Forwell Creek Storm Management Area (Between Lexingon and Weber)

I found myself in this corner of Waterloo because I had to get my computer looked at and the service provider had just moved to Columbia and King.

Still breathing deeply to rid the smell of epoxy from the still-being-renovated store from my lungs, and wanting to get a second quote from another provider south on King, I shifted my plans to bike through North Campus and instead turned east to head down Forwell Creek trail.

First I admired the outdoor greenhouse at Canadian Tire. How lovely the little impromptu landscapes made up by rows of plants for sale, some tall, some small. It reminded me of visiting the greenhouse at the Experimental Farm in Ottawa as a child. A completely human created forest.

As I continued east on Forwell Creek Road, I speculated on such questions as "Could I be truly fulfilled in a technology dominated future where all nature was virtual?" and "Could we really actually be living in a computer simulation?" and "Wow that would be some really intense coding!" to "How we long to know, and how little we do know about the origin and purpose of matter, from the expanding galaxy to this pine tree."

My next thought was: What a gorgeous place this is, no matter how it came to be or why.

When I first moved here and lived on Austin Drive, Forwell Creek was my first discovery and first love. Looking south over the eastern storm water pond, from the lonely road that looks down on it from above, I felt I was seeing a little Eden. At that time there were no houses to the east, just wild land. Soon of course came the razed fields (how it hurt my heart) and then the hosues - but this tiny wilderness lives on as lushly and enchantingly as ever, albeit slightly more constrainted from the perimeter.

Today though I decided to re-explore the west side area. I've been down that less well-used trail before - never to the end (which would, I imagine, come out at Lexington and Marsland - and I've been a little ways in on that side too, but there were too many snails available for crushing to make that experience anything other than upsetting and karmically damaging). Coming from the north, I usually stop at what feels like a half way point, where the hill comes down a little, and where for a long time there was a lone chair under a tree, awaiting a contemplator. Typically I stop because I feel so very far from any other person and I feel a probably reasonable anxiety of stranger danger.

(Sidenote: Agoraphobics, well, at least me, have an interesting relationship to stranger danger. On the one hand, it is, of course, stressful (for the possible assault) and irritating (for the limitations it imposes when wandering in wild places alone). On the other hand, there is nothing more relieving than a rational fear for giving you permission to turn around when you're forcing yourself forward against agoraphobic tendencies. But I digress.)

The landscape had become so lush and full of June that I couldn't find the trail. The last few times I'd explored here, it had been fall, when there is less abundance and more empty calm spaces. After a few moments of searching, I found it, a little fainter than it once was, but navigable. It felt slightly risky, as though it could disapear at any moment into a sea of laughing, anonymous grass.

As the trail turned from an eastern orientation along the edge of the pond towards the south and into the forest and field, it opened into a sheltered space of sumacs to the west and the pond beyond, and pines to the left and the long hill down to the creek to the east. The sumacs framed the pond, a latticework of dark across a canvas of light, and colour - colour was everywhere. Small birds were flying through the lattice.

Sometimes you are surprised by such unexpected wild beauty in unexpected spaces, and it make you delight for the ten thousand landscapes to be discovered right in your own little corner of the earth.

I continued to follow the path and it became became clearer, dirt now instead of flat grass. It started moving downhill. The mosquitoes were substantial.

(Another thing agoraphobics appreciate - mosquitoes. A reasonable reason not to sit and feel the feels, but to keep moving!)

I came to a fork in the path. The western branch, fainter, went up the hill into grassy sunshine. The eastern, down into woody gloom. I chose west, since I'd been east before.

The path dropped and dropped futher down the hill into the dim, damp piney woods.

Next I came to a ancient spreading willow and remembered the night in first year univeresity that S and I got in a fight at the McDonad's drive through on Columbia and King, after coming back from the Revolution Nightclub. The fight was me being young and stupid, the kind of young and stupid where so much love is given to you that the only thing you know to do with it is fling it back with complaints. After we fought, he ran into the night and I went home to cry dramatically with my roommate. Later he came back and we made up. He told me he'd been sitting in a large tree near the creek, listening to the water, and he brought me a stone. It was the only time he'd ever been truly mad at me. The forest and the water had let him forgive. I thought, as I passed the willow, that this must be his forgiving tree.

I was now deep in.

I began to feel the tinges of stranger danger anxiety - too far alone, too far alone. I kept going, I couldn't stop, curiousity pushed me joyfully and expansively.What is around this next corner, down this next hill?

I saw ahead a clearing filled with clothing and bottles and broken off tree limbs angled over living trees.

My first thought was this was a perfect location for rough sleeping in the sense of it being very private, probably very safe, and very pretty.

My second thought was that this was where I definitely needed to turn around.

I tend not to approach urban encampments unless they are very close to a main path. This one looked abandoned, but I wasn't very close to it. My a-brain was like, YEAH, sweet! Let's turn around (because it always likes that feeling). But my rational brain was like, yeah, you really should.

I turned around, vowing one day to return with a companion and follow this entire trail.

Back at the fork I still felt the enthusiasm for exploration so I turned west.

I was rewarded by a most enchanting clearing.

I think this is where the chair once sat, too.

And then above that, a view up a hill.

The way the clearing was scooped into a little sunlit valley among tall trees and bushes, out of the side of a tall slope, was so unusual to me and striking.

The mosquitoes were also really enjoying the space, and me in it. So I turned to head back after one last loving look.

On my return to the fork, I realized: this path is not great. It is clear enough, but not really clear. This is the kind of path that your archetypical mother voice tells you to be careful on and not get lost.

I experienced a moment of panic. It was not a clear path. Yes, I could SEE it, but it wasn't totally clear, and I couldn't see in my head exactly what it looked like ahead, because everything was so overgrown and unfamiliar.

Then a thought came:

Truth the path.

I only need to be able to see it a few feet ahead, and follow, and since I know I followed it in, I know it will reveal itself to me, in time.

I know there is a path here, and now I need to trust it.

I followed.

This was a new kind thought for me, a new path in my brain. Still just flattened grass, but visible and navigable.

Let go of your map, and your fear that your map will fail you, and trust the signs on the ground.

The panic didn't fully recede.  The path was still not very clear, with so many twists and turns. I thought (as I alway do in urban parks) "Well, you can hear traffic, won't get lost if you move towards it." Except I couldn't hear it that well. And this was a very strange landscape to me, hills and valleys and areas I hadn't even looked at on Google Maps and creeks and ponds barring staight lines in any direction. So suddenly, it felt like getting lost was a possibility. Would it be possible to wander for days literally almost in view of the Canadian Tire? Maybe! I could imagine it!

Panic again, and then the thought: Trust the path. Truth the path.

Let go of the map and trust the path.

I continued on. I could only see a few steps ahead, because of the twists and turns. At every turn, I thought, I don't remember what comes next! What if this is where the path disapears and I go stark raving mad, lost in the wilds? Become a naked, hairy feral adult living off Forwell Creek minnows and berries, always searching for the elusive Lexington road and all it offers for my renewed membership in human civilization?

Or worse, what if I have a panic attack?

Trust the path, trust the path.

And. Amazingly. The. Path. Kept. Being. There.

As I always knew it was, as it always had been.

With great relief, I finally reach the edge of the pond, and the view through the sumac, which signified re-entry into the known world. I spent a few moments admiring the view, and then followed a more clear branch of the entry path out onto the road a little further east from where I'd entered. There was my bike, reassuringly locked to a post. I unlocked it, feeling like a mountaineer descended from Everest, while a middle aged couple, the woman sporting a maple leaf tattoo on her ankle to match her red tshirt, walked by on a pleasant afternoon stroll.

Trust the path.

Steckle Farm (Bleams Road, address still unknown!)

In two weeks I will (God willing) be attending the wedding of some dear friends at Steckle Farm in Kitchener,Ontario.

Imagine my relief when I first learned that wedding wasn't on top of a mountain in NZ or in the Muskokas! Steckle Farm is most certainly outside my (expanding) zone, but, I think it's do-able!

Yesterday P agreed to drive me to Steckle Farm so we could check the place out in anticipation of the main event. Google maps told me it took about 15 minutes via the 8 or Westmount to Bleams Road. I promptly forgot to write down any directions, including even the address, on the assumption that everyone who owns a car has a GPS (being unfamiliar with owning either myself).

In fact P's cute little smart car DOES have a GPS, but was not familiar with simply "Steckle Farm".

There followed some conversation about directions, locations, checking phones, me not having data, him driving and not able to check phone. The GPS was not adding much of use to the conversation. I apologized. My head felt unclear. I recognized that I had been more relaxed about this then might have been reasonable given the challenge that it actually was. That's progress!

By this time we were at the roundabout on Margaret, which is the edge of my "walk" zone - the area I feel I can easily walk home from, my sanctum sanctorum.

After this: here be (possible) dragons!

I had some vague flutterings of panic - too much disorganization. Yes, I told myself, it does say something about how far you've come in terms of not tattooing the exact drive route on my brain and reviewing it anxiously like a map into Mordor. Yet I feared P would be irritated with  me, which in my ag-brain translates irrationally into him booting me out of the car somewhere in the wilds of Bleams Road (aka deepest Kitchener suburbia): an agoraphobic's nightmare.

I did some breathing and then he asked me if him choosing an unexpected route to the high way (yep, that was also happening) was "freaking me out". It was in fact not freaking me out (since at least I knew how to get to the highway!), but more importantly, I could feel P's concern for me and this was infinitely relieving and confidence building in this entire process. I assured him I was not freaked out.

And felt myself un-freak a little.

Soon we were on the highway. After a few moments I took note in my body of how extremely fast we were going. It was fast. 110. Think about how that feels to a person who rarely leaves the construction infested traffic jam of Uptown/Downtown. I felt like how I imagine my hamster used to feel when I unexpectedly removed her from the cage and carried her over to the couch. Little heart beating very quickly! I knew I would acclimatize soon so I just let myself feel the strangeness.

Somewhere between the King St and Fisher Hallman exits came the first "WTFWTFWTF" thought. It always happens at some point. It was not so bad. I put myself into work mode, where I have a duty to perform, not a big deal, just get 'er done. The feeling passed.

Then I experienced the most wonderful sensation of ... enjoyment. Like I was actually enjoying being in this car with P and that in fact we could live the rest of our lives in this little car in the sunshine watching the Petsmarts and row houses run by. Nice. Good moment. It reminded me of traveling with my Dad when I was a teenager.

Now we were definitively in suburbia. I had never been here in my life, that I can recall, in this part of Kitchener. The sky was very big and the grass seemed very long. Houses and buildings were spread out. A strange new world.

We finally reached Bleams. This was the point that P's geographical knowledge ran into my complete lack of memory of even the essentials of the specific location as visualized on Google maps.  He knew how to get us the area, but now we were true pioneers, discovering uncharted territories!

It was at this point also that a very strong need to go to the bathroom, which had been building over the past few minutes, became a clear and present reality.  I shared this with P. He told me we could stop at McDonald's.

I had lost track of the concept that there might even be bathrooms nearby, given how wild and deep this suburban adventure had become for me.  Also I felt I couldn't face getting out of the car at McDonald's. I told P I could go in the grass by the road and then he told me he could just slow the car down and I could stick my ass out the window.

We were momentarily distracted as P chose this moment to turn off into Huron Business Park to check the GPS. An old school GPS, also known as a hand-drawn sign in a ditch, alerted us to the fact that we were in the vicinity of "Steckle Farm Parking". Jackpot! shouted my heart. I still have to go! shouted my bladder.

I asked P to pull over by the entrance to the farm, and I spidered down into a ditch (that I prayed had no poison ivy) to pop a squat.

There is nothing more freeing that peeing in the great outdoors. Pee splash might dampen my knock-off Tom's, but nothing can dampen my joy! Also, it's very satisfying to urinate in a location that is, for you, an achievement to arrive at. 

Steckle: I came. I saw. I conquered. 

I marked my territory!

Back in the car, P and I drove down the drive but we decided not to get out of the car because apparently Ashley and Jeremy were getting married at the farm that day (according to another cute little sign) and we didn't want to wedding crash. Plus A was waiting for us to meet her in at the Village Creperie in Belmont for a well-earned brunch in 20 minutes.

P decided to take Strasburg back. I placed my trust in him completely since I more or less had no idea where we were or how to get back. That's cool. I like that I got into that place mentally. I trust him. I hope he wants to go on more drive challenges with me.

The Museum

It was a cold, sunny Friday morning and I was taking my first trip in months. I was going to the Museum, formerly known as the Children's Museum (and still very popular with that demographic), in downtown Kitchener. The plan was to take the bus there, tour the exhibits, and return home. An additional and negotiable goal was the special Planetarium showing at 11:30 am. Reading the advertisement which described it as a special portable planaterium, I had vision of stars swirling across a lofty ceiling, myself feeling magically transported not to a distant galaxy but somehow, more magically to me, the Ontario Science Centre.

But first I had to get on the bus. It was the first time in a long time I'd taken one. I was amazed at the processed of waiting. This happened a few weeks ago and I've since taken the bus several times (see "Museum of Natural Sciences") but on this day it was a whole new bag of confused impatience. Years of cycling, walking and the occasional car ride left me mystified at the amazing patience people displayed simply standing by the side of the road, freezing their assses of, enjoying the inspiring vision of rushing traffic, waiting for a large vehicle stuffed with other human beings the sole purpose of which was to ferry people around, but not quite on their own terms. Miazaki's Cat Bus would have been almost less strange to me. In the long feeling minutes that passed while I waited, my mind circled, again and again, the marvel of public transportation.

At long last the bus appeared and I nervously mounted the step. I found a place at the rear and was delighted to look out a darling oblong rectangle of a window, which framed the sights at every stop with an extremely arty edge. It was like the public transportation system had become an Instagram generator, making the less than glorious sights of what city planners are trying to convince us to call Midtown look, if not fresh, then a least intriguing, even if we'd seen them a thousand times (the doctor's offices, the pine trees, the bus stop benches, the Victorian houses turned therapist offices).

I got off the bus in front of City Hall and walked the next two blocks to the Museum, filled with the glory of adventure. Snow scudded in gusts at my feet, old shops revealed bright signs and dingy windows, while new facades yelled, "People do technology here, and also we have our own CBC radio station! The future is NOW!". I could certainly feel the energy of Kitchener's rebirth, like little tender shoots amid the soil.

A slightly anxiety-producing young man appeared to be following me, but I was pleased to note he did not turn into the Museum entrance way with me. I congratulated myself on not becoming agitated but in fact remaining committed to the mission.

At this time it bears noting that the Museum has an adorably small door next to the large main doors which is clearly designed for children, reminiscent of it's days as a museum devoted completely to them. I did not enter via this door, as I felt the adorableness of doing so would be overstimulating and might trigger my anxiety.

Inside, I paid an amount of money to visit a space I doubted I would spend more than 30 minutes in which normally I would grudge on full night out with only the hesitation that the girl at the counter would judge me for being wasteful when I exited in what she might feel was an inappropriately short amount of time later. I remedied this probably unecessary worry by asking her if I could go in and out, and promptly made up a story in my head that I worked in downtown Kitchener and was here on my lunch break, and would for some reason come back later. She said yes, I could, I had my hand duly stamped, inquired where the Planetarium was, was informed of it's location and then also that the Sex Exhibit was on the fourth floor, accesible only by elevator.

The Sex Exhibit! Yes, of course. Generating controversy throughout Canada as it toured the past several years, the Sex Exhibit had finally made it's way to Kitchener to stir delight,  to arouse, to educate and agitate in Old Berlin.

Making my way through the main floor children's play area, I directed myself to the second and third floor, to find the Planetarium. Coming onto the third floor, I saw what looked like a small, black, inflatable igloo. A young man wearing a museum pinafore was standing out side the impossibly tiny entrance with another man and a child. The first man appeared to be talking about the Planetarium. The second man, and child, appeared as though they had not the slightest desire to enter the tiny igloo via the tiny door. As for me, I took one look and decided that although bravery and courage and adventure were les mots du jour, no one could possibly expect me to get into that small, dark, sweaty space with two strange men and a child. I could picture the stars on the ceiling and the likely delight of them, but they were accompanied in my mind by the feeling of sweat on my neck, induced by anxiety as well as shared body heat. I imagined it to be an educational sweat lodge in which my worst nightmares might come to the surface, with only Museum Pinafore and Unenthusiastic Dad and Kid as my guides, while I tried desperately to escape the primal womb to which we all long to return, except when it is sweaty black plastic inflated by a generator.

I decided instead to tour the Russian History exhibit, which was was completely innocuous to me on every emotional level, and thus at the moment, quite soothing. I also viewed a large carved orca display. I strove to appreciate the artistic message of environmental activism behind it, but found myself only able to focus on how much it reminded me of the dinosaur museum and how happy that made me, in the way the simplest things can when you are in a new environment.

The third floor being more or less viewed, I stopped to ponder the choice to view the Sex Exhibit. It was located on the fourth floor, only accessible by elevator (gah!) and it was extremly unclear where the exit was (double gah!). Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If I could not face the sweaty black igloo, I would face the elevator. I took a deep breath, entered, and patiently waited as it rose up one floor. It opened, and I exited almost directly before a desk where a young woman sat, guardian of sex information. She informed me I could not take pictures, and I wondered if that could possibly be her only function there. Asking her about her function seemed akin to asking about sex information from a random although sympathetic and likely trusthworthy adult when you were a child - unthinkable. I asked her where the exit was and she said, "It is through the exhibit."

Through. The. Exhibit. Oh dear me. I might as well have been Sarah, standing outside the Labyrinth. The Sex Exhibit (of which all I could mostly see at this point were larger than life sized naked people photographs) was the painted set spanning the distance through which I could choose to nagivate to safety, or, equally frightening although less terrifyingly uncertain, return via elevator. A force of will rose in me, and I decided to venture on. My strategy: get through the labyrinth, and then double back and be educated about sex at a more leisurely pace.

The entire exhibit was lit by a lurid purplish glow. As I navigated corridors of displays, bodies, body parts and words you don't normally see in large print flashed out at me in sparks of information and sensation. I was a mouse in a sex education maze, intent on the exit, my whiskers and peripheral vision picking up titillating and unexpected stimulation responses. My focus was impressive. The first thing I can recall clearly seeing was five metres from the exit - a display of dildoes from ages past. I was filled with joy at the sight of these dildos, framed in the warm, reassuring light of the exit doors behind them. I went to the doors, opened them, reviewed the path to the stairs, and relaxed into curiousity about the exhibit.

For the next several minutes, I toured back and forth and around, learning nothing new about sex and generally being disoriented by the French and English side by side, which was once such a common place for me when I lived in our nation's Capital, but felt completely strange after 15 years in a city where the second most common language is either German or possibly one from an Asian country, and French is reserved more or less for foreign films and the dedicated bookshelf at the library, or the occasional couple speaking it in the street, which happens so rarely that it makes you wonder what on earth would have induced those persons to move to southwestern Ontario where they would have so few people to speak to in their preferred language, when so much of that language was available in other and in fact much more interesting areas of the country. I interacted with one display only, in which I pushed a button to watch a cross section of penis becoming engorged. It reminded me somehow of a Muppet and I appreciated the foamy quality of the moving parts. The engorged penis, historical dildos, larger than life naked photos and full sized white plastic models of lounging naked men and women are literally all I remember of the displays, but it was still worth the effort, if only to prove that I could run the maze with a degree of confidence. Although there had been some moments of mild panic, when deciding how much time to spend on reading the information and how much to allow myself to just move forward to completion of the exercise, I was glad to have overall been able to remain ok with any anxiety I was experiencing, and continue to calmly move forward.

Back downstairs and feeling extremely pleased with myself, I stopped and removed my shoes to play a step-on piano, sent a photo to L., and took a photograph of a display of Justin Bieber's hat and shoes. I wandered around a few more displays and then moved back down to the first level. I had a strong urge to go and lie down in the sensory room where the babies play, but felt that a 34 year old woman lying down among strange babies on a Friday morning would invite unwanted attention or judgment. Instead, I checked out the gift shop, which was really just three shelves of museum type gifts near the front door.  I then exited the museum with the anxiety that the counter girl was judging me for wasting too much money on too little time in the Museum. The feeling passed quickly in my happiness at having achieved my mission with a surprisingly low amoung of anxiety. I spent the remainder of the morning visiting a couple of bookstores, chased what I thought was my bus transfer across two crosswalks only to discover it was my receipt from the bookstore, experiencing a moment of great excitement to see a cop on a horse, and then non-enjoying all the common irritation of a crowded bus on the way back home. To simply be irritated - what delight, what success! For what is irritation, but anxiety that one feels confident in?

Museum of Natural Sciences

I boarded the iExpress across from the Grand River Hospital. It was a brilliantly sunny day, blue and white and yellow, snow falling through sunshine. I felt cold, but knew I'd soon warm up. The iExpress stops every 20 or so stops, making it a much faster way to get anywhere along the mainstreet. I sat next to a pretty girl watching television on her phone. The bus chugged along, stopping here and there.

"Laurier" called out the automated voice, and the driver pulled into the stop at Bridgeport and King. It seemed awfully far from Laurier University; nearly 10 blocks early. The doors opened and a voice piped up from outside, "Is this the 7D?" It was not, at all, the 7D (which normally stops at King and Bridgeport), and this was not, it appeared, the "Laurier" stop. This became instantly clear as the bus driver yelled out, "Shit!" and stuck her palm out towards the door, barring entry to the confused travellers. The doors were shut quickly, and the bus sped off. I laughed out loud. Everyone else continued to remain engrossed in their phones or internal musings.

After a few more stops we arrived at the University, where hundreds of Asian young men in black coats with thick glass and stylish girlfriends were eager to get on and off the bus. I took a deep breath and headed directly for the Museum, located in the earth sciences building. I had cleared a path through my anxious mind with an intinerary - walk through the museum, making moderately timed note of the dinosaur bones, rocks and murals; come out through the mock coal mine into the Biology buildings; penetrate through them to the new Nanoquamtumsomething building; explore this building; make my way to South Campus Hall; purchase a sweater; and then walk home cross country (or take a bus if it was convenient). My mind made many anxious objections to this itinerary, presenting many possible disasters, but I soldiered on.

My first brush with the elements took place as I transitioned from the warm, sunlit road from the bus to the shaded, windy corridor under the Davis Centre walkabove. Suddenly the day went from warm and adventurous to shipwreck in the artic, and the dogs have all been eaten. I began to question the wisdom of my plan to walk home, which caused me to question the wisom of my plan to walk at all, and on to questioning the wisdom of the entire venture. Like any good explorer, I set my shoulders and marched on. Once inside the Museum, life turned again towards the warm and hospitable; lovely  memories of coming into the building to cool off and admire ancient artifacts during summer bike rides, or to warm up reading Young Adult novels over the grating or in the bathroom during crisp winter walks (when my walking skills were considerably more developed). Entering the museum was like going back in time, a time of confidence and relaxation and dreaminess - not quite enough to cause me to forget my mission, but enough to make it much easier. I toured the exhibits, took some photographs for L., thought about sending them, didn't send them, turned my phone on, turned it off to save battery, and repeated that process about three times. By this point I found myself entering the mock coal mine, where I continued to deliberate about taking pictures. Decided against (phone on, phone off) and I was in the main Biology building. The doors on the coal mine side were painted to look old and distressed, to match the rocky walls, and on the other side, it was like being in high school in the 50s, with old drinking fountins, a clock with a goalie mask, and golden wooden doors. It had far more the quality of a museum than the actual museum I had just left.

My internal map of the evolving structural geography of the University being not well developed, I had thought maybe there was an indoor passage from this building to the Nanoquantumsomething, but discovered that outdoors would be the fastest route. At least it was sunny again. Nanoquantom loomed over the geological specimen garden like an alien ship that tried to land in a field but got caught in a city. It's geometric facade reflected daylight while keeping secrets. I tried the door and it was locked.

I circled the building, and began to wonder whether the trip to South Campus Hall might be useless - maybe everything was closed. I stopped a guy and asked. He said he didn't know, but that Timmy's was closed, and I concurred that if Timmy's was closed, than it was extremely unlikely that anything else on earth was open. Feeling cleared of duty (having accomplished as much as I'd been able to) I experienced a wave of relief and felt a feeling that was almost relaxation in comparison the trek that had lead up to this moment - I would go back to the Museum and just spend time there.

Back at the museum I continued to wander around, turn my phone on to take pictures to send to L, decide not to, and turn my phone off. I spent a great deal of time staring at mammoth and saber tooth tiger bones, and reading about core samples of University earth. Finally I took a picture of a mural which I was later to send to L, after turning my phone on and off several times. I happened on a clock and realized the next iExpress was leaving in five minutes. It was five, thirty, or walk. I decided to bus it. My adventure has been short, but not rushed. I felt satisfied with it, and thought it would be good to take the bus back, since walking was generally more familiar and less of challenge, and also more cold and thus a less desirable challenge.

Back at the bus stop surrouned by Asian men with thick glasses, black coats and stylish girlfriends, I waited patiently, continuing to be amazed as I have been, having recently taken up bussing again for my challenges, at people's willingness and patience to wait for a bus. Finally it arrived and we literally piled on - the crowd gathering like a wave that spilled into the warm interior. I managed to find a seat, and spent the next ten minutes trying to avoid a stylish Asian girlfriend's stylish bag hit my knees, while concurrently trying not to stare at her and her boyfriend, as they quite confidently and obliviously stared directly into each other eyes from a distance of 10 centimeteres, changing position generally only when the bus knocked them forward or backward. Finally my seatmate got off and I retreated towards the window, safe from the bag though not from the intimate view. All three of us deboarded at Uptown Waterloo. I went to eat pizza, have my eyebrows waxed, and get groceries. An hour later we were somehow all back on the same bus, continuing south, me with ridiculously awkward groceries and they with their love. I managed to deboard without sexually assaulting my fellow passengers with my grocery bags, while the couple moved on to another adventure in their day of romance. Hoisting my groceries up, tucking my toilet paper rolls under my arm, I headed for home.

Columbia Lake, August 18, 2012

I went out to Columbia Lake this morning. My head felt sleepy, while my body felt relatively strong. I couldn't quite figure out what I was doing. I didn't really know why I was going. The invisible walls that are so hard to pass are starting to make this whole thing less interesting.

I stopped at the stormwater lake by the little willow, which I often do if I feel sleepy and unsure. The light was bright and cold. I read Lord of the Rings until I felt my motivation, my certainty about my journey begin. Frod was climbing the mountain north of Minas Morgul. The grass and weeds around me were bobbing in the cold air.

I stopped just on the other wide of the Gate, an opening in the hedgerow just south of the lake. A cut path turns east briefly through the scrub and trees and then comes out due south between tall grass, short trees and soybean fields. Standing at the turn, I looked out over a vista of soy, trees, and roads in the distance.

I sat there for a long time. I just wasn't sure how to go forward. I didn't want to make myself go forward just for the sake of doing this loop.  I need to shift my brain through time, not my body through space. The air was cold in the shade. I sat with my back to the sun and felt the cool air, until I felt ready to move forward in the here and now.

Once I was moving again, I began to feel very tired again, sleeply, unclear, and without motivation. I continued to need to resist the pull to just plunge ahead without thought, driven only by mad, blind desire to get somewhere, do something, without any awareness. I sank into the tiredness and began to feel sad, about a particular relationship. This was clarifying, somehow. Feeling sad meant I did not feel madly driven, and thus at least risk of anxiety. I felt present. I kept going. I wasn't planning to do the loop but then at a certain point, I was. I was making the decision. This is the point where I often feel anxious and then get overwhelmed. This time, I began to feel that if I went forward, it would be less frightening and distressing. It would be easier, in my anxiety and pain, to just quietly go forward. Like being in the dentist chair, like facing stress at work, it's more grounding to just move forward, instead of fight to get away or strategize about going back. I think right now this feeling is only accessible when I am right in the middle of something - it's difficult to imagine it looking forward into a situation. I think right now this forward feeling is a motivating factor in mostly stark moments of near desperation (because on some level, every stark moment - the moment when you simply realize you cannot be anywhere else, that there is only one reality, and you are not in control of it - is always to some degree a moment of desperation for me), rather than a full time operating strategy - but I hope and believe that is slowly coming.

I didn't race. A feeling of stillness came over me, of my body steadily pedaling forward. I looked around, in curiousity, into the trees along the path. When I came out the other side, at the bottom of the hill at Bearinger and University, I felt almost completely at ease. So much so, and liking so much that feeling of being "away", that I began to explore the area. When I imagined going back around and up the hill, the originally planned loop, I didn't want to. I could feel energetically how inside my zone it feels like tightened mind - familiarity, patterns, repetitive thoughts and ways of orienting. A safe space, for sure, but a tight one, and to some degree, at times, demoralizingly boring.

After some exploration of the area, I began to have the thought that I should go back down the path. At first it felt too scary, and I certainly didn't pressure myself to do it, but then after a while, I thought about driving the next day and how I'd want to see how long I could be out of the car - how, if I am preparing to go to Staff Appreciation Day, I want to know I can "go forward" for an extended period of time, so I made a quick decision, as I was climbing up the hill, turned my bicycle around, and set myself on te path.

Then when I was on it, the familiar thoughts arose: "What are you doing? This is the kind of decision you always make that hurts you, snap decisions motivated by future anxieties! These are the ones that make you panic! You could panic. This could be the 'really bad trip'. It could be the one." I kept going, holding this, not sure why I was holding it or whether it was a good idea to hold it, instead of turning back, which felt like the deepest form of self care. And then a new thought arose, and I said to myself, "Well, if that was the reason you made the decision, you're here now, and you can orient from a different place than the one you made the decision from. Just because you made a decision in the recent past from an unhealthy place, doesn't mean you can't live with your decision in a healthy way. Turning back doesn't have to be the only way to self-care. Being here now in a healthy way is possible and could give you access to even better self-care mental patterns, patterns which don't require you to limit yourself to certain actions and places, and break down after one mistake, but patterns which you can take with you anywhere you go."

I can recognize that I made the decision under a certain set of conditions but now I can come from a different perspective to abide in and work with the results.

I don't believe this was simply a result of changed beliefs, as if the above is a statement I could have simply memorized and willed into lived experience be repitition or recall. I think that due to my meditation practice, my capacities are stronger than they once were to stay calm in the face of physical and mental discomfort, including that discomfort I bring on myself  (in these moments, often lines from a Radiohead song comes up: "You do it to yourself, you do, and that's why it really hurts!"). I think my capacity and spontaneously arising inclination to self-care is now slightly stronger than my capacity to rush ahead blindly, so that mistakes - situations I find myself in that are the results of times of unclear thinking - can be remedied in the moment by an accessible reserve of clear thinking and calm focus.

Coming along, feeling more peaceful now, I became spontaneously and unusually irritated by the noise of my bike tires on the fine gravel path. My mind said, "What if I can't stand this noise and I go crazy? There is so much more path to go!" What a strange discomfort, particularly because I usually like this noise. I think that this anxiety came up for me in this moment  as a little aftershock of the inital bigger fear. My mind was still on alert and it was finding things.  Being aware of that, I recalled my experience at the dentist again and reminded myself that if I can just keep being aware of the strange or novel feeling (for example, having freezing during dental work) it can become familiar and not a source of fear and anxiety. I do not have to be threatened by it - I can engage with it quietly and gently and steadily.

Then the Gate path was back before much time had passed and I felt deliciously happy. The sun was bright and deep yellow on the trees, and the sky opened up before me over leaves and grass shimmering the wind. I passed the gate path to take the slightly longer trail back through the hedgerow, and moved on into the rest of my day.

Hillside Park and Lexington Rd, November 6, 2011

This morning I had an extra hour before going to the Dharma Centre because Daylight Savings Time ended last night. It was a bright, cool morning. My mind was placid, not excited for or inclined towards any particular direction, so I decided to see where I ended up. I followed Willow Street to the Peppler and down the path along the stream, through Moses Spring Park and up University, onto the path running from University into Hillside Park. The entrance to this path was blocked and there was a sign that reminded me that sewer line construction and creek improvements were planned for the month of October until the spring of 2012. Uneasily curious, I went around the barrier and followed the leafy gravel path that jogs alongside the tumbling stream, and as I came around the corner, where the path turns east, the sky ahead looked a little bigger beyond the trees than I remember. An uncomfortable feeling arose within my body as I came up to a wide fence blocking the path, and saw behind it that the sky got even bigger, and massive contructions machines towered against it. As I snuck around the fence, I saw that those machines stood Alone against the sky - all of the trees on the south east side of the bridge, and the east side of the path, were gone.

How it hurts even to write this and recall it. The bridge was there - I was so afraid it would be gone! - looking naked and metallic against the bright stream and the almost white sky. The earth was churned up everywhere and hardened, and massive piles of cedar shreds were steaming whitely in the morning air. Everything was still but for a couple walking down the dirt rubble a hundred yards ahead. I stood on the bridge and remembered.

One year someone put a bird feeder up in a tree beside the bridge and at least 20 different kinds of birds, of all colours, fluttered around it. I used to sit on the bridge and stare east down the river. I could see no buildings anywhere and during those days, Hillside Park was far enough out of my routine and my zone that I felt like I was in a wild, remote place, on a wilderness adventure. I would gaze down the river and imagine a future self, traveling through rugged, remote Northern parks, and feel I was already there, somehow. One day, sitting on the bridge, looking east, I was feeling sad about something, and then I realized how fortunate I was to be finished school and free to loaf idly on a warm summer evening in the woods. I drew this picture, and now I am so grateful to have this record of what was.



Now it was like standing in a clearcut. I stepped over a dirty wooden beam strewn across the dirt at the edge of the bridge, and as I lifted my foot over it, I gazed at it almost numbly, the dirt, the abandonment, the indifference - while not everything is lost, things are being lost all the time. One simply stares at the too white sky, feeling that everything is still very stark and real and beautiful, but desolate, and new, and messy. The past is warmth and light and summer, green leaves and the clock in my grandmother's spare room. The past is a place that seemed wild and yours and eternal, but was really somebody else's to change, unexpectedly, so that you are left with a gaping heart, a solemn gaze, a steady witness, a great love.

I followed the rough dirty path for a little while, looking at the devastation of trees and animal homes and magical nooks, where I once saw a wild turkey and imagined that if I chased it, I would find a Wonderland within the cedars. What was once a curved path was now a straight blast through the forest, unsettling my sense of geography and even my memory of what used to live where now there was only the unestablished air. I stopped to speak with the couple who were walking, and they were explained to me that this was happening not to improve the park (because how could it?) but because there was flooding at the other end of the park, because the sewage pipes weren't big enough, and the city was growing. It is difficult to argue with the desire not to have sewage flooding.

The dirt path became rougher and I simply didn't want to see anymore, I wanted to get out of this wide, gaping space among the far off trees, so I returned to the bridge, crept around the fence blocking it from the north side, and followed the northeast path through the old Revival grounds, where everything was still blissfully ancient and still. This magical, sleepy valley of long grass, ancient oaks and bubbling streams, where once were held tent Revivals, how relieving to see it still dreaming in autumn quiet. At the smaller bridge, I made eye contact with a young woman with short brown hair who looked up from gazing into the stream.

I felt I wanted to leave the woods, although they are the place of such happiness for me. I was shaken by the clearcut and knew that only time would settle me, and it didn't much matter where I spent that time, and I wanted to keep moving. I decided to see how far I could go down Lexington. As I followed this busy road over the highway, past churches and retirment homes and ball diamonds and suburban houses, my mind began to drift peacefully, my body almost empty. Glimmers of fear arose and I watched them, curious, touched, affected, but detached. I felt strong and calm and light and clear. I could see a dark green shadow of pines up ahead, and I knew this meant the entrance to Kiwanis Park. I realized in that moment that it was the next place I most yearned to go, my next Shangri-La. Realizing this, I decided to turn around. I felt good, and I wanted to remember and associate this feeling with this place.

Shortly after turning back, I cycled past a rabbit that had been hit and was dead and bloody by the side of the road. As with all animals that have been killed on the road, I was touched and saddened, and offered a prayer. In feeling for this rabbit, I realized that I felt more for this dead being on the road then I did for the cars, the buildings, the power lines. The little body had become separated from the little soul, but the fur and flesh were still vividly organic, vividly real. I share a commonality with this little lifeless body, and in life, am closer to it in death than to the electric, speeding metals and flashing lights. Commonality - sympathy - that which is shared - space, composition, mind - is love, if one can define love.

Passing the baseball diamond park again, I thought about my best friend, who I haven't spoken with in months, because I hurt her and she hurt me, although all we both wanted was to care for each other and be cared for. I remembered during the first week of University, my second week living in Waterloo, over ten years ago, she had gone off with our new friends and I was supposed to meet them at one of the houses on Lexington road. But when I got there, no one was around, so I went and sat in the ball diamond park and cried and wondered if I would ever feel anything but alone, and how I would survive this strange town. And I realized I already loved this land, and that I would never be completely alone if I could spend time on the earth here. I knew that wherever I went, the land would always be a beloved companion. After a time, I came back to our little basement apartment and found my friend watching Oprah and looking teary. She'd somehow missed meeting up with the crew and thought I was with them and she too was feeling afraid and alone. We laughed and smiled and sniffed and watched Oprah together.

I miss her, like a white, open, too big sky.

Dodds Lane, November 2, 2011

On Wednesday night I went to get my haircut at Voila Uptown. At 8 pm I was finished, and came out of the bright lights, warmth and music into the cool dark night. I planned to go over to the Bridgeport Shoppers, buy some chapstick and ear plugs, and then continue on into Moses Springer Park to admire the moon.

As I came along the lane behind Voila towards John St, a very large raccoon ran across the road and into a yard to my right. I stopped to watch him run along the top of a fence, pause, look at me, and then leap into a tree. He disapeared into the darkness, and then, as I continued to watch, his masked face poppped up between a fork in the tree. His eyes reflected the streetlight as he watched me, and I watched him. Above him and to the right, through the bare branches, a very bright star shone like a beauty mark in the sky. The raccoon was nearly invisible and only because I had stopped and was looking for him was I able to see him in the darkness. He disapeared again and then re-appeared, even more dimly, and higher up in the tree. Again we watched each other in the the dark, until he disapeared again, and then I went on my way.