Crunch Time

Snow is drifting down. Fine snow. Pushed along by a bit of wind, while calmly settling on Victoria’s winter greenery. This afternoon I’m warm, cosy and toasty being a couch potato, enjoying movies and snacks. But this morning - I was rebellious!

Mondays are reserved for the walking group I’ve belonged to for the last 14 years. One of our group is in Hawaii, another had an appointment, one more had family visiting……..and so on until it was myself and one other. My rebellion was not a big one, because this morning, although there was snow on the ground, sidewalks and bushes, it was not even snowing. Patchy blue sky framed high clouds, brightened our trees outlined in beautiful white snow. The streets were mushy grey. For many of us, the weather change had not slowed us down. Personally I just wanted to walk in the snow. Hear the crunch of my footsteps. Feel the cold on my cheeks. See my breath fanning out in front of me. This rebellion, in service to winter nostalgia, was absolutely necessary.

The walk only covered about four blocks to the nearest coffee shop. I passed a woman shovelling the driveway of her condo building, another walking slowly up the sidewalk sprinkling salt to keep the path safe and vehicles actually being cautious on their way to wherever they were going. The coffee shop, though not full, was busy serving customers seeking hot coffee or tea. Coats, gloves and toques took up space on tables and chairs. Grand conversations to save the world or chats about mundane errands hovered in the air. A walking group friend joined me from her home just two blocks away. We discussed books and other of life’s heavy topics.

So I was not alone in my rebellion. It was not organized nor did we huddle over tables to plan our next move. It was all business as usual. As I conclude this writing, snow flakes are falling more densely, mounding gently over our Victoria green.

“Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for 

innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.”

~ Albert Camus, The Rebel

The Library - A Story imagined from a book title

This is also from our Writing Group on Friday, February 01, 2019. Writing exercises in our writing group are always entertaining. This month we had choices for our ten minute exercise. The first was to write from the title of a book we are reading - but it couldn’t be about the same premise. The second choice was to write from a picture ~ in this case a framed book cover of five brawny, feline looking aliens in front of a young blond gentleman, apparently the author of the sci-fi book. The stories of the aliens were great. Had the six of us laughing and laughing. I was the only one to choose a book title. The book I chose is The Library by Susan Orlean about the 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire that destroyed many books and part of the library. A fascinating read and I definitely wrote something completely different. Libraries over history have performed a great service to citizens of all countries. It intrigued me to write about it. I’ve formatted it and fixed a typo here and there, but otherwise it is unchanged. Here is The Library

The Library - long hand in 10 minutes

The library creaked and groaned to a stop beneath an ancient old oak tree. The team of dark grey workhorses snuffled and stomped with much gratitude at the their reprieve. They could smell fresh water and hear a gently flowing river. Manes unfurled as their massive heads tossed in expectation. 

‘Now you boys be patient’ Anabel came down from the drivers seat on the old moving library. Dressed in long gray women skirt and an dusty orange buckskin too big for her, she seemed as old as the library. Getting two buckets from under the library she brought Ben and George their water and fed them the last of the oats. 

‘I’ll get you more when we get to town once the children have had time to get their books. They get almost as impatient as you do but they’re always respectful.’ 

Anabel had been driving her library across the dry plains and through small valleys for fifteen years. She never felt alone as long as she had her faithful grays pulling her wagon and the joyful faces of children. Some of the children had grown and were taking high school classes so she didn’t see them as often. But always one of them would come to her and ask for a book for some project they worked on. Sometimes she was given books in some of the larger towns she went through always keeping her library stocked. It was a journey that Anabel loved.

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, 

is the location of the library.”

Attributed to Albert Einstein

The Philosophy of Trees

This next writing is from Friday, February 1st, and was the writing group assignment for this month. The topic was simply ‘trees’. Each of us wrote very different pieces about trees. From fantasy to real life, we were, as always creatively different. From laughter to poignancy we read and listened to each other with interest. Always interested in the philosophical episodes of Star Trek and watching the violent destruction of trees in the movie Lord of the Rings, I mused about the Philosophy of Trees in my short essay below.

The Philosophy of Trees

One may think that trees are not sentient beings that can even formulate something as grand as a philosophy. And maybe they are not. After all, they have no language of their own that humanity can hear. Like a musical instrument they do translate the music of the environment. Birds of all sizes nest leafy or needled branches. Squirrels scramble up gnarled or smooth trunks, race in and out of branches, raising their young in cosy hollows. Bugs and insects range all along the surfaces of trunks and branches, homes found especially in fallen tree trunks. From the still living roots, new shoots spring up beginning the life of a new tree. In a deep forest where humanity’s noise cannot be heard, the orchestra of forest life plays without stop, only the players varying as they go about their life. The trees of our forests have given us our homes whether we are grateful or not to them for their lives. They have provided fuel for the earliest fires in our existence. When the trees of the forest, or of our city streets breath in and out, they breathe out oxygen and absorb the carbon dioxide that the rest of the world exhales. Make no mistake, trees are not benign martyrs that only give. They will strike back, or die, when they are taken for granted. Roots will wrap themselves around underground wires and sewers. Trees will grow up through cement blocks and pull eaves-troughs from homes. Trees will survive from their seed and from their roots. When I reflect on all of these things, I believe that the philosophy of trees, where trees are sentient or not, is service and survival. Service to all of life from the tiniest insect to the grandest mansion, to inventors and makers of paper and the shade we love on a hot summers day. Survival to continue the cycle of life that we all enjoy. The greatest service just may be that trees make us smile, the loss of their beauty and grace felt when they reach the end of their life span.

“To be without trees would, in the most literal way, to be without our roots.”

~ Richard Mabey, Beechcombings: The Narratives of Trees