A timely essay from 2013 on the Landscape of Home and Gretel Ehrlich

For love of Earth

Last night I couldn't get to sleep and so picked up a book of essays in an attempt to bring sleep to me. In doing so I read something I was so moved and unsettled by (an essay on climate change and spirituality) that there was no hope of sleep after reading it. So much for sleep besides, what does one person's sleep one night matter anyway? More importantly the questions that remain with me are what does Gretel Ehrlich's essay from her book entitled The Future of Ice mean for me, for my little Island in the Gulf, and for the floating sphere we all call home?

Born and raised on a small Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, I am an Islander through and through. Like many other young people I left in my twenties  to attempt to expand my universe. Although I did my best while away to try to find landscapes in the interior of Ontario that I could fall in love with, I was constantly heartsick for my Prince Edward Island home. I recall  driving one bleak November day in Ontario and coming unexpectedly upon a lake and almost driving into it I was so happy to see a relatively large body of water. I didn’t realize how desperately I was missing the landscape of home; as much as I was missing the people and familiar routines.

But my little Island home, although wonderful and where we have chosen to raise our own growing up family, doesn't feel so comfortable anymore. The ease of childhood's ignorance has long since worn of and I am left with a grating feeling in my throat when I speak certain words, an inability to get a full breath when certain words are uttered by others. The words I speak about are all related to development and environmental protection, and to the ways we use our land and waters here.

We, as a small Island community, have a responsibility towards the land and air and waters of our home and I do not think we are taking this responsibility seriously enough. As environmentalist David Suzuki says people who live on islands know there are limits to things. He is right in that many of us here have a lived sense of those limits and what we need for our survival. Yet why are we  continuing to allow government to be swayed by investors promising to bring jobs in genetically modified fisheries to our waters, why are we still considering hydraulic fracturing off our coastlines, and why are we not an entirely organic Island when far sighted and reasonable people believe it is a possibility that could become a reality if only the government and people of our land were to speak out, and let their voices be heard?

The essay I read last night was written by Gretel Ehrlich and is entitled The Future of Ice. It is a gorgeous piece of lyrical writing about spirit, place and the role our behaviours play in affecting the landscapes we live in. It was a read that made me want to get up out of my bed late on a wet, cold night and go outside to touch the earth at my own doorstep just so I could remember that I am alive; a living member of the world right now. Ehrlich's writing provides a glimpse into the fragile, changing nature of the North, somewhere we oft think of as the last true frontier, strong and wild and free. The witness she bears to the vulnerabilities the north is facing is startling and sadly too easily translatable to our planet as a whole. The words she uses, poetic. This woman truly loves  Earth and writes about her love in a way that makes you feel as though you've somehow entered into the love as well.

As I age, I am realizing that many of greatest truths I have known in my life I knew intimately as a young child still awed by the sensuousness of the world. Truths which for too many years since I have largley forgotten. Ehrlich's words shook those forgotten truths from me much the way a good hug reminds you that you need to hug people more often. Yet her words rang hauntingly as well, like a rattlesnake's ominous warning entering spaces you'd rather pretend do not exist, rattled and shaken just before it's too late.


     "How fragile we are.’We' being the humans and this mountain. My Inuit friends in Greenland use the word sila to describe weather: the power of nature, landscape, and human consciousness as one and the same. Every scar on the landscape is also a perturbation of the mind." 
Gretel Ehrlich

I have felt the desecration of our sacred lands and waters too oft as a perturbation of my own mind, and more times than I care to recall have felt the scorn of others for being too deep a feeler, too much a fool for the voiceless. Yet still I must ask: what are we doing to this wondrous world, to all its living creatures, to ourselves? Is it still possible for us to take pause, look deeply into the eyes of the world, and fall in love again? 


Over the last few years I have been drawn to writers whose use of language explores both the internal and external lived worlds. A good friend of mine, poet John MacKenzie , does this brilliantly. His imagery pulled from the natural world reminds us that we are passionate, breathing creatures of bone and flesh whose bodies are not separate from the landscapes and mindscapes we inhabit. 
A wonderful example of the intimate precision of his writing is exhibited here in a recent sestina he wrote:
The Winter Wings of Gulls

Perhaps, the greatest thing we could do in terms of slowing the progression of climate change is to slow ourselves, our frantic pace, our shallow breathing, and once again be mindful of our connection to the Earth. We then could be reminded of the wonders of the natural world, of the ways that place infuses spirit. Perhaps if we all recalled  the forgotten truths of our childhood, the long, slow creak of years when we drank time like warm milk and squeezed the breath into and out of our days. Those truths we knew in our bones back then, those truths that I knew so well and let retreat to the shadows for too many years of my own life. Thankfully I have been reminded that we are inextricably a part of a great and wonderful unfolding; a mystery of nature and of spirit that encompasses the whole. 

In a particular wintertime childhood memory of mine, I am lying in a snowbank outside of my house, alone on a blustery, snowy day. I was outside by myself as I was oft given to, but I knew in my heart that I wasn’t really alone, that in the great loneliness there was room for all.  I knew all of this and more at age five, lying well bundled in snow deep enough to mold around my little form, the wind blowing, lifting eddies and currents of crystalline snowflakes all around me. My breath, soft little exhales, made clouds above my face which disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared, The sharp catch of cold in my little chest as I breathed the air back in reminded me to breath slowly, gently. I can still recall that feeling of being tucked in by the snow. The cold assurance that this was winter I was lying in, but the secure feeling that there was room for me in it. 

Ehrlich in her essay on The Future of Ice says:
“The sky borrows its radiance from ice, its adamantine clarity, and we spend lifetimes tracking down those elements within ourselves.”

Her essay speaks volumes about our need to make tracking down those elements that re-connect us with the living earth, with the spark of life inherent in all, a more urgent necessity in our lives. Her words an almost silent plea for us to care for each other and this planet with the same loving attention and awe with which we care for those we call our lovers. After all, the separateness we presume to be reality is only an illusion and the cost of being fooled by this is far, far too great. There is, after all, room for the whole of it.
Jill MacCormack

I am re-posting this essay from 2013 as it seems as timely now as it was then--perhaps more so. 
May love be your guidepost, and kindness, always kindness.
Jill

Naming, Blaming and the Smallness of Such Politicing--Maybe 2019 Could be Different

I am writing in response to Alan Holman’s Dec first, 2018 Guardian opinion piece questioning David Weale’s supposed naming and blaming over land ownership on PEI.

Mr Holman is trodding into naming and blaming territory himself when he says that most Islanders in his personal opinion are either content or disinterested in who owns the land. I am not sure what he bases this opinion on but it certainly is not a reliable refute to the passivity he accuses David of accusing Islander's of.

Rather, it is perhaps the perfect definition of passivity.

As per the Oxford dictionary, passivity is defined as: 
Acceptance of what happens, without active response or resistance.

And although David is a personal friend of mine, I feel no need to defend David Weale, the person. I know David can handle an unpleasant review or opinion on him or his personal choices. He is fully able to turn the other cheek or speak up for himself, need be. Or reflect, perhaps, on whether he might need to reconsider things. He is a grown up after all.

But the land and the waters of which we have a shared love and deep concern for; they need us to speak up for them.  I do not believe that Mr. Holman did a good job recognizing that the intent behind David's waxing poetic about 'them times" is to urgently call to attention how far we have strayed from the ideals of stewardship of the land our ancestors and the Mi'kmaq people's lived. After all they were the first to recognize and honour the land and waters which bestowed them with the basic necessities of life, nourishing their spirits as well as their bodies.

The land today bears silent witness to the unwholesome desires of large land holders and must be spoken for by those who love it deeply and see it being shown such little regard. I am speaking up not in defense of David, rather in defense of David’s defense of the land and waters here on PEI.

And while David might pine for a simpler time when seemingly those who farmed did so for the love of the occupation, he is not off the mark when he “rhapsodizes” for an era which saw a multitude of small sized, self sustainable rural land holdings doing well for themselves and their families while respecting the limits nature imposes.This is of course rather than the forced “go big or go home” mentality that capitalism's green revolution wrought on  small scale farmers and agriculture in the 1960’s and hence fore ward.

I hazard a guess that David harbour's no ill will toward either Mr. Irving or any of the orange robed GEBIS monks. I believe instead that he is deeply concerned about the larger forces at work behind  the Irving's and potentially GEBIS' land interests as well.

The PEI Lands Protection Act has been discussed at length regarding the spirit of the act and its intention towards discouraging the amassing of large tracts of land by any one land holder. Somehow the spirit of the act is being disregarded by these groups.  So too with the Irving’s imposition on the Water Act and implicit desire to see the moratorium on deep water wells lifted.

I agree with Mr Weale that the Irving’s don’t like potato farmers, they use them. The agricultural monopoly that the Irving’s have on rural PEI in their pursuit of what Holman describes as "long, flavorful french fries" for a North American fast food market is real and it falls under the term predatory capitalism (loosely defined as capitalism ignoring social and environmental concerns to attain its primary goals).

Even Holman admits that the Irving's, like an ill tempered child,  will take their ball and bat and go home if Island farmers and the governing elite do not want to play ball according to their rules. Capitalism, especially predatory capitalism, is not based on liking and being liked. It is based on winning at all costs. Profits are the measure of the win for the corporations and jobs (and therefore votes) are the measure in local politics. Hence the pandering by our gov't.

It is difficult for any thoughtful Islander to take a look at the soils and waters of this Island and not bear witness to what they are enduring in the name of corporate profits. Fish kills, topsoil degradation, and the increasing ownership of the land by off island enterprises such as the Irving’s and GEBIS (even if GEBIS is at least locally kind and better stewards of the land than the Irving's) are all troubling progressions.

I find no fault in David asking us to consider our role in the destruction of rural life on PEI and in the destruction of Island soils and waters too. We have become so accustomed to seeking comfort and avoiding discomfort that even when the evidence is clear we still want to avoid implicating ourselves in the equation.

Our collective failure to acknowledge ourselves as accomplices allows us to sit back and finger point rather than take the necessary, wise and compassionate action required to address the situation. If we fail to acknowledge what is going on then our passivity could be wrongfully perceived as contentment or disinterest by someone such as Alan Holman.

And so I am speaking out.

David knows Islanders well. We are a passive lot by and large. We don’t want to rock the boat because we know what sinking, even drowning feels like. And that sinking, drowning feeling began with the green revolution and the perception so many Islanders bought into that our rural way of life was not good enough. Big and shiny and new is better was the mentality underpinning it all.

The same mentality drives so much of  modern excessive consumption— that and the belief that there is something inherently wrong with how we are and that goods can make us better, even normal if we consume enough of them. These are widely shared and faulty beliefs but these beliefs are not our birthright; being an Islander is.

And so there is all the more reason for average Islanders to speak up about what is happening to the land and waters here in the name of progress, and profit. For not being willing to wade into the waters when they are becoming increasingly murky and abused is foolhardy.

In fact, we all need to be less afraid to wade out and let our voices and opinions be heard.  We were not always trapped in a culture of dependency. Our very survival in an era of climate change, increasingly right wing governing ideologies and the infringement on local culture by neo-liberal economics will depend on our ability to stand on our own two feet and create an economy based on scale like in Schumacher's Small is Beautiful rather than dependency on the export of mono culture agriculture or questionable farmed sea products. Or the export of young Islanders too for that matter. For the PNP immigration scandal here is tied in with this all as well.

Our parents generation taught us to "vote with our feet" when they saw how hard it was to raise us on two incomes in the suburbs.  Head for Ontario or the tar sands to feed your families they told a generation of Island youth. But you can only deal in rubber or tar or chemical pesticides for so long before it begins to eat at you.   

The refrain is all too common.

So who then is to blame for the mess we have found ourselves in?

In short, we all are.

But in reality it is all far more complicated than either David or Mr. Holman or myself have space or time to explicate. 

But the one thing I do know deep in my heart is that the blame game gets us no where fast and so I am betting hard on a future which can see beyond the smallness of such politicing. 

Personal or otherwise.

Sincerely,
Jill M. MacCormack 
devoted lover of Island soils and waters and kindness (let us not forget kindness)
A short list of Island Organizations run by very active amazing Islanders devoted to protecting Island soils and waters : 
https://www.facebook.com/ecopei/  
http://saveourseasandshores.ca/category/blog/pei-chapter-of-soss-blog/

Small Ponderings on New Year's Day 2019

Yesterday, a brilliant New Year's eve afternoon, my husband  and our oldest daughter and our son went for a walk in a nearby woodland. 

I did not take part in the walk. Too much Christmas coupled with the cumulative exhaustion of the travails of 2018 left me with no other choice but to seek the refuge of my own bed and a couple of good books for company. As much as I wanted to be out walking, resting was not optional.

When they came back they shared with me some sustaining images from their outing.
The walking trail was narrowed by ice and snow and took them from a declining snowy softwood stand to an old pit and a then a farmer's field.

They came upon several different piles of snowshoe hare droppings numbering in the hundreds (and evidencing a small snowshoe hare population there) with the most being spotted at the edge of a snowy field of abandoned green cabbages. A veritable Mr McGregor's garden of Eden to the hare's, minus Mr McGregor but likely frequented by enough predators' to keep the rabbit's tail short.

Another note was the sighting of coyote (or perhaps coywolf as my son has photographed one in the area) tracks in the snow and a third and final nature note was finding a dead bird which had been ravaged most likely by a sharp-shinned hawk. 

Before they left for home they heard a rumbling sound and saw a person on a four wheeler coming towards them.

My husband wondered if the land owner might not like someone tearing around on his property near the gentleman's new home because in the autumn he had complained to my husband about being bothered by some kids on ATV's on his property. He was very surprised to see that the person driving the  ATV was in fact the land owner himself. He paused and spoke with him for a moment. The driver is a friend of my husband's, a man in his seventies who was extremely ill and had been hospitalized with cancer a few short months ago. He responded well to his treatment and decided that there was no time like the present to be having some fun and living his life. He and his two children all had cancer treatments in the past year. He gifted himself the ATV and tore around in the snow like a little kid. What is there to say to that but Happy New Year and que sera sera?

 So much of life and death right there in one short outing.

New Years are funny times. They can feel ominous or filled with potentiates. They represent many different things to so many different people. Maybe a time of new beginnings for some. Same old, same old for others. 

Like this morning for example.

I was the first asleep in our home last night (no rah, rah, sis boom bah for me) and the first awake today. After completing my happy early morning chores for our two dear pet rabbits I made myself a pot of green tea and sat in my little dining room looking out our window to the snowy New Year's morning. 

There was nary a track in the yard near our garden or the stump by the old Maple out front which our oldest daughter keeps well stocked with black oil sunflower seeds in the colder months.

No greater perfection can there be to begin the year with but a woodland scene enveloped in a smattering of fresh snow.

Our resident squirrel (Snap-pea) keeper of the stump and general yard defender was still in his little nest in our back woods. First, two crows swooped in from their night time roost and they headed for the stump. They were quickly followed by three others. They rooted around the stump and one found a bit of bread the squirrel had buried in the seed. Another dug up some bread he had hid in the leaves which had gathered in the corners of the sandstone bordering our front garden. They all chomped a few seeds before the ruler of the roost, little wild red Snap-pea,  zoomed in with a defiance that seems to border on evil (but is simply  the ways of a dominant and very territorial squirrel). It swooped in and managed, as it does several times daily, to scare off all the crows and two blue jays by seeming to be in many places at one time--and it isn't even an actual, biological flying squirrel. 

This scene will play out many, many times in the days and weeks to come so long as something doesn't take the rascally squirrel the way of the bird on the walk yesterday.

Today I welcome the quiet of a deep snowfall to ponder how and where my feet might fall in the year to come. This evening there will be a New Year's potluck at my sister's place if the roads are clear enough to travel. Tomorrow I will make fresh footprints of my own.

Happy New Year!

May 2019 be a year filled with more and more people connecting deeply with nature and dissolving those stories that separate us!

In Peace and Goodwill,
Jill