Creating A New Story Reflecting A Spirit of Connection---Smelt Fishing in Cow River

This Island you see
is more than a place
it's an act of imagination
a story
a song
deep yearning expressed
in a work
of ongoing creation
You see...the Island is in RED

David Weale...RED magazine

Environmentally, economically, socially, Islanders and people the world over are in desperate need of a new story, a story in which spirit infuses the choices we make. Island historian, gatherer of tales, editor of RED magazine, storyteller David Weale has said this a thousand times in a thousand different ways, but I think he said it best in his book Chasing the Shore.

  "we need to bring forth from deep within ourselves, a new, or greatly revised, mythology, that transcends tribal consciousness; one that honors the entire earth and expands the concept of holy land in such a way that every square foot of landscape, every drop in the ocean, and every creature (including ourselves) is regarded as sacred - something to be treated gently and reverently, and experienced as a source of wisdom and communion. That is our challenge."

Chasing The Shore: Little Stories About Spirit And Landscape   by David Weale

Disconnected from our natural sources of wisdom (nature and each other) we have become a culture of consumers and perpetrators of a story that leaves us feeling dis-enfranchised, alienated, and wondering where to turn and how to make choices that will stem the tide that's drowning us in toxic inaction.

Re- igniting within ourselves a renewed sense of connection with all and re-establishing a sense of place and history can be a deeply rewarding experience. Entering into a relationship with the natural world on a sensory level is a fantastic way of deepening our sense of reverence for and connection with the natural world and each other.

Fostering a deep love of nature in our youth is a wonderful place to start. Allowing their natural curiosity and enthusiasms for the outdoors to re-establish itself necessitates re-envisioning the natural world as classroom and the whole child as intrinsically connected to the world they inhabit.

Thanks in no small part to my nature-loving parents, I was raised with a love of the woods, the fields, the capes and shores of our fair Isle. My husband and I have tried to keep our three kids innate connection to nature intact. We are grateful to all in our lives who help foster the natural enthusiasms of our children.

Smelt Fishing in Cow River

Thanks to a willing and enthusiastic  young aunt (my dear youngest sister Janeen) the past two weekends our two older children had the fantastic experience of going smelt fishing in the very Northside river that their great- grandfather smelted in. In fact, that river has been smelted in for several hundred years by people of the  community. Much and not much has changed over the course of time in that river. Sure, my kids had battery operated flash lights instead of cattail torches or the kerosene lanterns of days gone by, and the rubber boots may be of a better quality, but they still stood in the river under the darkened night sky, and dipped their bare hands into the cool, rushing waters in attempts to capture the fleeting silvery flashes as the smelts made their way upstream. And as we discussed before they left, this was done with a spirit of reverence for the life giving qualities of the fish they were attempting to catch (along with a spirit of wildness...another very wonderful spirit to retain connection with!!)

Tired, cold and wet but highly enthused, the three of them along with other family and friends who were out in the river, made their way back to my beloved Uncle Gerald's old Northside house to further the tradition of "having a feed" of the newly caught fish accompanied by some storytelling and imbibing on the part of some. As Gerald said to my guys, well after midnight and just as they headed off for the hour long trip back to town..."Let's make this an annual tradition for you two kids!!"

It's that spirit of history and deep connection with the natural world which fuels us to create a new story reflecting a spirit of connection with Earth. A new (and not so new) story which demonstrates respect and caring for the natural world and re-acquaints us with our sense of wonder in nature.

Jill

Images--wikipedia

Plastic Waters...Contaminating our Oceans with Plastic Waste...Time to Think Twice and REALLY LOVE the Sea

Garbage In, Garbage Out

 

The Conservation Magazine article from 2010 by Susan Casey entitled Garbage In, Garbage Out is easily one of the most distressing ecology essays I've read on the impact of plastics on Earth. This read is not for the faint of heart, but I would argue, is imperative for any modern consumer to read and have an awareness of. As a civilization of rampant, thoughtless consumers, we allow the continuation of contamination of plastics to enter into the biology of all living things through our mindless purchasing and disposal practices.

According to this story, 40percent of the ocean's surfaces are now covered in waste. There are gyres in each of the oceans which are huge, swirling plastic waste pools where plastic outnumbers plankton at an alarming rate.

 "...the North Pacific gyre is only one of five such high-pressure zones in the oceans. There are similar areas in the South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean. Each of these gyres has its own version of the garbage patch as plastic gathers in the currents. Together, these areas cover 40 percent of the sea. “That corresponds to a quarter of the earth’s surface,” Moore says. “So 25 percent of our planet is a toilet that never flushes.”

 The notion that plastic makes life easier and better is one we urgently need to reconsider. Plastic, like many other modern conveniences, may make things simpler in the short term, but the long term consequences are far too dire to any longer believe that it is only a good thing in our lives.
Life beyond plastics will require a large scale change in how we purchase and consume everything-- from our food, pharmaceuticals, toys, household items, electronics (such as the laptop I'm typing this on) to medical equipment, including the production and disposal waste from it all.

We rationalize the plastics in our lives in a myriad of ways, recycling being the greatest pacifier of guilt for the thoughtful, yet only 3-5 percent of recyclables are ever actually recycled. A massive reduction in the production of plastic, and re-use of that which is already generated is a first step in the right direction. Educating everyone you know and love is an important second. There are no easy solutions, but awareness trumps ignorance on every front. Our time of being blissfully unaware  needs to be over for the sake of our children's children and for all living things on our planet.

What we can do...from Green Sangha... How to reduce plastics in your life
and another great resource...  my plastic free life

Jill MacCormack

A Province Hungry for Change: Food Security on PEI--- 2014, The International Year of Family Farming

Hungry for Change

Undoubtedly there are a great many thoughtful people living in our little province who are hungry for change. They are labouring towards an elevation of understanding of how the choices we make daily  affect our lives and the lives of those around us.

 Living in a small place it is easy for us to be dismissive of those who speak out regarding long held ways of doing things but it might be wise to consider that there is not something always inherently wrong with change. Something very good just may come of it.

 Just recently I was involved in some projects my eight year old daughter undertook for social studies, and science. We discussed some basic concepts regarding the needs of living things. Clean air, clean water, both drinkable and life supporting as well as healthy, living soil in which to grow our food were some of the things we discussed. Basic needs for living things, but are these basic life support systems being respected for the wondrous and diverse life giving qualities they contain? I love this little province we call home, and wish only wellness for it but am confused at times by the ways we allow destructive practices to impact the well being of the land, waters and air. 

We know that continuous application of  agri-chemicals contaminate our air, soil and waterways. We know that there are still many unknowns when it comes to the use of cosmetic pesticides and human health, yet we as an Island community have not yet come around full-scale to the notion that we need to change how we think about and care for these basic life support systems for the health and well being of all. 

I am  very encouraged by the rising tide of young farmers with an interest in practicing more sustainable, organic methods of farming. A friend of my sisters just recently purchased a 98 foot greenhouse to add to her organic farm and, as she said in a note she wrote me last fall, it was thanks in no small part to the people who supported her weekly veggie delivery over the past several years. This is exciting news to me! Each time we make a choice towards better informing ourselves and our families about the real sources of our food, each time we pause mindfully and consider how we prepare and consume the foods in our pantries and our refrigerators, we give those basic support systems (air, soil, and water) the respect they deserve and improve our connection to the land and the sea we live and work and play on.

How we choose to grow our food, how we care for ourselves and our homes, how we purchase goods and services all impact the air we breathe, as well as the health of the land and the waters of this finite piece of land we've put our roots down into. We all need to take responsibility for the choices we make.

Feeding seven billion people on a warming planet is a concern leading scientists are considering. The troubling fact that more than one in four children living in PEI are food insecure means that how to healthfully, and economically feed ourselves and our families is a growing concern of many Islanders. Understanding that there is a connection between both concerns and that there are  common solutions beyond large scale conventional agriculture is something everyone should be thinking and talking about. Reconsidering how we purchase, and consume food requires of us a willingness to think about our connection to the natural environment and to every other living thing on this Island and the planet as a whole. 

"The United Nations, for its part, has designated 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming to raise the profile of these unsung agricultural workers and spotlight the roles they could play in the face of challenges like climate change, malnutrition, and poverty."   

Andrea Stone National Geographic May 2014 

Many Prince Edward Islanders are celebrating 2014 for the historic role it played in the formation of our country. Perhaps we would do well to consider 2014 as an opportunity to celebrate small scale agriculture in our home province. By getting to know and supporting local, small scale farmers whose aim is to nurture the land they farm, we are taking an important step towards improving food security and healthfulness for all.

Many of us do know that the time for change is at hand. All that we require is a community of understanding and personal commitment as well as the political will to make viable change a reality.

Sincerely,
Jill MacCormack

Loving This Planet

I LOVE this planet we call home! I love it like I love my own breath, even more than my own breath! When its wonder, its magnificence and beauty take my breath away, I am still in LOVE... even more so...
To nurture this LOVE, I am continuing to consider deeply how choices I make in my daily life impact the greater whole. I am contemplating the wondrous way I fit into the cycles of the natural world, the way energies of thought influence matter, my body--- this little earth--- I daily inhabit.
In gently caring for myself, my family, our community, I am contributing immeasurable wealth to the world. Each kind word, each thoughtful action, each act of LOVE says to the greater whole, "thanks for letting me be part of something so wonderful"...Happy Earth Day!!
Love Jill

Spring, Where Art Thou? The Dreariest day of the Year, March 11th, 1933

There upon the barren Maple's limb,
a song sparrow chose to rest his wing,
and sweetly raised on high its morning hymn

a most welcome, venerable sign of spring.  

                    

No sweeter sound this morn could I have heard,
the trilling song was most melodious.
Whoever would have guessed- this tiny bird
could cure me of my long held weariness.
Jill MacCormack

This past winter (2013-2014) my beloved PEI was blanketed with fully twice the amount of snow as last winter and the most snow recorded in 42 years...which means the most snow of my lifetime thus far.

Feeling too deeply winter's etchings upon me...lack of sunlight, housebound repeatedly by storm after storm...too much isolation, too much inside my own head...like lovers who've spent too much time together, winter and I need some space this year, some time apart so as to better appreciate each other again next year.

But, like a great many others, a trip south was not in the cards for us this year, not that it ever has been a consideration for a number of reasons. Thus leaving me, like so many, desperate for those signs of spring that lift the spirits, searching outside of myself towards spring:

Crows carrying nesting materials, pairs of goldfinches at the feeder; the male becoming increasingly more lemon coloured with each days passing, a sighting of newly returned grackles, the great blue heron huddled in an open corner of the pond, the fat little robin who returned too soon weaning himself off of my stormy days cranberry handouts, a pair of bluejays attempting to get seed, a song sparrow sitting pretty on the low edge of the snow bank still mid window high outside my dining room, a pair of Hairy woodpeckers tracing a stump of birch out back with their hungry beaks, the snow slowly receding from the driveway and roadside edges resulting in gurgling, muddy rivulets and the smell of wet decay, Lucas' ecstatic discovery of daffodils broaching the earth beneath the living room window, persistent fellows...all! It may be weeks before we see the crocuses or buds on the Maple reddening and my patience with much has grown thin but spring, however late, will come.

Yes, I'm winter weary and it shows in my face, my enthusiasms, but I should not complain. I think to my mother's retelling of "the dreariest day of the year", a tale from her own mother's childhood, a tale of the bleakness of late winter on the northeastern side of our fair Isle, in the 1930's. Her mother's story was one of poverty and illness, lack of resources, and winter weariness and truly being isolated and housebound. It makes me wonder how I would have navigated such times. It certainly etched itself on my grandmothers generation with a deepness and acuity that would make my complaints of being tired of winter pale in comparison. Although, undoubtedly, the sensitivity to environment is evidenced as having passed through the bloodlines to me.
Jill



THE DREARIEST DAY OF THE YEAR

                                                               

I was just a young girl when my mother told me this story  from her childhood. It was March 11, 1933. A three-day blizzard was raging from the south and her mother was sick in bed upstairs.  All eight kids and their father were in the kitchen, the only heated room in the house. Snow covered the windows darkening the room. The strong winds whistling through the drafty old house meant moving the kitchen lounge closer to the woodstove to try and stay warm. As there was no tea in the house, her father resorted to toasting some wheat on the stovetop  to try and make a drinkable substitute. He kept the wheat in a storage bin above the kitchen. Tea was a basic necessity to a Northsider like himself.  Because it was impossible to get to the river for drinking water, their dad melted snow then boiled a big pot of potatoes in their skins.  This was clear evidence of how much their mother was needed in the kitchen, as all the kids hated unpeeled potatoes.  To pass the time, the kids played store with an orange crate and food from the pantry. The bleakness of that day was to become an indelible memory  for my mother and her siblings, a day they vowed to remember for as long as they lived. They wrote the date on as many places as they could, including the walls of the outhouse and the school. Down through the years on March 11, my mother would relate this story and upon phoning her sisters or a brother living out west, would ask if they remember what day this was. The answer was always the same-“the dreariest day of the year, March 11, 1933”.

Written by Arlene McGuigan as told to her by her mother Maud MacDonald (nee O'Hanley)