I had a lovely epiphany this November, when a friend encouraged/cajoled/relentlessly bullied me into signing on for the Capra 30 x30 running/walking challenge in which we committed to run/walk for at least 30 minutes a day for the 30 days of November. There were three of us, in on the project. In late October, we had managed to schedule our third annual social hike because once a year is somehow all we have managed to make happen, in between lives, babies, fur babies, work babies, all the things we have to tend to. This fits my life experience (or is it a story I have carried for a long time?) – time scarcity/demands on my time tend to mean little time for friends, because of all the other pressing obligations. It’s kind of part of what makes adulting/family life challenging. But after we finished our annual hike, (shortened to a walk, because of all the obligations), we embarked on this 30 x 30 challenge, and every day, part accountability, part encouragement, part feeding the connection, we texted each other – an update, a photo, a confession, an accounting. And I realized, the mistake in my thinking was to assume that I needed big chunks of time – an entire evening, a weekend, a half-day, an hour and a half at least, to connect with friends, when the connection can be fed with a quick call, or a text, or an update, and a shared challenge. Sporadic is okay. Short is okay. It was like the initial walk was the fire and each day, we added one little twig to it. So, instead of it going out, and us having to relight it a year later, and risk not having the spark to do it again, we fed it with tiny little twigs. And we all felt our mental health, our friendship and our overall wellbeing, was better for it. So bravo to Capra Running Co, in Squamish, for the most brilliant and generative marketing strategy ever.
Kalmia Hockin lived in Pemberton several years ago and worked at the Pemberton and District Library. She wrote a few beautiful posts for the Wellness Almanac, and I always cherished our encounters. Life took her to a new community. And yet, she kept following us here on the blog… and on the weekend, sat in her car, and recorded this. She sent it with an apology for not having time to write a longer email/update… and I’m so glad that she didn’t let that stop her from recording her voice and sharing this. It fits under my new revelation of small exchanges being so much more than none at all, but in fact, tiny little pulses of energy into the web of connection.
So grateful for this web. These words. This lovely human being.
Kalmia shared that she has been “reading a lot by this incredible poet, Jeannette Armstrong of the Sylix Nation in what is now known as Okanagan. This one is called Grandmothers.”
In the part of me that was always there, grandmothers are speaking to me. The grandmothers in whose voices I nestle and draw nourishment from. Voices speaking to me in the early morning light, glinting off water, speaking to me in fragile green, pushing upward, groping sun and warmth, pulling earth’s breath down and in, to join with porous stone. Speaking to me out of thick forest and majestic rises to sheer blue, in the straight slight mist, in twigs and fur, skin and blood, moon and movement. Feathers stroking elegant curves against wind.
Jeannette Armstrong
Silent unseen bits, in the torrent of blood washing bone and flesh, Earth’s pieces, the joining of winds to rock, igniting white fire, lighting dark places and rousing the sleeping moment caught in pollen. A waking of stars inside. And when blue fire slants to touch this water, I lift my eyes, and know I am seed, and shooting green, and words, in this hollow, I am night glittering, the wind and silence, I am vastness stretching to the sun.
I am this moment, Earth mind, I could be nothing else, the joining of breath to sand by water and fire, the mother body, and yet I am small, a mote of dust, hardly here, unbearable without anything to hold me but the voices of grandmothers.
If you’re curious about this woman’s work and teachings, check out her TEDx talk from 2011.
The Wellness Almanac 