Christmas Letter 2013

Hullo,


Another year of good times has flown past. This time last year Clive and I returned to Australia and New Zealand. There we renewed many great friendships and were welcomed with warm and generous hospitality. It was an exceptional time.



A degenerative tear in my left meniscus marred the ski season for me. I am happy to say it is almost 90% better and I am about to go skiing again!



I was in Scotland for two and a half months while Clive was there for 4 months. I spent the first two weeks in May with Shona and then Chris and his girlfriend, Emma came in June bringing exceptional weather. The main purpose of the visit was to see 96 year old Theo, Clive’s father who still lives on his own. He has an unbelievable constitution.



Clive and I biked the C2C across Northern England, hiked and biked on the islands of Canna and Rhum. In June we headed to Austria for 3 weeks and met up with Karen and Tim from NZ. Unfortunately we had to abort our planned trip after 4 days, as the weather was similar to a Canadian winter! We had an attempt at a high mountain but again the snowy weather forced us down. We met a violin player in the Vienna Symphony who had been lucky enough to be rescued from falling into a crevasse. Clive and I headed to the Leinz Dolomites which was lower and did a few trips then met Alistair and Margaret from NZ for a couple of fun days.



Meanwhile back in Scotland my niece gave birth to a beautiful baby girl Esther Grace and a fine addition to her family Daniel 5 and Kirsten 3. After some time with them I returned to Canmore mid July to write and hike. I did some great trips in the extraordinary Rockies and made progress on my writing. Clive went sailing for a month in the west coast of Scotland and helped his dad out. He returned to Canmore in September and promptly went mountain biking.



In the fall I created and taught a new course, ‘Writing the Seasons.’ I loved the concept of looking at life and projects as seasonal. The idea uses journaling as an integrative tool and I am excited to teach it again in February. It is a good addition to the work I do with Conflict Resolution.



Chris has had a good year and was in a ski movie called ‘Into the Mind’ which was creative and courageous for the ski world. (You can buy it on itunes!) He works for Salomon freeski TV – you can google this. He and Emma just bought a house in Revelstoke. We are heading there for Christmas with Shona and Andrew. Shona has had another busy year. She is in her third year of environment geology at the University of Calgary. In the winter on weekends she is a ski coach and in the summer she and her Olympian friend run ski racing camps in Whistler for young girls.



Clive and I just escaped a very cold snap here –37 in USA, mainly Arizona. I have to say it was fascinating and good to visit with friends. However we are happy to be home in this beautiful community, minus the endless malls and 4 lane highways!

I hope that 2014 brings lots of laughter and good times.

Lessons picked up on the beach.

I brought back a bag of rocks and shells, treasures from the beaches of Australia and NZ. Not the perfect shells I used to search for, but cracked and broken ones revealing inner spirals and iridescent coatings. Back then I thought it was possible to have a perfect life. Now I know that life is messy. Risk, chaos and uncertainty are catalysts for transformation in the process of becoming.

The trip provided an opportunity to revisit previous choices, decisions, the pain and suffering of friends living with illness, and the joy of others. The integration of these experiences is fertiliser for new growth. As I let go of worn out stories, relax into the space between my thoughts; I am propelled forward on my growing edge. Brokenness reveals an inner magnificence not seen in perfection.

“It is the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance” Bette Midler.

My Celtic Roots

The young man in Café Books, Canmore replied to my question with a strong Irish accent. “I am from Wicklow, south of Dublin.”
”Do you have Celtic blood?” he asked.

“Yes, I have just returned from two months in Scotland and Europe.” I replied.

 What is Celtic blood? Does it differ from Canadian, Croatian or African blood? I wasn’t born in the Scottish highlands but in Aberdeen the heart of the Calvinistic northeast. It is the aquamarine seas of Mull that floats into my mind’s eye.

 In June, Clive and I spent a week on the island of Mull on the west coast of Scotland. On our first night in Salen, serenaded by the urgent calls of oystercatchers with not a midge in sight, I walked down by the pier on a carpet of pink thrift. I remembered the good times I, as a teenager, spent with my older sister Ruth who left this world prematurely in 1999. She taught in the two-teacher village school for a few years in the seventies. Almost fifty years ago she and I hung out the train window as wind blasted through our hair, as we sped past Loch Lubnaig, collected multicoloured shells on the deserted beaches, walked under the ancient oak trees, on the orange bladder wrack, cut peat, licked pork chop juices off her frying pan, sang Petula Clark’s hit song “down town” as we shopped in village grocery store that smelled of soap, and sang Scottish songs as we walked miles over hill and moor.

This time Clive and I cycled to Tobermory. In dazzling sunshine, red, blue, white buildings crowded the bay, yachts bobbed lazily on their anchors and Clive said the dense jade forest could be Tahiti. I was so very present, soaking in the fresh greenness, the wide seascapes, and the island air. I longed for the day to last forever.

The next day we walked along the track through the purple heather and bracken on the Island of Ulva. Again the sea vistas was scattered with close and distant islands, sun glistened off a million spring leaves, the call of the cuckoo, the antler discarded on the bog, seals and eagles captivated me.

This was followed by a well-spent day striding over Ben More’s rocky ridges, pulled upward by the call of skylarks, curlews and the unfolding views. My character was strengthened by a bike ride in the rain alongside silver beaches, over the forested pass to Pennygael.

 After a long sleep we had a sunny bike ride over the moors to the south coast where we walked along a narrow track beside lapping waves, through the marsh, bog myrtle, honeysuckle, glossy silverweed, familiar smells of childhood, feral goats, a herd of deer, to the dramatic basalt columns, the Carsaig Arches,  eroded by the constant motion of the sea.

The cycle to Iona wasn’t long enough. The cool western island breeze bewitched as we crossed the short straight to Iona dominated by the austere grey and pink granite walls of the Abbey.  But it wasn’t the Abbey I had travelled so far to experience but the silvery sands, the turquoise water, the emerald grass of the machair studded with blue, yellow and pink flowers, and the evocative crack of the corn crake. It was the pebble beaches, the pink, green, white rock smoothed by eons of wave action that took my breath away.

As a child I was rooted in this landscape. At first in father’s Airdire garden, then summers spent on the Island of Arran, as a teen to the Island of Mull and as a university student my roots deepened in Glencoe, Skye, Kintail, Ben Alder, Ben Nevis, mountains climbed with the Edinburgh University Club. Since then they have encircled the planet.

Lingering on Mull, I connected footstep by footstep with the land of my birth and formative years. It was a homecoming, a recognition of the magic, of the tangle of the Islands. And as I felt the mystical call I responded with my full attention, took numerous photos in hope of  capturing the essence of the beaches, yellow irises, and islands to carry with me as I returned to my adopted home in the Canadian Rockies.

Woman's Mystical Wisdom

Are all the mystical poets are old bearded men

with pointed turbans who lived centuries ago?


Do women have mystical wisdom?

we who bear children

experience the mystery of pregnancy

we who lend our bodies to the growth of another

we who labour to bring the child from the inner to the outer

we who suckle our babes

feel our breasts hard with milk

feel it drip bounteously from our nipples

we who see the mystical in the mundane

laundry dirty dishes perfect salads

snotty noses sick children

well made beds clean kitchen sinks


we are no strangers to the unknown and the agony

since the beginning of time

we have created groaned nurtured

our babies into being

we have screamed at the wailing wall

as our children have been wantonly killed by bombs bullets cars

our handiwork is the work of God

yet destroyed as thoughtlessly as the work of the devil


women’s work is love

not the romantic kind

that ends happily ever after

but ongoing tough love

that expands through pain tears and forgiveness

love that causes our tender hearts to ache for the pain of another

love that breathes us into acceptance

love that keeps on loving after tragedy

wild courageous feminine love

Facebook poetry

THE TURNING

the coracle moon
drifts on mountain waves
showered by stars
pinpoints of light
in the winter solstice night
and welcomes the fiery dawn


PARADISE FOUND
in a valley called Chickadee
the world born anew
covered in fresh snowcrystal
blue skies
fleece and friends
warm body and soul


HOLY GROUND
seeds sprout in stillness
spread interwoven roots
offer an anchor in the storm
cocooned in the forest
i am entwined
in the moon’s embrace
a place to grow myself

2011 Christmas letter

There is a globe beside my computer with the Americas covered from top to bottom in bright pink dots – showing Shona, Andrew and Kumu’s 55,000 km route from Canmore, Whitehorse, Alaska and then south. Yes south as far as you can go by land without falling into the southern oceans. Then a few dots north to Buenos Aires from where they shipped their vehicle to Jacksonville, Florida, then drove north to Ontario and west to Canmore. A year’s round trip. It was great to welcome them back to Canmore just in time for Shona to start her University education in Environmental Science at Calgary University, and Andrew to take up his position as a Coach for the Lake Louise Ski Club. They are living in Calgary and have settled into a routine of weekdays in the city and weekend in the mountains, which they assure me, are among the most beautiful in the world. I have to agree with them. We have enjoyed their visits. You can read about their trip in their blog: www.kumulife.blogspot.com



Chris continues his busy life in Revelstoke. He had an exciting trip to Kashmir, India last February. This was nostalgic for me as I spent a year there 40 years ago. Sad to say it has been war torn for years and soldiers were in many of his photos. Still he went helisking with a New Zealand company and the skiing has expanded significantly since the seventies. Chris was one of the athletes in a locally produced ski movie called ALL.I.CAN. It took two years in the making and has an environmental theme. In late September Clive and I were thrilled to be at the premier in Whistler along with 1198 others! The movie was even better second time round in Canmore. Superb cinematography, young people spreading the joy of skiing around the globe and inspirational reminder of the beautiful planet we call home. This summer Chris started to run his own Home Renovation Business and never seemed to be out of work. That has now been put on hold six months while he carries on with his winter skiing activities!



Clive and I spent 2 months in Scotland and Europe in the spring. One highlight was 10 days biking on the west coast of Scotland with two days of the Island of Eigg. Scotland, my first love did not disappoint and her beauty still takes my breath away. We spent 10 days hiking hut to hut in the Zillertal Alps in Austria with our university friends Fred and Alison. I loved it. In between time we reconnected with family and friends. Unfortunately Clive’s 94 year old father Theo, was not doing to well and had a few days in hospital with an infected toe that might have been a blood clot to begin with. He is still determined to live in his own home. He is actively very interested in the world, does his own grocery shopping and travels on Edinburgh buses and does the Guardian crossword every day. He is better now and his perseverance, wisdom and courage are inspiring.



Meanwhile in Canmore Clive and I have an active life doing yoga, hiking, biking and skiing. I have spent time writing and teaching. It feels like I have chased a snarling three-headed dog out of my writing brain as I work on the second draft of my memoir. Who knew it was such hard work?? We do have so much to be thankful for after all we live in paradise!!



Winter has got off to a very good start and we have already had some excellent powder skiing at Lake Louise. The backcountry snow conditions are still very unstable so trips there have been low key so far.



It’s really great at Christmas to receive everyone’s letters and news – thankyou for that.



All the very best for an enjoyable Christmas season and a memorable 2012.

My Writing Story.

“Write for an hour.” Antoinette instructed.
“An hour?” my mind screamed. “What will I write for an hour? What needs explored this morning? What will come I wonder?”

When I signed up for this day of Life Writing I wanted to investigate the part of my story that seeks expression in my memoir. It has been a journey, a long journey.

It began as I travelled on a train across the deserts of Iran 40 years ago. Fresh eyes, young and innocent of the world I wrote a travel log of our honeymoon to Afghanistan. Back then my inner world was not a place I visited, it remained off limits, unexplored, not worthy of my attention. A forlorn, forbidden place where if I dared to enter I would find terrorists, demons filled with unspeakable shames and secrets. It was many years before I was forced to open the book of myself.

When I returned from India a few years later I wrote an article about hairdressing in the Himalaya. I though it worthy of National Geographic but when it was rejected by a travel magazine I filed it away in a box that I carted from London to NZ to Australia and finally Canada.

My life changed dramatically in 1984 as I plunged into mother hood. I did not want to forget the extraordinary life of travel I had lived, the wild places and people I met on those ‘once in a lifetime’ journeys. I carved out space in my busy life to write. In the small back bedroom, I closed my mind to my surroundings while I recorded our adventures on our first computer.

I showed these writings to a trusted mentor Jack Shallcrass. His comment took me aback. “Wilma we need to know about your thoughts and feelings.“ My files were pushed into the box to be forgotten as I raised my family.

Becoming a mother I propelled me into my feelings. I remember the awe I felt as my fully formed baby boy was placed on my stomach after 14 hours of labour. Love at first sight, careful examination revealed he had no squint. His brown eyes, in his perfect pixie face, framed by his dark hair, gazed at me wide and alert. A miracle. As he grew feelings poured through my body, weariness, exhaustion, anger, frustration, irritation, boredom, despair, depression, hope, joy, play, compassion, and love.

Years later the children grown, I wrote a draft of my life and now I am re-crafting this, some days it feels as if I am wallowing in my past.

Last night on facebook I watched photographs Louise Hay the writer who in the eighties gave me priceless tools to love and design my own life. She was dressed in a filmy magenta top celebrating at her 85th birthday party with vigor and enthusiasim. I felt warmth as if her love reached out to me across cyber space and through the computer screen. More than that I was inspired that she is still writing and living life full of meaningful activities.

Why write a memoir? It is about the growth of me, my unique story, my own unfolding, life’s process of revealing mySelf to myself. Each step not wrong, not bad, but necessary to my journey towards wholeness. In this happy day world of linear thinking and rationality where emotions and wandering are judged as wasting time, unacceptable, or downright wrong, I can’t think of anything more valuable than trying to express my growth, my development, my authenticity on the page.