Walk, Read, Hope

A friend borrowed this idea from a friend and I will pass the theme on right here. My three words of summer? Let me reflect.  Waiting, caring, reading?  Or maybe, worrying, healing, reading? Or walking, reading, hoping.  Always reading, always hoping, always walking. 

The walking got slower and slower as my dog got weaker and weaker. Slow walking strengthened my patience. It became a way for me to focus on the journey and not the destination.  

Resting during one of our last walks together

Reading. I love how the private act of reading becomes a portal to worlds beyond. Books are my preferred tools of engagement with ideas and other worlds. I read to understand both myself and those around me. Books give me hope.

Hoping. It’s been a strange summer. Even sunny days in July were overcast with grey, ash-filled clouds from northern wild fires. Dark clouds hovered in my family, too, as a dear family member struggles with mental health issues. But hope brightens even the darkest moments.

Summer morphed into fall with some chilly, near-zero overnight temperatures. Today I’ll spread our dog’s ashes in the places we used to walk. I’ll shift the remainders of my summer reading list over onto my fall reading pile, and I’ll continue to hope for light … even as days shorten and darkness falls earlier and earlier. 

Ominous clouds hover everywhere. What stormy times we live in. Take time to walk, to read, and to hope.

Downtown Winnipeg in smoky haze

Shade gardens and reading

Ain't gonna lie ... it's been a difficult year .... caregiving while managing my own health issues.  Grateful for the dappled shade of a garden and a pile of books.  

                                    

José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro /
CC BY-SA 4

Like Cicero said,   “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”

   ― Cicero (born 106 years before Christ - so that's 2131 years ago and still relevant)

I've got the garden ... 

and I've got my stash of summer books!  

So I'm all set. See you in the fall! Stay curious, be brave and practice kindness! Hope it's a good summer for us all.

Lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

Ah, the scent of sun-dried sheets!

It’s my first summer with air conditioning. How did I ever allow myself such an indulgence? Not sure I deserve it. I’ve managed quite nicely, all these years, without. But when I had to replace the furnace this winter … something I can’t live without here on the Canadian prairies, I had the opportunity to upgrade to AC and thought it might help in selling sometime in the future. 

Before this, I relied on shade trees, closed curtains and fans to get me through the most extreme heat.  I'd reflect that human beings have survived centuries of heat while doing strenuous physical labour … surely I can sweat it out for a few hot days. But here I am … one of the privileged ones … using up more energy while expending less of my own. However, I still hang my sheets outside. That remains from my childhood and I'll continue to indulge in this privilege. The scent of sunshine-dried pillow cases has yet to be imitated.

Star Weekly, August, 1945

Meanwhile … war rages throughout summer in other parts of the world. How can this be? How can humans destroy blue summer skies with dark smoke and missiles? How can this be happening now …in 2024? Haven’t we learned anything from our violent past? I re-read a Star Weekly from the summer of 1945 … the first summer of European peace … even while the grueling Pacific war continued.  

In North America, people were heading to lakes, while in ruined Europe, women, who became known as 'trümmerfrauen' were cleaning up the rubbled cities. Meanwhile, both my parents, still unknown to each other, were helping re-build the Soviet Union as POWs  - one in above open pit mine, the other in an underground coal mine. 

Star Weekly, August, 1945

I sit and read in air-conditioned comfort, flicking through news reports of more bombings, more casualties. 

Yes, these are the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer for some ... I wish it were for all!

Blue and Yellow Paradise

I've been working on edits for Crow Stone during July and my outside world has shrunk down to mostly just dog walks. But during those walks, the dog and I try to appreciate the little things of life.

Walking past a radiant canola field today—the big blue prairie sky stretched endless above, puffy cumulus clouds scattered haphazardly for contrast—made me feel happy—happy and grateful. The rain that was missing during last year’s drought, has been plentiful this year, and the canola fields are bursting with yellow blossoms. 

So far, we’ve been fortunate to avoid the extreme heat that blisters much of earth this summer. It’s quite idyllic here in Manitoba. 

What are a few pesky mosquitoes when you consider the dangers of global warming, a continuing pandemic and an insane war? My afternoon dog-walk felt like a stroll through a blue and yellow paradise.

Blue and yellow.  The colours of Ukraine’s flag, symbolizing their blue sky and their yellow fields. Now their blue sky is filled with angry clouds of smoke and their yellow fields are tangled up with fighting. 

As if our world didn’t have enough problems. 

Trails of Summer

It’s been a great summer here in Winnipeg—one of the best. (But then, my memory’s spotty and every precious summer is the best.) No mosquitoes—except the one that got me on the ankle the other day. No forest fires—although we had a couple of hazy days from eastern fires. No tornadoes—although Alonsa, only an hour west of here, had a bad one with a fatality. But here, in my southwest corner of the city, summer’s been near perfect. 

I’ve enjoyed every moment of it and spent happy hours biking the Harte and Grand Trunk Trails. Great summer for berries and I’ve stashed away containers of saskatoons and chokecherries. 

If there was one word to describe this summer for me, it would ‘biking.’  I’ve been trying to convince myself that I can do a more ambitious bike trip along the Baltic next summer and have discovered that I love it. It’s so much faster than walking, but slow enough to experience nature. . . like flowers and clouds.

Now if only I had a dog's nose...