Back on Track

I’m sitting at the end of the dock writing. This is the most beautiful place to be and it may very well be my last chance to do so before Wayne & Diane come back. They are scheduled to arrive tomorrow. RATS!!!

I wish their holiday was a month longer. I’ve thought of emailing them and asking if they would consider extending their holiday. Maybe now they are finished visiting Newfoundland they could go visit Quebec. That’s a nice big province. It should keep them busy for a month or so.

I was hoping our life would be pretty much straightened out by the time they returned but we’re still dangling from the rafters. At this point I’m starting to have nightmares that it will become a permanent lifestyle.

I tried to bring Pumpkin on the deck with me but as soon as I put her down her back hunched over and her belly slinked down to the deck and she headed back to some more protective and familiar territory with her tail between her legs. I tried. She said. “I don’t think so!”

I’m looking into the water at the end of the dock and there are a million tiny little fish (minnows) darting back and forth underneath where my feet are hanging. A plane is flying overhead going down the valley towards Kelowna. Little birds I can’t identify are chirping and there’s a crow exercising its vocal cords from the top of the Tamarack trees on the neighbour’s lot. The Okanagan Lake is as clear and as quiet as water sitting in a bowl on a countertop.

There must be 25 or so feet of water below the dock where I sit and I can see everything on the lake floor including the moss on the rocks through the greenish, blushish hue of the water. It’s beautiful out here. It’s peaceful and serene before the activity of the day begins.

This is absolutely the best time of the day. The only sad part that lingers in the back of my mind is that our time here is soon coming to an end. But for now, all I want is this moment, right here, right now. This moment with my feet dangling over the edge of the dock and my pen dropping words on the page as I sit here in the beauty of God’s creation. Right here, right now, what more could I ask for.

On the blue metal ladder leading down into the water there’s a perfect spider web. It is weaved between the two curved pipes that we hang on to when we make our way down into the water for a swim. It reminds me of my online writing group and how everyone was talking about their love hate relationship with little creatures like spiders, moths and mice.

I can’t say I’m partial to any of them but I can’t help but marvel at the absolute ingenuity of the woven web and how it’s symmetrically formed and how much time it must take the spider to do this intrinsic work and how we, humans come along shudder at the nuisance and with a sigh of distaste and a quick motion or two of the hand tear down the inconvenience.

I wonder how different our world would be if all of us (humans) honoured animals, insects, trees, plants, stones, water and the beauty of our environment with just as much importance as we do ourselves. I ask myself those kinds of questions often especially since I’ve come to the Okanagan Valley – a place where many, many people come to live because of its beauty.

It is beautiful. As is, where is. Even more beautiful in the areas untouched by man. But man comes along and with all their infinite intelligence they need to manipulate the natural beauty there is to fit into a more manicured, box like, sterile, what they think is a more perfect representation of what they feel it “should” be or what it “should” look like to be more picture perfect then it already is. I feel like we’ve come along and tampered with a master piece. It’s like coming along and tampering with a piece of Picasso or Van Gogh’s work and altering it to suit “our” taste or our needs just because we think it would look better. Sacrilegious!

And nowhere is that kind of thing more apparent than right next door to my sister’s house (and a reason for their selling) where a couple have decided to build their dream home plantation style house. Already something like 2 million dollars or more has been poured into this 6000 square feet or so monstrosity and it isn’t anywhere near completion.

The saddest part is that this lakeside mountainous lot would not accommodate their dream so they called in the big machines to come in and correct the problem. They hauled away, get this, 1800 truck loads of dirt and rock. They literally tore the mountain apart and hauled it away to build their castle which looms over all the neighbours and is completely out of context with the surroundings and the other homes which have been here for a long time.

I look at that house from my viewpoint here on the dock and it feels like an assault to mother nature and the beauty that was here. Although I know it won’t change anything, in my hope to somehow make up for such stupidity, I have decided to leave the spider web, which I started writing about intact and to enter the water from the shore or by jumping off the edge instead of using the ladder.

But, if I do go in the water, it’s not going to be right now. First life and all its duties are calling and I must leave my time of introspection and connection with Spirit. It is time for me to take on my day. As much as I treasure and am grateful for the moment, there is still lots I have to do. There are clothes to wash, a car to clean, the house to put in tip-top shape, the grass to cut, Mom to visit and Kim and Debbie are coming tonight to work on the Empowerment workshop we plan to give together at the end of this month.

It doesn’t have the makings of a very relaxing day but a fulfilling one never the less and I plan to enjoy every moment of it, by being connected to the here and now and the gratitude I feel for what already is and the promise of what is yet to come.