Flowers

February 18, 2018February 18, 2018 / Lisa / Leave a comment

Yesterday there was a memorial paddle down the north fork of the Skykomish River for Sam Grafton. The day was shades of gray, snowing, sleeting, winds high in the trees. And I was home by the fire, unaware. But I saw the photos and videos. And on that gray river were clusters of bright kayaks, like spring flowers.

As the kayaks and rafts started to float away, people lining the bridge, lining the river, threw in flowers.

Today I had to drive to the city. As I followed the twists and turns of the highway, I found myself searching the river.

All those flowers alone out there in the wind and snow and rain. Caught in little eddies, pushed ashore to rest on rocks, flying free downriver on the current.

Over the past week many have brought flowers to their house. Beautiful bouquets. And I felt anger, that they would have to watch those flowers die.

So today I watched the rushing water as I drove. I wanted to find a flower, a petal, something I could steal back from the river.

Save it.

Bring it home.

Keep it safe forever.

But the flowers are gone.

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A Rolling Stone

February 9, 2018 / Lisa / 3 Comments

In the late 1980s my father and I hiked to the old Sunset mine. There, we found this large rock full of iron pyrite. You know, fool’s gold. The rock looked painted in gold, the pyrite was so thick. Dad and I took turns carrying the heavy thing back down the trail. At home, it became a door stop for the cabin, and dad loved telling people it was real gold but ‘he didn’t need the money’.

So of course it was stolen.

This past week I was talking to a police officer friend about restoration work that will be happening at Sunset mine, which led into telling him about that rock and how somebody stole it back in the early 1990s, obviously thinking they were going to get rich.

He started laughing and said ‘I know where that rock is!’

A local person who has been in and out of jail many, many times, has frequently told people that he’s rich because he has a big rock full of gold. He ‘found’ it years ago. The officer has heard him say this many times.

Yesterday, the officer friend was on a call that involved another person who is well-known to the police. That guy mentioned that his friend recently gave him a rock full of gold.

I told my friend that if he sees that rock he’s to confiscate it. Doubt he could do that, but wouldn’t it be great if the rock came home? I assume it’s the same one, because how many big rocks thickly coated with fool’s gold can be floating around our little neck of the woods? Well, actually, probably quite a few now that I think about it. But still. If that rock ever does come home I’ll take a photo of it and post it here.

Meanwhile, I kind of like the idea that the rock just keeps rolling on, moving from story to story.

Somewhere, dad is laughing.

Rituals

January 28, 2018January 28, 2018 / Lisa / 2 Comments

Yesterday I participated in an event full of tradition and it got me thinking about the importance of ritual in our lives. That and the difference between ritual and routine.

‘Ritual’ is defined as a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.

‘Routine’ is defined as a sequence of actions, regularly followed. In other words ‘habit’. Although for my husband the routine of morning coffee is more like a ritual.

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I think we use those words interchangeably, and in doing so, forget the underlying emotional connection to those things that are actually ritual rather than routine. In using those words so easily, we lose the connection to our past, our heritage, our culture.

Yesterday I had to squash feeling like an interloper because the event I participated in was of a different heritage than mine. But as I sat outside by the fire, with wind high in the trees, light rain falling, and singing all around me, I realized that while that ritual may come from a culture I had no ‘blood’ connection to, they were rituals that I had an emotional connection to.

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I choose purposely to use the word ’emotional’ rather than ‘spiritual’ because those who know me know that I am not much of a believer in organized religions. I don’t believe there is an afterlife, as in heaven, or a place that people go to be forever happy, or to suffer for eternity. I think of religion as man’s first attempts at creating a moral code.

At the same time, those rituals yesterday gave me peace. Just like the womb experience of sitting in the hot tub in the middle of the night with stars spread out above, like I talked about in my last post. I realized that while I may not have what I perceive as religious beliefs, there is something about stone and water and trees that lets me breathe.

So I guess those things are my religion. Walking in the woods, or being near trees is definitely my ritual. What are yours? What fills your soul or speaks to you? Or what routines that others might see as habits, do you see as ritual?