I had a productive 9 days at Monkey Valley, with the winter plumbing problems fixed at low cost, thanks to Kevin Thompson of Princeton, BC! Finishing work on the barn is well underway, too, thanks to Brent Ross and Tom. It is going to be bee-you-tiful, as my grandma used to say. I’m coming up on 9 years at Monkey Valley now, and I do believe all of the work will be finished this year!
I also felt inspired to do some work on the medicine wheel. I went down there to pray for my friend Dorrie, who died recently, and felt spirit telling me it was time to finish the wheel, which was created at a medicine wheel teaching in 2005. At that time we laid out the direction stones and center stones, and filled in most of the rest of the wheel with pieces of wood. Now I started replacing the wood with stones—the grandfathers. I dug a narrow trench from the east door to the south door, in honour of the spring section of the wheel that we are in right now. And I filled in the entire curve with beautiful stones. That was a bit of a job, as the stones felt the need to periodically leap from the wheelbarrow on the journey from my house to the wheel. I did my best to be patient with them, but at one point my patience ran out and I pleaded for their cooperation!
The time at Monkey Valley ended on a sad note, with a morning discovery of weasel corpse in the downstairs bathroom. The poor little thing has expired. I don’t doubt this is due to torture by Donald. It was a real gift to get to see weasel up close, this time in his summer clothes, but I felt sad that his life is over. He emitted a perfumey, flowery musk smell, which I also noticed in the region of Donald’s nose. What a perfect creature this weasel was; whole and self-contained. His is-ness was striking, even though he was no more.
I didn’t feel as sad about this tiny animal death as I used to do when I found a bird or mouse that Donald killed. It used to break my heart. I wondered if my heart has hardened, but a dear friend suggested that perhaps I am just more connected with the natural cycle of life and death now, through the time I have spent in connecting with the land. So that I can accept the natural fact of death better. Maybe so.
Accepting the death of my friend is a different matter, which I don’t wish to treat lightly in this blog. I will say that I am missing her very much. I pray that she is held in loving light, and is at peace, finding her way in the new formlessness she has become.