Karen's New York Love Affair – Page 31 – Karen Rempel's Art and Stories

Wascally weasel!

One of the things I love about Monkey Valley, which goes hand-in-hand with the stillness, is the presence of wild animals. Being so far away from people and their noise means being out where the animals live. Having an encounter with a wild animal is a special gift that sometimes happens out in nature. I find that if I haven’t seen a wild animal for a few days I start to feel something is missing. I believe that as a human species we evolved together with our animal friends, and our souls need their companionship. Without interactions with animals we get lonely.

This is a concern for me as we encroach on the few remaining wild areas and the space left for our wild friends to live in becomes more and more limited. Many animals such as deer and coyotes learn to adapt to human presence, coexisting with us in small tangles of brush and stands of trees, but some animals cannot. And the simple fact is that if we are using up all the room, for cities, farms, clear cuts, roads, and mines, there isn’t much wild space left for our animal friends to live in. The numbers of species are dwindling, and I think also the number of animals within the species, especially of large mammals such as wolves, bears, and elephants.

But one day last fall I had an unexpected visitor in the house at Monkey Valley. It wasn’t as big as an elephant—much closer to squirrel size, actually. I was in the living room watching a movie when I heard a strange hissing sound coming from the laundry room. My first thought was that the propane heater was leaking. I went up the stairs into the laundry room, sniffing for the smell of gas, but what I noticed was a strong skunk-like odor! The hissing noise was even louder in this room.

I noticed that Donald was crouched in the middle of the laundry room floor, focused on the corner under the laundry sink. A little creature ran out, puffed up and hissing at me! It was a weasel! It was in the midst of changing from summer colours to winter, when it would become an all-white ermine with a black tip. Right now its back fur was a mottled brown with some white patches, but the tip of its tail was black.

What a feisty creature! It hissed at me very aggressively, although it was smaller than a squirrel, but thinner and longer. I don’t know how it got in the house. Perhaps through a small mouse hole—it was certainly thin enough to squeeze through a mouse hole—or maybe through Donald’s cat door.

I opened the door to the outside, at the end of the hallway, and went to get a flashlight, broom, and towel. I’ve had some luck catching mice in towels in the past, but this creature was more aggressive. I started with the broom, trying to sweep the little weasel toward the open door. He leaped on the end of the broom, biting it ferociously, hissing all the while. What a little character! No fear at all. Donald had lost interest and left the room. I got the camera and took a few pictures of it, and continued to try to encourage the little creature to go out the door. It took many skirmishes with the broom, and retreats behind the bucket in the corner. I had to clear away everything the weasel could hide behind, and close off any spaces he might hide in on the way out the door. More broom work, and then I finally got him to run out the door. I wonder if this is how the honourable Canadian sport curling got started!

What a gift to have this brave little visitor come into my house! The magnificent weasel would be an appropriate symbol for courageous fighting against enormous odds. Also for being true to one’s nature without fearing the consequences!

Prison guard blues

I taught walking meditation to my two classes at the youth correctional institute on Monday night. The first class consisted of three young men. A male guard was in the room, the library, for the first part of the class, working on the computer. So I introduced the meditation, and as we began slowly walking around the room in a circle, we heard the magical sound of Windows starting.

But actually, this shows me how accustomed I have become to the prison environment. For while this new sound (of Windows starting) seemed intrusive, I didn’t even notice the enormous clanging sound of the heavy prison doors in the hallway outside the room slamming shut repeatedly throughout the class, which had seemed like a shock to my soul-body when I first started teaching there.

We made it one and a half times around the room in the five minutes, and the young men seemed to be in a calm, quiet space after the meditation. The guard left, and the rest of the class was tranquil and flowing. I explained that they could use the walking meditation when they are feeling upset. The focus on the feet, which usually are not upset (unless they happen to be sore or injured), helps the meditator to shift into a more positive state. At least, that’s the theory!

The next class was the young women. This time a female guard came to the class and participated in it too. This is a wonderful development, which, as teachers with Yoga Outreach, we are encouraged to promote. For the guards no doubt can benefit from the yoga as much as the students.

But this time, the presence of the guard presented a new challenge, which I had never encountered before. For she had done yoga before (from a video) and thought it was appropriate to offer corrections to the students during the poses, as well as to give orders to maintain discipline in the class! So during the silent walking meditation she gave orders to the students to be quiet when they were giggling. And it went downhill from there. I totally lost control of the class, and it was a complete disaster! A new learning for me.

A few days after the fact, I can feel some appreciation for the universe bringing me this opportunity to learn new skills as a teacher. I now know that if a guard joins the class, I need to take her aside and lay down the ground rules; she is there as a student only, and must leave the class control to me!

The final straw was when the students and guard were lying in savasana (corpse pose), the final resting pose that is the traditional way to end a yoga class. The guard took a call on her radio headset (which she had been wearing throughout the class and which occasionally emitted noises), and started speaking into it, from her mat. (Rather than leaving the room so as not to disrupt the students who were in a quiet, resting state after being very rambunctious throughout the class.) Then she said to the students, “OK, time to go get your meds.”

At this point my strength arose, and I took back control of the class. I have a strong sense of ritual and there are certain things that MUST be observed, such as ending the class in the traditional way. I said “I am not finished. I am ending the class, and need one more minute.” I gently brought the students out of sivasana, and we closed with the traditional Namaste salutation (which means “the divine light in me greets the divine light in you”). After saying Namaste to the students and thanking them for sharing their practice with me, I turned to the guard (who left the circle and did not participate for the closing) and said Namaste to her. After they all left I put away the equipment and drove home, furious with the guard for undermining my authority in the class, and with myself for not knowing how to handle it.

I must say, I felt much more compassion and understanding for my Diamond Approach teachers, whose classes I have interrupted and disrupted many times. Now the shoe is on the other foot! And walking meditation did not help me to regain my ground. It took a strong talking-to to my superego, who was having a field day with me for not handling the situation well, before I started to calm down.

The joys of being a wild woman and putting myself in situations where the unpredictable can happen! Of course, this is where learning and growth can occur. Even though it didn’t help me right in the moment, I still recommend walking meditation, for it will help us all develop a connection with something that is deeper than our emotional state. And in spite of all the disruption in the class, it was beautiful to see how one of the young women in the class really connected with the earth energy through her feet from doing this meditation.

So keep practicing!

If you are interested in more information about the benefits of teaching yoga and meditation to people in prison, check out this link to the UK organization The Phoenix Prison Trust. Once you’re at the site, click Why we do it.

Delightful feet

Well, how did it go? What did you notice as you did the walking meditation I described yesterday?

I did it in my apartment, and found that in five minutes I just made it from one end of my apartment to the other, and back. I have a small apartment! So that gives you an idea of how slowly I was walking.

I noticed my mind wandering numerous times, mostly with “to do” items. The feeling in my feet was delicious. A warm cozy feeling, in warm socks and slippers. Walking on the carpet added to the feeling of coziness. Some people find they almost lose balance when walking that slowly, and I did notice my gait and balance felt much different than usual. I felt the alignment of the bones in my legs and hips and ankles in a different way than I’m usually aware of. A sense of the weight of my body and how the bones move to support it.

The cushy feeling in my feet is was most delightful. It felt like the earth was a resilient force, receiving and yielding then slightly pushing back. Of course my mind wanted to get involved with theories about connecting with the earth, and how this is a step on the path to connecting with the entire universe. But the actual act of walking has a simple feeling that really felt innocent and delightful.

Now, after the meditation as I write this, I notice my feet feel more open, and I can sense the earth’s energy entering my feet through the soles, where they touch the floor. It seems like a white light entering my body. Wow, the vastness of the earth as a being feels like a huge energy, and as I sense the energy through my feet I start to notice that the energy field of the earth is all around my body too.

This totally blows away my notion of being a small separate self that is completely cut off from everything else and unsupported in the world. My body feels like a permeable spacious entity that is connected with the space and energy around it, so that the energy of the vast earth is through me as well as around me, and I feel a gentle humour and delight in the quality of the vast energy. As I sense into the quality of the energy, my mind activity stills, and I enter into the unknown of what is arising. Blissfulness, pleasure, but there isn’t the usual sense of “I” to experience it.

The usual I has faded more into the background, but I notice she has some fear about being with the unknown. I am part of a much bigger awareness, and my usual I wants to go back to the usual activities of my egoic mind. What will this bigger awareness require of me? What is happening in it? What is it? The collective energy of my neighbourhood? I hear the birds and cars outside, and someone hammering. There is peace in this vastness. An imperturbability, that seems to be reminding me of its truth. The vastness informs me that I can be aware of that imperturbable peace as I deal with a problem I’ve been irritated by since yesterday, that my egoic mind finds annoying. And curiousity can be there too. Hmm, why is this person I’m annoyed with behaving this way, and what is arising out of the vastness through their actions? What boundless generosity the universe has, to not only make me feel supported as part of something much larger than myself, but to also help me with a very minor problem in my life!

So, I am sure your experience of the walking meditation might be different than this. I have had a daily meditation practice pretty steadily for about 10 years, and I use a practice called inquiry to notice my experience and follow it into the depths and breadth of reality. Plus Saturday morning relaxation, tea, and chocolate allow me to shift out of my usual awareness and pay attention to a bigger reality in a way I don’t usually take the time to do.

I invite you to share what your experience was of the walking meditation, and what you were aware of at the end of the meditation. If you don’t want to share it on this blog, maybe you’d like to write about it in your journal or tell a friend what you noticed. I invite you to use this practice every day this week, for 5 or 10 minutes. Keep seeing what you notice. It’s never the same day twice! (Except in Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day, but that’s another story!)

Walk your blues away

You’ve probably heard that walking is good for you. It’s one of the most highly-recommended forms of exercise. It’s gentle on the body, and good for the psyche. The physical activity can get the juices flowing and even create a little endorphin high. Going for a walk is good for clearing the mind, and it’s also a great technique to use for controlling anger. Just being outside for a while and touched by the sky can lift the spirits. But this isn’t the kind of walking I’m talking about.

I’m talking about a simple practice called walking meditation. It’s different from regular walking, in part because the pace is slower. Its benefits are more profound than regular walking. It is a spiritual practice, and like many spiritual practices, the purpose is to support us in a different kind of awareness than our usual consiousness.

Our usual consciousness involves a lot of thinking! It is sometimes called our egoic mind. We use it to function in the world—planning how to talk to a coworker about a problem or new idea, deciding what to make for dinner, remembering a warm moment with a friend. As you can see, the egoic mind is usually oriented towards the past or the future. Don’t get me wrong—the egoic mind is useful, and developing a healthy ego, which includes a sense of being a separate self and other characteristics that ego psychologists have listed, is an important developmental achievement for humans. But it doesn’t stop there!

We are much more than our egoic minds, but unless we are remarkably lucky or have done a lot of inner work, we may not be aware of what that “more” is. Actually, we may not be aware THAT there is more. I believe that the midlife crisis is a waking up moment when we realize that the life of the egoic mind is not entirely satisfying. Perhaps we’ve raised a family or achieved career success. Relationships may have ended or they might be continuing, but somehow didn’t bring all that we hoped for. Maybe there’s a feeling that something is missing. A richness and aliveness that we remember life having when we were children. Or a sense of being at peace. There are many qualities to our being and to the nature of all that is that we might long for and sense are possible, but don’t experience as often as we’d like.

Walking meditation is a way to drop out of the busy thinking activity of the egoic mind and open our awareness to what else is true in the present moment. It can be a doorway into a more expanded awareness of reality. I’ve learned different forms of walking meditation over the years, at Naropa University, at Diamond Approach retreats, and elsewhere. I taught walking meditation as part of a meditation class I taught in Merritt, in which I introduced students to a variety of meditation techniques. I think having a daily meditation practice is very difficult, and also very important for developing our capacity to be aware of more than the egoic mind. I think it is so difficult that without a context such as a spiritual understanding to give meaning to the activity, and without the support of a spiritual community, it is probably not possible. But I could be wrong—if you disagree, or have had a different experience, I’d love to hear about it.

I stopped teaching meditation because I felt that without the support of a spiritual path, people wouldn’t be able to sustain their practice. But on the other hand, even meditating once and never meditating again might have a benefit. So I’ll invite you to try this for yourself, and see what you make of it. Whether or not you have a spiritual practice or want one!

Preparation: Choose a place to walk where you can walk slowly without worrying that people will think you’re weird. This could be in your home, or outside. Decide how long you’re going to walk for; I suggest 5 or 10 minutes the first time.

Let your eyes rest gently on the ground about six to eight feet (two to three metres) in front of you. Soften your gaze so your eyes aren’t focused on the details. Walking at night is good too.
Clasp your hands loosely in front of you, with your arms relaxed and hanging naturally. One way is to insert your right thumb between your left thumb and forefinger, so your left hand clasps your right thumb, and the rest of your right hand clasps your folded left hand.
Bring your awareness down out of your mind and into your feet. Feel your feet. Feel how they feel in your socks and shoes, or sandals, if you’re wearing any. Feel how they feel making contact with the earth.
Begin to walk slowly, keeping your awareness on the sensation in your feet. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to your feet.
At the end of the time you have set, increase your awareness to include the space in and around your body. Take a few moments to notice what you are aware of.

Blessings on your journey.

Wild neighbours: cougars and their ways

At Monkey Valley, we place a strong emphasis on keeping retreat participants safe. One of the ways to do that is helping people learn about the wild animals that live in the area. I’ve written extensively about cougars on this blog, to tell you the story of how I learned about cougars and why I feel it is safe to be out and about at Monkey Valley when there might be cougars in the neighbourhood.

For some reason, this has been a very popular topic for spammers! And with readers, too. I think we are all fascinated by the magnificent cougar. If you are planning to come to Monkey Valley and would like to read up on cougars, here is a summary of the entries about cougars and their ways:

Winter in Vancouver: service not snowplowing

As I have mentioned before, I am spending this winter in Vancouver. I wanted to stay at Monkey Valley, to enjoy the incredible stillness that comes when the entire landscape is blanketed in white. But it was not to be; the snow plow company was unable to commit to plowing my roads to keep them open for the winter. I was unable to risk getting snowed in for several months, given my commitments to my people here in Vancouver; teaching yoga to the youths in prison in Burnaby, and assisting my chapter of the Society for Technical Communication as its president. Both of these require my presence in Vancouver occasionally, though ironically my technical writing work does not, as it is conducted entirely by phone and internet.

Yesterday morning I found a light dusting of snow in the backyard of my place in Vancouver, and at Christmas time there was actually over a foot of snow! Very unusual weather for Vancouver, but it was a nice compensation for missing out on the snow at Monkey Valley.

I didn’t give up easily on spending the winter in Monkey Valley. I looked into what would be involved in plowing the roads myself this winter, and came up with several options:

4-wheeler with blade attachment or blower attachment
hand-held and pushed/walked powered snow blower
custom-built blower attachment for my Tracker
tractor with blade or blower attachment

As well as costing anywhere from $1,000 to over $10,000, these options would also require me to do the work, which is to plow 7 KM of road. The time this takes varies depending on the type of equipment, but would be a minimum of 1-2 hours for that length of road each time a few inches of snow falls. Given the 8 inches of snow that fell in early December, I was glad I made the decision to leave when I did. I just did not want to spend my whole winter plowing the road, as much fun as that might be! Maybe next year.

Of the options I mentioned, I think mounting a snowblower on my Tracker would be the best way to go. It would involve permanently altering the vehicle’s front bumper, and attaching to a point higher on the front of the car as well, so it would definitely alter the appearance of the car. But why buy a 4-wheeler or tractor when the Tracker has more power and can do the job!? MORE POWER!!!! As Tim Allen used to say on Home Improvement.

So I have been enjoying serving my people in Vancouver this winter. I recently taught a class I developed, called Yoga for the Office, at the STC’s January program meeting. It went really well. It was a thrill to teach to many people who had never tried yoga before, to help them feel the benefits of it for themselves. The treasurer of the chapter told me it made her headache go away, and the public relations person said her shoulder ache disappeared. Plus people had various interesting experiences of changed mental states due to the breathing we did. So I was very pleased with how the class turned out. I am considering offering this one-hour workshop to offices in the Lower Mainland. Please let me know if you’re interested!

Running the Berlin Wall

One of the coolest things I did in Berlin was go for a run along the Berlin Wall. Kirsten lives in East Berlin, so I ran west along Pariser Kommune Allee until I came to Muhlenstrasse, and there it was! The Berlin Wall! How cool is that! To go for a run and come upon the Berlin Wall!

A segment of the wall has been retained as a memorial, and many artists have created idealistic artwork to commerate the opening of the wall, creating a living piece of artwork called the East Side Gallery. As usual, it was already dark out when I set out on my run. Yet there were quite a few people strolling along looking at the artwork, and some were taking group and individual photos of each other against the wall. It was very moving, to see this 10-foot high edifice that had broken hearts and families. It seemed so strange to imagine it. What is the point!? Some people on one side of the wall, some people on the other side. It is only 10 feet high so it’s possible to see over the wall in many areas. They could wave at each other.

One side must have been grey and bleak, and the other side full of colour and shiny bright commercial baubles. But frankly, in light of the environmental devastation caused by the western consumer culture, I found myself favouring the Communist idealism, as I ran along beside the wall, looking at the graffiti-covered artwork. Then I remembered that Communist Russia also has created a huge amount of pollution, especially with nuclear waste from their abandoned atomic submarines. Communist or Capitalist, we all bear responsibility for the shape the earth is in today.

I ran for quite a while, following the wall, dodging around the photo-takers, looking at the art both old and new, hoping to see the famous image of fellow communists Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev kissing each other on the mouth, when suddenly there was a break in the wall, showing the no-man’s land between the wall and the Spree River. And what do you think I saw there? A gigantic flat-screen TV billboard displaying a picture of Lionel Ritchie! What a shock! Across the road I saw a gigantic bubble-shaped building, called O2 World. I learned it is an entertainment complex, and Lionel will be playing there in April. This is the fruits of the wall coming down. East Berlin gets to see Lionel Ritchie. And, in June, the Eagles! May all Berliners experience a peaceful, easy feeling. Ich bin ein Berliner, ja!

It’s dark in the park in Berlin

$O\'Horten$ I approached the theatre and saw there were posters along the wall at street-level, with the movie theatre entrance up a flight of stairs and the theatre towering several stories above that. The posters showed Australia—a Nicole Kidman pic whose posters I’d seen everywhere, including Amsterdam, Prague, and Berlin. Very Hollywood! But look—an offbeat poster showing a man with a moustache holding a very large dog in his arms, with the the words “Cannes Selection something something.” The movie was called O’Horten, by Bent Hamer, the director of Kitchen Stories (a weird Norwegian movie which I’d seen and loved). My kind of movie! The other posters showed a selection of horror movies, action flicks, and kids films. I left satisfied, knowing there was something I would enjoy seeing, here in Berlin. This was comforting to me—the familiar world of movies still existed in this strange place.

I ran on through the rain and came to another corner, Danziger, where there was a Mobil station set off in the Volkspark Friedrichshain. This struck me as odd, but I noted the price—1.09 Euros per litre (about $1.80 Canadian) and continued along Danziger, always keeping the park at my right. It was 35 minutes into the run now, and I was sure I was coming near to the starting point. The next corner was Landsberger Allee, and it was more commercial. The park disappeared and there was a giant sports complex called SEZ on my right. I didn’t know if anyone used it, for it was dark (closed at this hour on Christmas Eve), and the building had a lot of graffitti on it. But I saw there was a blowling alley—10 Euros—ball sports, massage. After the end of the building there was a little street going right, back towards the park, so I followed it, through a desolate area with tram tracks carved into the pavement, between bleak-looking apartment buildings, and then came to a road with a T sign.

I followed this, passing a woman walking a small dog, and came back to the park. The way led into the park now—which I had hoped to avoid—but I also hoped it would lead straight back to the starting point. The paved path was lined with orange street lights, and I kept to the left whenever the walkway branched, so as to keep the bulk of the park to my right. There were some ominous-looking buildings looming in the darkness on my left, which I later learned was a Krankenhaus (krank means sick, and this was a hospital).

I seemed to have entered a very unfamiliar area that looked nothing like the brightly-lit boulevard I had started out on. At the next turn in the path the street lights changed to white globes. The path cut between wooded hills and as I descended between them I felt I had entered Narnia. After another minute or so my tolerance for the unknown reached its limit. It was 45 minutes into the run. With each step I was increasing the distance back to Kirsten’s apartment. I lost my trust in my sense of direction that this road would lead back to where I’d started. I was afraid I’d entered the twilight zone, and everything had changed and I’d never find my way back. So I turned around and went back the way I came.

Coming out of the park I was worried I’d lose my way and be lost running around the park all night, so I was very relieved to come back to the T sign and the tram tracks. I read all the street signs as I retraced my route, alarmed to discover an entire segment of road between Danziger and Friedrichshain that I’d failed to note. The rain had stopped now, and I noticed the cheer of the apartments along Friedrichshain, lit by strings of Christmas lights. On the ground floor was a restaurant, glowing orange, each table lit with candles, a server looking out the window. Not a single patron had come to eat there on Christmas Eve, but perhaps they’d just opened and were expecting a big reservation. People got into parked cars with packages, and suddenly there was a more festive holiday feeling in the air.

It’s amazing how much more quickly the second half of a run in a new place feels, when I am retracing the journey and some things feel familiar—the movie theatre, a brick paved half-circle park entrance, the steet sign at the corner of Friedrichshain and Friedenstrasse, the pink concession stand building. Without fear and uncertainty slowing my steps I made it back to Kirsten’s in just 31 minutes!

Later I checked her map and found that in another 200 meters or so the park path I was on rejoined Landsberger Allee and from there it was just a few hundred meters to the starting point. The side trip into the park was a loop that went into the park and rejoined Landsberger farther up. Fear had stopped me from completing the circuit—which was not an even rectangle but more like a diamond shape—but I finished it a few days later, in the daylight, when we returned from our Christmas excursion to Prague. The seond time it took 40 minutes to do the complete journey from Kirsten’s to the park, all the way around the park, and back to Kirsten’s.

Looking back from the safety and comfort of my home in Vancouver, where everything is quite familiar, it seems that runs in a new place are the most fun and exciting. Everything is unknown and fresh, and it is great when things get a little scary at times. I feel a curiousity and aliveness about discovering the new place, whether in a city or in the wilderness. And running allows me to cover a good distance fairly quickly, so I can really get a sense of the terrain, and learn the land with my feet. But let me tell you, when I was afraid I was lost, in the dark in a scary park in East Berlin, I felt like a fool, not a wild woman.

Returning home I also found out that what I expected to be a minor park, covering one city block, is the oldest and second-largest park in Berlin, covering 52 hectares, and built in 1840 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Frederick the Great’s accession to the Prussian throne. Although I couldn’t see this in the dark, it is filled with statuary, monuments, playgrounds, and delightful vistas. It is really true that we create our own reality, based on our history. And this might not always be such a bad thing—I guess I like the feeling of being afraid in the unknown, my imagination running away with me. I’m glad I hadn’t read all about the park on the web site first, and seen it on a map. It was good to discover it on my own, directly with my senses, even if I was viewing it through the filters of my history.

Wild women run in the dark in Berlin

I arrived in Berlin about 10 PM (after travelling 22 hours), and spent a lot of the next day sleeping. It was dark by the time I was ready for my first run, at about 5 PM. So my first run in Berlin was after dark, with the temperature around 0° C.

I knew there was a park at the end of my sister Kirsten’s street, about a 5-minute walk away, so I went in that direction, north along Friedenstrasse, and came to the Volkspark Friedrichshain. I decided not to go into the park but just to run around it, so I wouldn’t get lost. I headed to the left, and went about 100 yards when I remembered my wilderness training about staying found, and I back-tracked my steps to Friedenstrasse, memorizing landmarks including two round pods that I imagined were drop-off points for used clothing (but I later discovered are for recycling different colours of glass) and the cross-walk with four stretches, each with separate pedestrian signals, to traverse the busy wide street with three lanes in either direction and a tram line in the middle. On the side closest to the park there was a small pink building with a counter where someone was selling snacks, by the entrance to the park.

Satisfied that I would recognize this point when I came back around to it, I set out in a clockwise direction, around what I imagined was a square park of about one city block, like I’d seen in San Francisco and Vancouver. I could see lights through the trees where I thought the edges of the park were, and estimated that one circuit of the park would take about 9 minutes. I looked at my running watch and saw that at this point I was 9 minutes into the run.

The buildings along Friedenstrasse, in East Berlin, had seemed very massive, square and heavy—bleak and menacing. There was a massive brick church at the end of the graveyard, with a huge square tower that looked like a crematorium to me, and next to it an abandoned factory with a smokestack stretching several stories into the sky. The buildings across from the park also seemed to be very big, squat, and bleak, though they were apartment buildings. There was a lot of graffiti everywhere, which Kirsten told me was a big problem in Berlin. I wondered if it was a symptom of cultural trauma from World War II and the subsequent splitting of Berlin that had never been healed.

The park on my right reminded me of the landscape I’ve seen in Poland near Auschwitz—the bare trees with tangled branches and the low clouds overhead, as well as the feeling of bleakness. The broad sidewalk I was running on had two sections of concrete paving stones set in a diamond pattern, with a reddish cobble-stone path in between them. I imagined the smooth part was reserved for cyclists, but the walk was deserted at this time of day so I ran on the smooth section.

I came to the first corner in a few minutes, and went up to the street signs to read them, so I wouldn’t get lost. To my surprise the stretch of road I was on was called Friedenstrasse—peaceful street—Kirsten’s street had bent at a sharp angle when it met the park. The new street was Friedrichshain, which I later learned is the name of that district of Berlin—a more funky, fun, artistic, part of Berlin, with many restaurants, cafes, and boutiques. Even on this quiet residential street there was a different feeling, which I didn’t notice at first because it began to rain very heavily. I ran on, into the groove now (it usually takes me about 14 minutes to warm up.) I saw a neon sign across the street, Theatre am Friedrichshain; there were two people ahead at the bus stop. I ran to the intersection and crossed at the light, running through a wide river of rain water that had collected along the edge of the street; I wanted to see what was playing! To be continued…

Blessings for the winter solstice – pecan fudge pie!

May the trees rest peacefully this winter, under their blanket of snow. May the earth continue her turning, gently nudging the darkness toward light. May all beings be happy, fed, and warm.

The winter solstice gathering at Monkey Valley was cancelled due to early snow and overworked snow plowers. I drove out of the valley last Saturday evening, through 7 inches of sparkling, light, fairy-dust snow. I was very proud of the Tracker, in 4WD low and with new winter tires, for driving out of there like a tank, over 12 KM of unplowed roads! It was -15° Celcius, and the snow was still falling. Truly a magical drive, with the roads completely drifted over, and the snow-laden boughs of the pine trees hanging low on either side, giving friendly wishes for my safe journey.

So instead of having a gathering on the land, I will have a small tea party in Vancouver, taking tea with my friends Geoff and Azusa Blake. In honour of the solstice, I am going to bake a pie (instead of the traditional bread). I’ve never baked a pie before, so this is quite momentous! I’ve been inspired by my expert pie-making friend, Devona Snook. And just today my friend Tim Kelly gave me a fantastic book for travelling vegetarians, called Vegan A Go-Go, by Sarah Kramer. I’m going to try her Fudge Pecan Pie. If it works out, I’ll let you know! Though if it doesn’t, I will probably blame it on pie babyhood, not the recipe.

So I invite you to take a moment to notice the deep darkness of the longest night. Feel that brief moment when the earth makes a tiny shift in rotation. Wish her blessings on her journey. And then celebrate with friends, with or without pie. Happy winter solstice.

Basic Flaky Pie Crust

1.25 c flour
.25 t salt
.5 c vegetable shortening
3 T very cold water

Stir together the flour and salt. Cut in the shortening until well mixed, then add the water. Mix until a dough forms. On lightly floured surface, knead for 1-2 minutes, then roll into a ball. Wrap dough in wax paper and chill for 30 minutes. Roll the dough into a pie crust with floured rolling pin.

Fudge Pecan Pie

.5 c water
.25 c vegan margarine
2 T unsweetened cocoa powder
.75 c chocolate chips
.33 c flour
1 c sugar
.175 t salt
.5 c soy or rice milk
1 T vanilla
1 c pecan halves
1 9″ prepared pie crust (see above)
2 t soy or rice milk

Preheat oven to 350° F (175° C). Bring water to a boil in a pot, then remove from heat. Stir in the marg, cocoa, and choc chips and whisk until melted. Add flour, sugar, salt, .5 c milk, and vanilla, and whisk until smooth. Stir in pecan halves and pour into pie crust. Bake for 55-60 minutes, until a toothpick or knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. Brush top with 2 t milk. Let cool to room temperature before serving.

Easy-peasy! (As my old friend Bev Lytton used to say. I hope all’s well with you, Bev.)