Monkey Valley Retreat Center – Karen's New York Love Affair

Q: Does a bear poop in the woods?

A: Yes, and so can you!

Okay, you’re probably thinking I’ve totally flipped out, if you didn’t already think this after some of my previous entries about mouse turds, including “The mystery of the dead animal in my living room,” and the moving song “Blue turd on my window sill.”

But the fact is, being close to nature means being close to the full cycle of natural processes, which mostly involve birth, eating, eliminating, reproduction, and death. And when you spend time in nature, the signs of the elimination process are all around. Yesterday, when I was out for a run at Monkey Valley, I came across some magnificent signs of bear elimination. Call me crazy if you want, but I love finding bear scat. I found two piles, and one was a lot larger than the other, which might indicate that two bears of different sizes have been in the vicinity. Or maybe it was the same bear, having a big poop and then a little poop after. I noticed that both piles had undigested rose hips in them, which indicates the furry creature has been attracted to the bright red seed pods, which seem remarkably red and vibrant this year.

But what does this have to do with you, and specifically, with you pooping in the woods? One of the questions people who have never been on a vision fast ask is how to handle this basic biological function. Obviously, when you’re out in the wild on your solo, there won’t be a flush toilet, and not even an outhouse. This means you have the wonderful opportunity to experience what your ancestors did. Poop in the woods! Or in the desert, as the case may be…

We like to practice no-trace camping as part of our honouring of the land during the vision fast. This means packing out your TP, and covering the signs of any biological waste you might be leaving behind. So dig a shallow hole, and when you’re finished your elimination process, cover the hole with leaves and dirt. If there are rocks in the area where you are fasting, you can put a rock over the little pile to mark it, so that you know not to dig in that same spot again.

There is an ancient familiarity about squatting outside to perform this everyday function. The position is actually more comfortable for our body than a toilet, though if you’re out of shape it can be a strain on the quadriceps at first. Women out on a fast will get a lot more practice with this than men, learning to squat and pee too, without peeing on clothing or shoes. That’s a practice you will have a chance to master during your fasting time, especially if you drink the recommended amount of water!

A final note about biological processes for women out on a fast. It often happens that women’s cycles shift when out in nature, and your moon time might come while you are on your fast. We recommend bringing the supplies you’ll need in case this does happen. Pack the used supplies out with you, along with your TP. If you’re in bear country, you might want to keep your used supplies in a plastic bag some distance from your sleeping place, and use water and a bandanna or disposable wipes to keep clean. Or moss, if you’re in the woods.

Having your moon time while on a fast can deepen your connection with the sacred in nature, and help you feel part of the natural cycles of nature. Perhaps you will be inspired to create a ceremony to honour your moon time, bleeding directly onto the earth or making an offering of your blood in a ceremonial way.

Being out on the land during the vision fast, attending to our natural biological processes in ways that are more like the way our ancestors did, connects us to the 120,000+ life times of the human race, and helps us know that we are not alone. While our single life is finite, we are connected to a powerful, enduring life force through our human and pre-human gene pool. This is something that pooping in the woods can teach us.

Madame Moose strides again

On a run at Monkey Valley recently, a magical thing happened. I was running up the road, and saw a magnificent female moose in the meadow beside the road. She saw me too, we looked at each other for a little, and then she moved away up the hill.

I felt awe and pleasure at this rare contact with Madame Moose, and continued on my run up the hill happily, keeping a lookout in case I saw her again. Sure enough, when I got up near the top gate I saw her up by the gate, and she saw me again too. I backed off a little, so she wouldn’t feel trapped or threatened, and then I thought I would take advantage of this opportunity to ask her a question.

“Should I sell Monkey Valley?” I asked her. I was feeling very discouraged about the amount of time I’d been spending on tending to the ranch this summer, and feeling burdened by it.

She said, “Don’t sell this land. Don’t sweat the small stuff.” Or as my brother-in-law Geoff Price told me, “Don’t sweat the petty stuff, don’t pet the sweaty stuff”!

Then she hopped the fence in a single stride. This seemed to confirm what she had said to me. To take the small stuff in stride.

A note to the poster who claimed to see a dead moose caught in the barbed wire fence on my south fence line: Not! The fence has been there thirty-plus years, and the moose and deer all know where it is. As I saw with my own eyes, these magnificent ungulates take such things in their stride.

I have not been so equanimous, and decided to probe the universe’s plans for me by putting Monkey Valley on the market, in spite of the moose’s advice (or, if you prefer, my own inner guidance as prompted by the moose encounter). I am feeling the call to have more freedom in my life, and keeping two homes has been feeling like a burden. Much as I love the quiet and privacy of Monkey Valley, I feel a stronger pull to the city, and it is a strain to keep both going. So I’m going to see what happens. If the place sells before snow flies, I will take that as a sure sign it is time to move on to new pastures. If it doesn’t sell, I’ll keep Monkey Valley and make a new plan.

In either case, I will continue to offer vision fasts. Either at Monkey Valley, or on the land near Monkey Valley.

Blue turd on the window sill

A recent discovery at Monkey Valley inspired me to write this homage to John Denver:

Blue turd on the counter makes me happy
Blue turds in my bed can make me cry
Blue turd means the mouse has found the poison
Blue turd means the mouse is going to die

I was very moved by this ditty, although not as much as by the original song by Mr. Denver.

Goodbye, wascally weasel

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.

Winter visitors

I just got back from Monkey Valley, where I had a chance to find out how the place fared for the winter. I found evidence of some horses (or so I thought) in the yard, and the corpse of a tiny shrew in the power room. Other than that, no signs of mayhem from the animal world. No mouse or rat invasions, and no insect invasions either. It must have been a quiet winter! I do feel sad about the poor little shrew, though.

There was the usual water damage due to freezing. In spite of my best precautions, which I have detailed elsewhere, there were a number of casualties to the plumbing system. After a day or two of seeming to operate correctly, the kitchen tap started spazzing out water in all directions. The upstairs toilet handle would not flush, though flushing by pulling on the mechanism inside the tank worked. One of the showers leaked ceaselessly on the first night I was there (with my Mom and sister Katherine), until, cursing, I attacked it with a screwdriver. For some reason loosening the plate around the handle caused the showerhead to stop dripping, even though I hadn’t got it open to fiddle with the workings of the thing. And, two small leaks in valves in the power room. I see another big plumbing bill in my near future. Aargh!

But this is life. As I’ve recently learned from two of my Diamond Approach teachers, these things happen to us no matter how realized we are. It is not my fault, not your fault. The only thing that changes on our journey of soul maturation is the way we experience the problems, and the way we handle them. I personally enjoy venting my frustration through swearing, but maybe there’s a different way… Such as sensing how I actually feel in my body, and expanding my awareness to know that I am a vast and regal being… Or whatever.

The good news is Monkey Valley made it through the winter, and the damages are actually pretty minor. Happy Spring!

I’ll tell you more about the “horses” next time.