Lessons from the wild...

May I share with you a few lessons I learned when I went on a 7 day canoe trip in the BC Rockies last June? I am really glad that I was able to spend that time with my father but I also took away some life changing (I am all about change) lessons from the mountains...

It was a challenging experience up in the wild...but extremely rewarding. I came away with two impressions. The first was from the mountains themselves. Each morning I awoke to them, as I travelled they lorded over me, constant and overwhelming in their beauty. As I started to look with poetic eyes, I viewed them as my sisters.

The mountains are 'woman' in the sense that they steal and break hearts. My father has gone on this canoe trip (a 117 kilometre circuit of trials and lakes...mostly lakes) every June for eleven years now and said that he will continue to come back until he can no longer physically do it. These mountains have stolen his heart completely and they began to steal mine.

I had to ask myself why...what is it about them? It is her beauty true but there is more...what truly wins the heart of man is her generosity and pure integrity. She is always giving - giving scenic delight - cool breeze to us when we were canoeing under the hot sun - crisp glacier streams when we were thirsty - the lush vegetation all about us...and yet on the flip side she is exact and brutal - true to herself without apology and this struck me most of all - winds could come up and weather changed quickly - the breeze to our back could change and blow at us on the lake - the lush vegetation could become a labyrinth of no return if we wandered off too far -the wildlife was unpredictable and we had to be on guard for bear - mosquitoes were a constant blithe and so on. Many a man have lost their lives in her bosom. She breaks hearts without apology. No regret for it and yet, men love her still. We could curse the cold winds and rains that came from her as we paddled to our next camp. It did not phase her. The mountain is what she is and yet she is always changing.

My father says that the wild is never the same. Each year the lakes change - the land changes. It changes where it needs to. It repairs where it is needed. Something falls away, burns away, rots away (a tree...a mountain stream...a rock slide down one side of the mountain) as is needed.

I want to be like the mountain - firm and unmovable but always changing. I want to live without apology for who I am - generous - a pillar of integrity. That is the lesson I took from my 'sister' mountains.

But I also took away another lesson. The scenic beauty of the mountain starts very small. It is made up of the tiniest treasures. As I portaged along trails I began to notice the forest floor. When the trees hide the peeks my eyes rested downward to the plants growing there - mosses, flower, fern, grass, mushroom, shrubs - oh so green. Each different from the next. I think that I am a botanist at heart, my camera took many a picture of these green gems of the forest. They indeed make up the very wilderness.

If you were to look with a critical eye -an unhappy eye - you would see much flaw in the wild. Fallen and rotting trees, lots of them. Yet as you soften your eye you would see what these gems do. Mosses cover the rot, flowers thrive at the base of tree stumps, ferns blanket about the fallen trees. I realized that there is a subtle beauty to the mountain region that builds up and grows into it's overwhelming allure.

It is the same with people. We each are a scenic creation but we are essentially created by individual subtle beauties. We all have flaws just like the forest and we must! For, like the forest, if we didn't then there would be no need for the mosses, the ferns, the flowers and those, poor reader (as I am ranting terribly) make up exactly what the forest is. I see a little more clearly that we each are made up of little things that add to the amazing charm and splendour that is woman (or man).

Each flaw is an opportunity for literally- new growth. I embrace flaw (sorry for the overused cliche) I change flaw where I can but like the mountain I live without apology. I consist of flaw - and your are welcome for it - I believe now more than ever that it is only through mistake that we can grow bigger, brighter and better. Of course I mean that in changing and learning from mistake and flaws this can only happen...does that make sense?

It is through subtle beauty that we thrive. The grand comes from the small and subtle -an accumulation of the small and subtle - Anyway, this is very long but I hope a little thrilling. It was a self changing experience and I would recommend it to every woman. I hope I described what I learned well enough but I fear (unless this is common knowledge to all and I am just slow on the up take...as could very well be the case) it is a lesson best learned on a weeks expedition into the wild and not through second hand telling (or babbling). I hope it inspired where it might...