I often feel like spirituality is something other people experience. I’ve never felt connected to a greater being, and I wonder if my feelings about the land and nature aren’t a little forced. And when I get emotional while witnessing indigenous ceremonies, my tears are probably a whole lot of racial guilt. Some places are […]
Tag: Canada
Goodbye Canada, For Now
Tomorrow we leave this campsite in Whiteshell Provincial Park, our final in Canada, and drive all day to a rest stop in Ontario for the night, then all the next day back into the U.S. at Minnesota. I have to admit, it’ll feel good to be ”home”—although we’ve had our home with us the whole […]
Manitou Appe
At our last campsite at Hecla, I met Svea (she’s on the right; Lauren the park interpreter is on the left), who helped lead my guided tour through the woods of Hecla Island. While Lauren told me about the mammals native to Hecla, Svea mentioned a few spiritual beliefs of her indigenous people, the Anishinabe, […]
Flooding on Winnipeg River
I’m lying on the sofa very early in the morning, watching and listening to a thunderstorm; it’s supposed to storm on and off all day long here. Normally I’d enjoy a good storm, but in the Airstream you worry about hail, falling tree limbs, the dog quaking in the corner of the trailer beside Tracy […]
Exploring Hecla Island
It’s been a quiet week here at Lake Wobegone Winnipeg. (I’ve always wanted to start a post like that.) Seriously, this little island is rich in cultural history and has wolves on it, but we’re not finding much we can do because: we’re not golfing, the lake is flooded so no beach, and mosquitoes turn […]
Hecla and Gimli on Winnipeg
That’s not an entirely made-up headline. It’s a scramble of where we are—as a cool-sounding phrase that reminds me of the Star Trek episode, ”Darmok and Jalad at Tamagra,” where Picard has to learn an alien’s language—that’s all in metaphor—to survive. It’s one of my favorite episodes. We are indeed on Hecla Island on Lake […]
Mosquitos v. Bear
If this were who would win in a battle here in Manitoba: a swarm of these dragonfly-sized mosquitos or an average-sized black bear, I would bet on the bear, based on how I’ve seen Banjo react to mosquitos. She doesn’t, is the thing. They’ll cover her so that we have to wipe them off her […]
Canadians …
We’re more than halfway through our summer tour of Canada (well, let’s count this as more like a first-time swing through), and I’ve come to a few conclusions. Okay, in truth this is a photo dump before we leave Saskatchewan for Manitoba tomorrow, and I hate not to have text with images. So, here goes […]
Lookin’ for Peace in All the Wrong Places
Here at Greenwater Provincial Park in Saskatchewan, I’ve got that old song, ”Looking for Love,” stuck in my head, and it’s not even fitting because the character finds his love in the end, yet we’re still looking for the right campground in central Canada. It’s especially hard to hit the mark in campground choices and […]
Saskatoons and Blueberries
Jacqui (queen of this blog, if you’ve been following) gathered Saskatoon berries along the river valley as a kid in Canada even though most other non-native folks like her didn’t even know about them; her mom is a botanist, which has perks. She pointed them out to us near Edmonton, and now we see them […]
