Walking – A Wabi Sabi Life

One Path

“crossing the river of life”
Mo Chuu (mother river) Bhutan, October 19, 2025

“No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!”
Friedrich Nietzsche in The Marginalian

This time the path led to touring and trekking in Bhutan, with an early three-day layover in Bangkok. Curious about Bhutan since reading that its Gross National Product was based on happiness, in recent years I’d begun my research. Committed to traveling with a Canadian company, and wanting to experience the country by walking in its forests and on its mountain trails, after last year’s heartening experience, I opted for a women’s hiking tour hosted by Wild Women Expeditions. Away almost three weeks in October, companioned by three women from the US, we were expertly hosted by local guide Chhimi from Blue Poppy Travel.

Since walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino in May 2022, I’ve made annual long distance walks. Each has been a known pilgrimage with sacred sites marking well worn paths trodden for hundreds of years by seekers and practitioners. Bhutan was no exception, as ornately carved wooden temples perched on mountain plateaus, white stucco stupas scattered in fields and on roads, and prayer flags strung across chasms constantly reminded us that we were being held by Mayahana Buddhism, the state religion deeply integrated into all aspects of Bhutanese life.

From our first walkabout during our first day in Paro, when hearing chanting we came upon the first of several ceremonies and offerings for peace, compassion, and the ending of suffering of all beings – hallmarks of this form of Buddhism. Chhimi confirmed my hunch that given so much current global conflict and suffering, the monks and nuns were engaged in even more ceremony as antidote. As I write this post, the country is hosting an unprecedented Global Peace Prayer Festival, November 4-17, in its capital, Thimpu, at the site of the massive seated golden Buddha, in hopes of rekindling hope and shared prosperity. We were deeply moved that this small country of 700,000 citizens was undertaking such effort, and expense, for the well-being of the planet and all its beings … for each of us.

Buddha Dordemna, Thimpu (for perspective)

We were many times blessed on our expedition. Everyday the sun shone in an azure sky when the week prior had brought unprecedented rains washing out trails and creating landslides on the only highway traversing the country, resulting in hours’ long delays. Narrow road shoulders became more treacherous with debris and washout along cliff edges. Days after our departure, major storm systems in neighboring India were bringing more rain.

Too, we had countless “right place, right time” moments, including watching monks practice their festival dance in the field one Sunday morning; meeting a local girl who invited us to use her bow and arrow to practice the national sport; having an unusual roadside photo opp with a Himalayan Grey Langur; seeing one of the four Queen Mothers (the earlier king married sisters), and the current King and Queen pass us in their motor entourages (no photos allowed); and even seeing Mount Everest from our plane departing Paro.

To have journeyed in such a small group, with two women who, like me, were celebrating their 70th birthdays was an answered prayer, as we supported each other in challenging climbs that took us to heights of 3000+ meters, and lengthy, quad and calf gripping descents.

I am filled to the brim with visceral and visual impressions in which here, now, is my first humble attempt to put into words. Many times, as is my way, my heart overflowed in tears. I trust poetry will emerge … in the right place, at right time. But for now, may this suffice.

With much love and kindest regards, dear friends. “om mani padme hum”

Ring a Bell … Take a Pause … Find Some Patience

Ring a Bell … Take a Pause … Find Some Patience – Touching in with musings about my summer.

July 11 was the last time I posted. Then, a poem from Rosemerry Wahtola Trummer with the perfect photo of a perfect red zinnia to complement her words. “Beyond Patience,” which was how I’d been feeling. Now today, up at 4:00 am – intentionally as I’m on a Timeshifter jetlag program – I wanted to touch in with you.

Summers are short here on ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Amiskwacîwâskahikan), Treaty 6 territory, and my rhythm is to be out in it as much as I can before the cold comes and I cocoon. This year has been marked by early rain, big winds, and again smoke, though not as much as last year. September brought wasp-free warmth inviting meals al fresco and early morning coffee sipped on the deck before dawn, wrapped in a down quilt, watching Venus shimmer, the sun rise, and the crows fly from the east, readying for their migration south. It’s become my meditation.

As I’d been having trouble finding words to write, I metaphorically rang a bell and took a pause. Played some pickleball, though it’s lost some allure. Returned, after several years away, to the Canmore Folk Festival, though soaking showers and the ongoing threat of storms added a tiring element of vigilance. Planted herbs and greens and made good summer salads. Read a few good books. Sat for a weekend in silence. Polished a couple of poems from April’s half-marathon, one of which was accepted in the upcoming “Kairos” issue of Yellow Arrow Journal. Read some of my poetry at the weekly summer Sounds From the Valley concert. Bought an e-bike in June, and during the past five Fridays riding with a friend have finally relived the promise of its joy and exhilaration. Walked the river valley, though not as many kilometers as in past two summers, but climbed hundreds of its stairs, all in preparation for tomorrow’s departure for Bhutan and this year’s long-distance walk.

And I revised, and revised, and revised my poetry collection for its upcoming publication. From the introduction:

“Composed of sixty-two poems complemented by my photos, Skyborne Insight, Homemade Love is the metaphor for my realizations, often brought into focus—quite literally—while sitting by the window on a plane, staring out into the sky. Something about that view’s unobstructed vastness where, paradoxically, I feel closer . . . to my vulnerabilities . . . to my shortcomings and misgivings . . . to my questions seeking answers . . . to God, which might be the best word for all of it. Those “aha” moments, distilled from noticing and naming the grief and the beauty in life’s imperfections, the sacred in the mundane moments at home, and those extraordinary ones when travelling abroad.”

This summer I’ve come to know in my bones both the boon and necessity of living life slower, and paradoxically feeling its fullness. Time feels thick. Not that it’s moving fast, but that I can hardly track what I did last week, let alone that it was only yesterday when we saw that play, or ate dinner at that restaurant, when it feels much longer ago.

“The artist actively works to experience life slowly, and then to re-experience the same things anew …

… If we removed time from the equation of a work’s development, what we’re left with is patience. Not just for the development of the work, but for the development of the artist as a whole.”
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

I’m about to ring the bell again, and take another pause, this time walking in a land that prizes happiness and is deeply steeped in a slow and mindful patience. As is my way, I go curious and feel anxious with the unknown of it all, this being my first time flying solo to Asia. I hope for the words and photos to note experiences which I trust will be profound. In the interim, may you be well and happy. And thank you, as ever, for reading.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Breathe and Create

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my participation in a poetry writing half marathon. As preamble to this week’s post, below is the prompt given for the 23rd hour, and the “list” poem I cobbled together from the book on my desk at dawn that Sunday morning, after 10 hours of writing 10 previous poems.

Hour 23 — Write a poem about harvesting something, it could be anything from clams to apples.

A List for Harvesting Creativity

Know that you and everyone is creative.
Tune into your ideas, impulses, dreams and hunches.
Make it up. Experimentation leads to innovation.
Expect surprises.
Mistakes are part of the process.
Rules can serve. Rules can hinder. Learn the difference.
Self doubt is part of the process.
So is rejection.
Keep your habits fresh.
What you don’t know is as, if not more, important than what you know.
Saying “no” is foundational to saying “yes”.
Play.

With thanks to Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being (2023)

Now that I’m back to walking, often solo, in preparation for another long distance trek (destination and details to come), I’ve returned to listening to podcasts and audio books to help pass the time. I found Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act on Spotify and as I’m reading it for a monthly book study, hearing the author read his pithy chapters, the transition from one into the next marked by the ringing of a bell, has been as delightfully edifying as the book study conversations.

The list above captures a mere fraction of his self acknowledged “noticings” about what and how to open possibilities for a creative way of being. This past week, I was struck by his chapters on listening, and patience.

“Listening is suspending belief.”
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

Given that we listen not only with our ears, but with our whole bodies, our filters of acculturation, beliefs, perceptions, and biases affect what we hear. Learning to listen with an awareness of these influences opens possibilities and grants us freedom from unconscious and accepted limitations. While I know this, to hear another say it, meaningfully hit home.

“There are no shortcuts.”
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

So opens the chapter on patience. But it could be the mantra for entire book. I stopped walking and replayed Rubin saying:

“When it comes to the creative process, patience is accepting that the majority of the work we do is out of our control. We can’t force greatness to happen. All we can do is invite in it and await it actively. Not anxiously, as this might scare it off. Simply in a state of continual welcoming.”

To do otherwise, by letting our cultural predisposition towards efficiency govern instead of responding to life in sync with its revealed rhythms and not our imposed agendas, is an argument with reality. Another deep resonance.

On my writing desk, beside Rubin’s book is Suleika Jaouad’s The Book of Alchemy. A gift from my sister, with a focus on journaling, its subtitle, A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life, suggests its hugging up against Rubin is not a coincidence.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Saudade

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about that quintessential Portuguese quality called “saudade.” A bittersweet yearning…a tender sadness…the presence of absence evoked in fado music and singing, dance, poetry. Qualities represented by this photo I took in Andalusia five years ago.

Last night, while eating dinner at our favorite Portuguese-Spanish influenced cafe, saudade stirred. Even before we entered, I felt waves of nostalgia for those times three years ago when eating in Portuguese cafes along the Camino, or in the tapas bars with Sig in Malaga, and that sweet match-box sized vermuteria we stumbled upon our last sunny Sunday in Sevilla.

Maybe it was yesterday’s summer-like weather inviting us to relax after a day working in the yard and garden, readying it for more outdoor living. Feeling the sun warm on our backs and faces, no jackets, gloves or toques, each of us remarked over the pleasure we felt not needing to brace against the cold.

Certainly, it was evoked by the cafe’s newest Sunday night addition, a Spanish singer-guitarist. Several of his songs so moving, I was almost brought to tears.

The longer I sat within the mood of the moment, I realized that this for me is particular to Portugal and Spain. That as much as I love being in Italy – and to date have visited many of its regions – I don’t recall being stirred in the same way.

I was to have returned to Italy this fall to again walk la Via Francigena with a small group of women. But due to no registration, I needed to cancel. I am disappointed. But I wonder if saudade is calling. And if one day, I’m to make another long-distance walk in Portugal and Spain. Not so much an “exterior” pilgrimage to Santiago, but the “interior” one to my soul. The outward destination not really the point. The journey that matters, experiencing anew what evokes and stirs.

Feeling saudade, the proof that I loved and lived,
dreamed and remembered… even if for a moment.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

The Presence of The Absence

There is a word in Portuguese that has no direct equivalent
in any other language: “saudade.”
It is not just longing. It is more.
It is longing mixed with melancholy,
with expectation,
with tenderness and with a gentle sadness.

It is longing for something that was. . . or maybe never was.
It is absence with the scent of memory.
It is love that did not have time to end, but neither to continue.
It is music that echoes in the void left by someone.

In fado they sing saudade.
In our long silences, saudade is hidden.
In lonely walks,
in lost glances out the window,
in letters never sent.

Saudade does not want to leave.
It doesn’t heal, because it doesn’t hurt completely.
It doesn’t break you, but it doesn’t leave you whole either.
It’s the sweet wound of souls that feel deeply, beyond words.

Carrying saudade within you is proof that you loved,
that you lived,
that you dreamed… even if for a moment.

~ Waves of Life, Facebook, May 4, 2025 ~

*singing* *fado on the steps in Lisbon, May 2022*

Exactly three years ago I was walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino to Santiago. During my first evening in Lisbon, I encountered the essence of “saudade” in a young street musician strumming her guitar, perched on stone steps across from our hotel, singing “fado,” the Portuguese equivalent of the “blues.“

Once home, in preparation for writing about my experiences, I heard a Portuguese guide refer to fado as “the presence of absence.” This inspired a poem which was published later that year in 100 Caminos, an annual Chilean anthology celebrating Camino poetry:

. . . now my memory mends and fills
those cracked and empty places
with jasmine perfume and birdsong
blistered heels and sun kissed faces

Saudade captures much of how I’ve been feeling this year. Tired from the moral outrage I’ve felt in response to the incessant displays of blatant evil. . . disappointed with life events that didn’t quite become as I’d imagined. . . I feel “the longing for something that was . . . or maybe never was.”

Disillusionment giving way to letting go. Discernment that comes with age.
The proof that I have loved and lived and dreamed.
The presence of the absence acknowledged and allowed.
And what is asking to emerge next.

Life’s unfolding along its silver thread, invisible until it’s not.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. It’s nice to be back after several weeks’ absence.

Regardless of My Age

It’s been mighty cold here in Alberta, and across Canada. A much-needed, honest-to-goodness winter with a snowpack forecasters say will lessen the impact of spring and summer forest fires. Temperatures well below zero, made colder with wind, killing off viruses and vermin. A restoration of balance that, while I appreciate, as I said to Sig as we layered to go out, I wish I wasn’t in. It’s been less than a month since celebrating his birthday in Huatulco, Mexico, but it feels like ages with this profound contrast.

And Walker, despite inheriting Annie’s insulated coat, and boots that he reluctantly wears, has found his first winter too cold to do much more outside than his business. And even that’s done fast, carefully perched on three legs, alternately the fourth to keep it from freezing. Last week, both of us bundled to play in the backyard, not a minute later and he was at the door. That night, he didn’t eat his dinner and slept all evening instead of his usual watching TV (I kid you not!) or playing with us. I sensed he was depressed and reflected to Sig we needed to move someplace more temperate, as both Walker and I need to walk…outside…in Nature…without freezing.

I’m going on about this because I’ve noticed with every passing year, I’m less inclined to brave winter’s elements and that troubles me. I used to ice skate…cross country and downhill ski…I haven’t walked with my Camino group since Christmas. Dog walking has become episodic. Reading my friend, Gretchen’s post this morning got me to thinking more about my own aging and how it’s showing up.

“Ageism is the last bastion of political incorrectness, and no one is going to fight it with us or for us. No one else cares, until they arrive there themselves…”
Gretchen Staebler, “You’re Doing Great…For Your Age”

I met Gretchen at a writing retreat years ago on Whidbey Island. Then, she was working on her – now published and highly recommended – moving, tender, and funny memoir, Motherlode: Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver. (For local readers, it’s available to borrow from my public library.) I love Gretchen’s fresh and candid take on life, and too, her big heart from which she responds to my recent posts about the harrowing state of our world. From her post which inspired my writing today:

“What do you see when you look in a mirror? Go ahead, look. Do you only see wrinkles and sagging skin? Yes, they are there, it’s a fact of the third act, it’s what the body does. And what else? What is reflected in your eyes, your smile?”

In this “third act,” what I’ve been calling “the eldering landscape,” my body is having its say, and I’m having to become more adept at listening. In this year, crossing the threshold into my eighth decade (mind-blowing what becoming seventy actually means!!!) I don’t know how I’ll celebrate. I do know I’ll continue to be enthralled, amazed, bewildered, curious, vulnerable, astonished, uncertain, afraid, grateful, courageous – the whole enchilada of words describing me being in love with the gift that is my life. Regardless of my age.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.
I’m so happy to welcome you, my newest subscribers, and grateful to you who have been reading me regularly.

Gratitude

thankful for the still flowering gift from my friend

“Gratitude is so much more than a polite “thank you.” It is the thread that connects us in a deep relationship, simultaneously physical and spiritual, as our bodies are fed and spirits nourished by the sense of belonging, which is the most vital of foods. Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry

I had no idea what to write for this, my last post of the year. I’d read some favourite bloggers who, too, wondered, knowing social media would be replete with eye-catching memes, inspirational quotes, thoughtful musings, and the perfect poem. But walking with Walker yesterday, noticing how much colder the temperature after a week of balmy days, and nearer to the horizon the mid-afternoon sun, I listened to an Emergence Magazine podcast wth Robin Wall Kimmerer reading her essay, The Serviceberry (known in these parts as the saskatoon berry). The above quote stood out as I struggled to keep the earbuds snug and the leash loose, my first time time navigating both since Annie’s passing. I knew I had a way in to writing, even if it meant I’d be adding more of the same to the year-end mix.

Looking back on this year, with its highs and lows, loves and losses, misunderstandings and reparations, I knew gratitude’s strong and persistent thread had, as always, had carried me across chasms of felt separation into the folds of belonging. I knew that by writing poems, walking long distances, seeing beauty in the imperfection and photographing its shimmer, I was saying “thank you.”

As I continue to walk the uneven and unpredictable terrain of the “eldering landscape” – a phrase I coined at the beginning of this year – I know with growing certainty that I am companioned by others. Friends and family who, further along, offer guidance and point out it waymarkers, and folks yet to cross its inevitable threshold. For this I am thankful, for it can be an arduous and sometimes lonely trek.

In the coming days, duing the great pause between exhaling this year and inhaling a new one, may I remember that infinite possibilities reside in its vast unknown. May I remember my sovereign capacity to shape a kinder, more generous and grateful future. May we all.

“Openness of hand, tenderness of embrace, spaciousness of heart, graciousness of home, blessedness of earth, vastness of sky, for all the spaces that bid me welcome, I give you thanks.”
Jan Richardson

Dear friends, thank you for companioning me here on these pages. I appreciate knowing my words matter.

Much love and kindest regards…

In the Days That Follow

*walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino, May 2022*

In the Days That Follow

Imagine the wrongs made right, the crooked made straight
the middle way the means to hold the center strong
the point to rise again to choose again
to act with love, to be kind.

Invoke the wisdom of ancients, angels, and ancestors
with wild words of song, and prayers whispered
over a cauldron wrought of shadowed griefs
fired by our righteous rage.

Mix equal parts beauty, truth, and justice into
an elixir made in paradox, luminescent in the dark
heaven sent on the more-than-human breath
earth bound on waves of sand and water.

Elemental formula with sacred geometry
to bravely mend and steadfastly restore
our broken hearts, a torn country,
the exhausted planet.

A work in progress, this poem coalesced the day following the US election. Like many around the world, I awoke to the news I’d hoped and prayed would be different. A brief scroll though social media and a friend’s post of an image – no words – of a tear falling down a woman’s cheek said it all.

Last night, I began reading The Dreaming Way: Courting the Wisdom of Dreams (2024), the latest book by Toko-pa Turner. An internationally recognized dreamworker and one with whom I have personally studied, Toko-pa writes, “As our dreams nudge us in step with the larger intent of nature, we grow to see how necessary we are to these troubled times.”

Describing the Dreaming Way as the practice of choosing to live in reciprocity with the inner and outer worlds, she encourages us to regularly shift our attention away from our modern, external life of reason and rationale to take seriously the imaginal world and dreaming. By doing so, we are contributing to the shifting power in the world and enacting a revolution from within.

My poem, sourced from and steeped in the richness of the imaginal world, is a homage to knowing, trusting, and valuing the necessity of walking in both worlds, my long-time way of being. Now, I recommit to paying more and regular attention to my inner life, a takeaway from my most recent long walk, and the boon of living in my eldering landscape. My life and our world depend on it.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Clouds

CLOUDS
All afternoon, Sir,
your ambassadors have been turning
into lakes and rivers.
At first they were just clouds, like any other.
Then they broke open. This is, I suppose,
just one of the common miracles,
a transformation, not a vision,
not an answer, not a proof, but I put it
there, close against my heart, where the need is, and it serves

the purpose. I go on, soaked through, my hair
slicked back;
like corn, or wheat, shining and useful.

Mary Oliver, in Why I Wake Early, 2004

Oh, the clouds.

Walking most of the eighteen days in Italy on la Via Francigena – up and down Tuscan hills, across the wide expanses of freshly tilled farmland, in forests dappled with light or dark and sodden with rain – those heavenly ambassadors companioned us, occasionally letting loose their heavy load. A common miracle turned potentially disastrous, depending on the day, the colour of the weather alert (yellow, orange or red) and location in the country, or continent. (In Morocco last week, rain turned years’ dry lakes and rivers into muddy flows.) We were always safe, with our technical guides, Ambra and then Laura, always checking on their various weather and trail apps.

One day, I accepted the invitation to make the memories that come from braving the elements, and walked with three of my companions the distance to Bolsena- every step in the persistent rain and wind. Twenty-six kilometers from early morning to late afternoon through acres of dying sunflowers, village streets, forest paths, up into the medieval town and then down its treacherously steep and slippery cobblestone to the lakeside town’s more contemporary hotels. Clouds so thick the spectacular views obscured until the next day.

Soaked but warm. No waterproofing enough to withstand the deluge.
Shining and smiling. Proud of our accomplishment.
Memories made.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

memories made in medieval Bolsena, Italy (me in red)
photo credit: Laura Harris

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

– Mary Oliver –

This poem arrived shortly after I had posted Monday’s blog, Love Letters to Life. Its imagery brings to life what I could only hope to have conveyed. That by walking alone along the same river routes for weeks, I began to know and feel my relationship with earth, with life, and its relationship with me. That as I re-remembered this, so, too, was I being remembered, taken in, and held by earth.

A few minutes ago, I wished my friend “buona notte” as we concluded our monthly Zoom call. Held within our mutual love and respect for each other, our conversations always bring gifts – an insight, deeper clarity, more to ponder. Knowing that in a week’s time I’ll be in Italy, feeling its imminent “realness” and growing excitement and curiosity, with her invitation I was able to speak my intention for walking, alone-together with women, currently strangers, but soon to be walking mates.

May we feel remembered by the earth.
May we “sleep as never before,” rising each morning rested, refreshed, and ready for the day’s stage.
May our thoughts “float as light as moths among the branches of perfect trees,” and not weigh heavy as stones in our packs.
May we feel the presence, support, and joy of being with each other, inviting each other and ourselves into “something better.”

This will be my last Friday photo and poem feature until my return in mid-October. I expect to post “love letters” on Facebook if you’d like to follow along. Until then, much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

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