Journeys of the Heart, Journeys of the Soul

Reid Dickie

“Do not think you will necessarily be aware
of your own enlightenment.” – Dogen

My new life purpose has been revealed to me with great clarity during my travels this summer. In a few words, one part of my current life purpose is to learn and be hurled into new experiences then to report what happened with honesty, without proselytization. That is what this blog aims to achieve.

Another part is helping other Old Souls find their clarity, their purpose. Spirit has given me three incredible Old Souls whom I am honoured to assist with their life work. All men, of various ages spanning two decades, my “suns” as I have come to call them, bring vast richness, comfort and energy into my life. I thrive on that and I am grateful everyday for their presence in my purpose.

Wind and rain sculpt the soft sandstone of Castle Butte in southern Saskatchewan

Most Old Souls spend much of their life soul building; for some, life is only about soul building. This is another part of my current purpose. The long trips into the Saskatchewan hinterland have given me the stimulus, the space and the solitude necessary to reclaim my humanity, to proceed with my personal evolution in a world dead set on stealing my humanity from me. Since shamanism begins at Nature mysticism and moves outward from there, my time surrounded by raw Nature enchants my soul, quickens my evolution and drives my purpose. I get healed! I get happy!

People I encountered this summer have surprised me with their understanding and  acceptance of my spiritual needs. I think of octogenarian tour guide from Coronach, SK, Tillie Duncan, who told me she meets people all the time who do ritual at these places so “you’re not the only one, Reid.” I was heartened to know that bit of information and humbled by her gracious silence while I did my small rituals.

At Jack’s Cafe in Eastend, SK, over a long breakfast as I scribbled in my journal, I noticed a 30ish local couple across the aisle eying me repeatedly. When they rose to leave, she came over and said to me, “Are you a cop?” I smiled and said I wasn’t. “Well, you got something, some kinda power.” Her husband stood behind her, nodding and smiling strangely. “Do I make you nervous?” I asked. They agreed I didn’t. She sputtered a bit and said, “You make me feel…” She was grasping for the word and surprised herself it was so simple. “You make me feel happy!” We all laughed and I told them it makes me happy to make them happy and to have the best day they’d had in a long time today. I’m sure they did. He kissed her as they were leaving, giving the old town codgers gathered in Jack’s for their morning coffee something else to gossip about.

Weathered farm house built about 1905 in Big Muddy area of southern Saskatchewan

I get enormous satisfaction knowing that I have incited several people to travel to sacred places this summer, to personally explore themselves within the context of ancient aboriginal holy sites. For some, it has been life-changing. I hope to get permission to share a few of their stories with you on my blog.

I plan to keep the mighty Avenger for a few more weeks as I have a long list places to visit and record around Manitoba. Thank you for watching my videos and being my passenger on some of my travels. Many more miles ahead, the curious and the arcane await us. Stay tuned! Be happy!

Best Outdoor Sex EVER – Three Videos from Marsh Lake

Reid Dickie

This is a shot from the summer of 2010 of painted turtles sunning on a fallen log at Marsh Lake. The lake looks much different this year.

Here are three short video reports from my recent travels to Spruce Woods Park.

Flood Damage

 Marsh Lake is an oxbow of the Assiniboine River and offers a pleasant picnic spot and easy hike although the trail is closed since the lake was severely flooded by the river this spring. The first video (2:33) shows the once-verdant picnic area next to Marsh Lake and the grey flood cake that covers it now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWexQo1RT2s&feature=player_profilepage

Red Maple

Red maples are rare in Manitoba, their usual habitat is in the eastern U.S. Several of the trees grow at Marsh Lake in Spruce Woods Park. They appear to be in full bloom but that’s not the case. Watch my short video report (00:37) on what’s going on anyway with those red maples.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF3Rcfy1u2M&feature=player_profilepage

Best Outdoor Sex EVER

I’m always curious what people write in the guest books at various places in my travels. Recently, at Marsh Lake, a couple of couples seemed to have excelled at one of the endless opportunities that our provincial parks offer – great outdoor sex! Watch my short video report (00:42).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvEVFnpAjA4&feature=player_profilepage

Three Days in Eastend – T. Rex Discovery Centre

Reid Dickie

Day One

It’s Day One of my three-day stay in Eastend. The little town of Eastend, SK is located in the eastern foothills of the Cypress Hills, tucked into the wide and beautiful Frenchman River Valley. Eastend has a vast history which they have traced back to the dinosaurs with the local discovery of a T. Rex skeleton back in the 1990s. What sets Eastend apart is how they have developed their extensive and varied history into a blossoming tourist industry. Glacial landscapes, aboriginals and settlers, historic events and recent discoveries have been put into perspective, developed and now bring new interest and tourists to the town despite its out-of-the-way location.

 Actually, Eastend has two very good highways serving it: Hwy #37 from Gull Lake and Hwy #13 from Shaunavon. Eastend is less than a hour off the Trans Canada Highway, south of Gull Lake. I have visited Eastend regularily since the mid-1990s and watched them create an international image. The T. Rex Discovery Centre, an amazing building set right into the valley wall, opened a few years ago and offers state-of-the-art museum technology and methods to demonstrate the significance of the finding of the T. Rex skeleton. It’s a little bit of heaven for dinosaur lovers. To give you an idea how thoroughly Eastend has adopted the T. Rex as its power animal, there is a street leading to the Discovery Centre called T. Rex Drive. Next to the Centre and halfway up the valley wall (location, location, location) a new housing development is underway called T. Rex Heights! Though I didn’t shoot inside the Centre, here is my video report on the building and its spectacular location.

Star Mound School “Learn to labor and to wait”

Reid Dickie

I have written about Star Mound in the Sacred Places series with mention of the old schoolhouse that sits next to the beaver mound. Located in extreme southern Manitoba near Snowflake, Star Mound School opened in 1886 and closed in 1962. Moved six times in its existence, the one-room schoolhouse now rests as an excellent hands-on museum on a historically significant site. The school museum retains the original desks and fixtures, books and pictures. All that is missing is the blackboard. The building is simple wooden rectangular box with steep gable ends. The porch was a later addition. The decorative features of the small flared pediments over the windows and indented frames painted red add charm.

Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and departing leave behind us, footprints in the sands of time.

Let us then be up and doing, with a heart for any fate, still achieving still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait.

In addition to a beaver-shaped burial mound, possibly one of only two in the country, the top of Star Mound offers a spectacular 360-degree view of the prairies. Rolling hills cut with treed breaks flow off to the north, shadows of massive lazy clouds slide across the land, the garish colours of the monoculture glow. Explorer La Verendrye witnessed this vista; artist Paul Kane made sketches from this vantage point. Instead of tractors, half tons and toxic canola yellow, their landscape had buffalo, tipis and tall rippling grass. Had they come in spring, they would have found the sides of Star Mound glorious with crocuses.

Today the site also offers a number of buffalo rub stones, a geodetic survey marker denoting the place’s relationship to the Canada/US border, a small picnic area, constant breezes coming up the hill and a peaceful oasis to commune with Spirit. Step out of the wind and into education as it was a hundred years ago.

Find more stories about Manitoba schools on my Schools page.

The Doll House by Heather Benning

Reid Dickie

The house is gone. Find out why here.

A chilling monument to the decline of the prairie farm stands next to Manitoba Highway #2 just a few miles east of the Saskatchewan border. The 2007 art project by Saskatchewan artist Heather Benning is called The Doll House. Heather took an old abandoned farmhouse, removed the rear wall completely, furnished the place with stuff from the late 1960s when it was last inhabited and covered the open wall with plexiglas – instant doll house! The name is only one of the many ironies the project evokes. The loneliness of prairie pioneer women who could go months without seeing another woman struck me. The location would have been bleak if not desolate although Highway #2 was once a trail. The house is about a hundred years old now and Heather says it will remain an art project until it falls down. Here’s my video report on The Doll House.

I Am Curious Wind Farm

Reid Dickie

I Am Curious Wind Farm is my latest video which combines original DickTool Co audio with recent images of the St. Leon wind farm high atop the Manitoba Escarpment.

Hebron School – 1 Room 8 Grades 30 Pupils 1 Teacher

Reid Dickie

HEBRON SCHOOL

Part 3 of 3

Though I was home schooled early by my teacher mother, my formal education began in Hebron School, a one-room schoolhouse. This sounds like a pioneer situation but it was actually the 1950s. The area south of Brandon had plenty of young farm families at the time. Dad and Mom along with several neighbours with school-aged children petitioned the provincial education department to reopen Hebron School. With the baby boom in full bloom, the province agreed with the local wisdom of using an old one-room school to help educate the population surge. The school reopened in 1955, the year I attended Grade One. Hebron School sat at the intersection of two gravel grid roads, three miles from Hayfield, one west, one south, one west.

Hebron School as recorded in A Study of Public School Buildings in Manitoba (1994) by David Butterfield for the Historic Resources Branch of Manitoba Culture Heritage and Citizenship (as the department was known then)

Between 1903 and 1918, the building of one-room schools flourished all over Manitoba. About 400 new schools were built over that 15-year span bringing the total number of one-rooms in Manitoba to 1,400. Built about 1910, Hebron School was a traditional one-room country schoolhouse, wood frame with a pyramid roof and a low dormer above the front entrance. The doorway sported a small porch with modest Classical Revival stylings in the form of a pediment supported by columns. Almost square with a small cloakroom at the entrance and a little office for the teacher on the west side, the rest was the classroom with blackboards around two sides and a row of large windows facing east. A flagpole flew the Union Jack. The school’s amenities included a small stable out back where you could tie up your pony or mule for the day while you went to school, and a manual pump for water. In the spring and fall, I rode my little two-wheel bicycle to school.

About 30 pupils demanded the attention and wisdom of Miss Bernice McRae, a young local woman fresh out of Normal School. During the school day, Miss McRae moved from the large Grade One row to the much shorter Grade Eight row, giving each her own special attention, their lessons and the direction their attentions needed to go. I learned everyone’s lessons in one year. It was impossible not to, a bright, curious child getting eight years of knowledge at once! It was school immersion. I attended Hebron until the middle of Grade Three.

Every year the School held a Christmas pageant that disrupted the room completely because the stage, built on wooden trestles, took up a third of the classroom. The show consisted of the familiar songs, drills, costumes, the usual Christmas trappings all cute as the dickens when done by little kids, your little kids! I “sang” and “acted” in the nativity play, usually as a shepherd.

Hebron School had a basement, which meant it had a furnace that kept it relatively warm most of the winter. On the coldest days, we lit an extra stove on the classroom.

When Miss MacRae noticed black clouds streaked with lightning building in, she’d herd us all into the cement basement of the building to wait out the storm in safety. I recall the sound of the daily attendance binder she kept as she snapped it shut after taking attendance as we entered the basement. I suppose she brought it to account for her small brood of charges should we be hurled into oblivion or taken to heaven by a twister. 

My Grade One picture from Hebron School 1955

Like Hayfield, Hebron School no longer exists. Sold and moved off the original site in the 1990s, its corner of the world has turned into cropland. Often unused schools became granaries, shops or sheds but I’m not sure of the eventual fate of Hebron School. A stone with a commemorative plaque marks the spot where the school stood.

Though I excelled in terms of the requirements of Miss MacRae and Hebron School, and despite school immersion, in Shoal Lake Grade Three, I was behind. I couldn’t multiple or divide for my level. Before and during Christmas, while I recuperated from an accident, Mom taught me math at the kitchen table. Dad would come home from work and we’d report how the multiplication was going, complete with demonstrations. “Six times nine,” Dad would say and I would spout out the answer. I caught up.

In addition to the plaqued rock, there is one other reminder of Hebron. Hebron Road, a good gravel road, runs off Hwy 2 east of Souris and goes right by the former school site.

 

Find more stories about Manitoba schools on my Schools page.

Big Beaver, Saskatchewan

Reid Dickie

As the sign says, there actually is a place called Big Beaver, Saskatchewan, located on the Missouri Coteau at the western end of the Big Muddy Badlands. The 2006 census said there were 20 people living in Big Beaver, maybe a couple fewer today. In its heyday – the 1920s – Big Beaver boasted 300 people, a six-room schoolhouse and four grain elevators, including, in 1925, the biggest inland grain terminal in the British Empire.

Today Aust’s Store is the hamlet’s only business. A classic country general store – their motto is “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it” – Aust’s offers the full gamut of merchandise. Groceries, farm supplies, stationery, clothing, garden supplies and a myriad of stuff you need fill three large joined wooden boxes. Each room has its own distinctive odour, rich and rural. There is even a “coffee shop” with classic advertising and a few locals who love to jaw with strangers. Have a cool drink, relax and chat in Aust’s. Then have a boo in the Big Beaver Museum and Nature Centre which offers sandstone concretions, native hammers, hatchets and pemmican stones along with a collection of stuffed local critters. They have a very good softbound book with area history that is worth buying at about $14. Big Beaver has a small campground, a rodeo every July and is right in the heart of the Saskatchewan Holyland. This is my video panorama of downtown Big Beaver.

Yosemite’s Frazil Ice

Amazing earth phenomenon that occurs in many American parks each spring – frazil ice!

Along Saskatchewan Roads

Reid Dickie

Visible for miles, this white beacon is, in fact, Weyburn, SK’s original water tower. It stands atop Signal Hill. Learn its history.

A couple of shots of Chapel Grove Cemetery just north of Minton, SK along Hwy #6.

By consulting the weather rock, they know what the weather is like at the Country Boy Motel in Coronach, SK. The motel’s website is completely appropriate, including the flubbed slogan “Your Home from Home”! Another weird motel sleep.

Corner Gas Today

Reid Dickie

Recently some friends and I were wondering what happened to the set of the popular CTV comedy Corner Gas, situated out in Rouleau, SK southwest of Regina. In my travels this week I passed the old set and took a few pictures. A little rundown but there is a sign which commemorates the place.

The elevator across Highway #39 still says Dog River.

The Halfway Trees

Reid Dickie

Regular, intercity travelers along the Trans Canada Highway between Brandon and Winnipeg will be familiar with the halfway trees, trees that local lore says mark the midpoint between the two cities.  

The halfway tree on the north side of the highway is about 14 kms west of Portage la Prairie, right next to the road and protected by a steel guard rail.

 This tree is a 40-foot common willow and is the last survivor of a willow planting next to a drainage swale. Twinning the TCH caused the other willows to be removed but this, the largest one, was spared. This tree is a Manitoba Heritage Tree and is listed prominently in Heritage Trees of Manitoba, a publication of the Manitoba Forestry Association.

The other halfway tree, situated about 23 kms west of Portage on the south side of the TCH, is a gigantic, old cottonwood. This is the tree most recognized as halfway despite  lacking heritage status. I have often seen the lower reaches of this tree decorated with an occasional Christmas ornament, ribbons, shoes and assorted stuff. It has been the scene of various life-changing events over its 100 year history including at least one marriage proposal.

So we have two trees nine kms apart that both claim to be halfway between Winnipeg and Brandon. Fact is, neither tree is exactly halfway but, by actual miles, the cottonwood is closer to claiming that title than the willow. I suspect building the Portage bypass and twinning the TCH changed the mileage between the two cities, thus neither tree is pivotal. The cottonwood certainly merits heritage status and the Manitoba Forestry Association is taking nominations now to update the protected tree list. See their website for details on the process.

This moody photograph of the cottonwood at night was taken by Brandon photographer and videographer Derek Gunnlaugson. Thanks, Derek. Check out his website, Dex. 

How To Measure the Height of a Tree

Have someone stand next to the tree. (It doesn’t have to be a person but should be something of a specific height.) Holding a ruler vertically, walk backwards from the tree until the person is one inch tall on the ruler. Note where the top of the tree is on the ruler. Take that number and multiple it by the height of the person (or object) next to tree and you have the tree’s height. Easy!

Sacred Places – Castle Butte, SK

Reid Dickie

June 20, 2011

“Enticed back, fulfilling an unspoken responsibility.”

I wrote about Castle Butte in a post called Local Knowledge. Castle Butte, a quarter of a mile around and over 200 feet high, is a huge, ever-eroding sandstone monolith that stands like a sentinel over the vast distance of the Big Muddy Valley in southern Saskatchewan, a prominent landmark for millennia. Many times, I’ve stood next to Castle Butte and gazed down the miles-wide valley, its stratified walls burnished by afternoon sun. Since the valley has filled up over the past 8,000 years, I imagine it five times deeper, engorged with torrents of cold glacial runaway meltwater, carving a new language in a system of channels across the land, its syllables the unstoppable will of gravity driving fresh water toward a warm and welcoming sea. The same water chiseled Castle Butte’s precious shape.

This picture shows the butte holding a cloud.

This year, like last, I visited Castle Butte with my friend and spiritual ally Chris. Just like the returnees I write about in Local Knowledge, we were drawn back. Our detour due to flooding allowed the chance to visit the butte. We were eager to return and happy the gravel road through the valley was easily passable. My experience with Chris defies the reports in Local knowledge since we were alone both times we stopped there. This year, the butte’s sparse greenery is lush from the rains, as you can see in my pictures. When it rains heavy, the butte looks like a fountain.

These four pictures show the streams of erosion on one small face of the butte.

This picture shows one of several pinnacles that Castle Butte sports.

A hoodoo, sculpted by the elements, at Castle Butte.

This is the view across the Big Muddy Valley from Castle Butte.

Castle Butte stands as mute witness to its wild, watery genesis but a full participant in its saga of erosion and change. The wind and water still etch their calligraphy into its soft, willing sandstone, the people still return and all the while, Spirit aids and abets our needs. Majestic and mysterious, Castle Butte waits.

Summer Mobility

Reid Dickie

On the road again!

I picked up the summer car from Enterprise Car Rental on Monday and the tradition of the Mighty Avenger continues. Last summer I rented Avengers from ECR and drove 27,000 kms between the two of them. This year, due to the fine efforts of manager Brayden, I have the new generation of Avengers to accompany me – a 2011 SXT in a ghostly silver colour with less than 6000 kms on it, just a baby really. We’ll be getting to know each other well over the next few months.

My wanderlust isn’t as powerful or compelling as it was last summer. I am well into the acceptance phase of my grief for Linda. I feel incrementally more peaceful everyday, more comfortable with my new life. I’m not sure exactly what adventures the Mighty Avenger and I will have this summer. A few sacred places are beckoning me back.

I do know my first road trip will be this Friday to attend the funeral of a well-respected friend from Shoal Lake, Joe Fikkert. I grew up with his sons, worked in his bakery and always enjoyed the company of this jovial intelligent man and his lovely and talented wife, Joan. I proudly own one of Joan’s wonderful paintings. Without stint, Joe served his community long and well and will be missed by many. So long Joe, it was great to know you.

Be assured that wherever my travels take me, I will always return here, to ReadReidRead to report what happened.

On the way out and back on Friday, I’ll cover some of the flooded areas so will have pictures and first-hand information here upon my return.

The Arches of Russell

         A drive down Main Street in Russell, MB comes with a real visual treat. The story goes that these wooden arches were rescued from Dauphin when they were tearing down the old arena. Just 7 days away from becoming land fill, a senior Dauphin resident brought forward a photograph of the then-new wooden arches arriving by train. In the picture a clear stamp indicated the 32 ply nailed wooden laminate arches came from a former Russell business, the Glu-Rite Rafters Company, owned by Carl Mantie. It is now believed that this is a homecoming for the massive structures. The arches truly are both historical evidence of superior craftsmanship and modern engineering genius. That’s mostly what the town’s website says.           Serendipitous, inventive and a fine recycling of history – huzzah to Russell!

Marsh Lake

         This idyllic place is at Marsh Lake in Spruce Woods Provincial Park. The lake is actually an oxbow of the Assiniboine River. Horseshoe-shaped, it was created when erosion changed the river’s course, isolating a bend in the river. The water is fresh and abundant with life. Painted turtles catch some rays on fallen logs, deer, raccoon, rabbits, coyotes and the occasional elk call it home. I have seen cormorants, pelicans, swans, cranes, geese and ducks on the water. Around the water’s edge there is a self-guiding hike through the forest that’s one leisurely kilometer long. At the apex of the hike, there is a tiny island accessible by a floating walkway. The island’s park bench offers a grand view of the red sands, green spruce and blue water.  Adjacent to Highway #5, Marsh Lake has picnic facilities, primitive restrooms and huge mature cottonwoods that sing the happiest songs on hot summer days. Linda and I stopped here many times, to hike, sit by the water, be free.

                                                            

Top: the blue waters of Marsh Lake. Hwy #5 along the left.

 Centre: painted turtles sunning themselves on a log.

 Bottom: the view from bench on the island at the tip of the oxbow.

SK Roadside Attraction

        In the summer of 1990 Linda and I went for a long drive hitting thrift and secondhand stores all over Manitoba and Saskatchewan. On the Trans-Canada Highway east of Regina in Whitewood, we stopped at Old Geo`s, an antique store in a beautiful old two-storey buff brick house. Outside the store, there was this display of the bleached bones of buffalo and cattle collected from the Saskatchewan plains over the past century. It was a striking sight! I`d be interested to know if, 20 years later, the bones remain on the same site. Anybody know that?

SK Roadside Attraction

STATIONS OF THE CROSS, LEBRET, SK

       Linda and I loved the Qu’Appelle Valley in southern Saskatchewan. We often stayed in Fort Qu’Appelle, hiked some trails in the valley and enjoyed the amazing vistas. Along Highway 56, the little village of Lebret rests on the north side of the valley, picturesque, quaint and dominated by an old stone church. Up the valley wall the Stations of the Cross have been marked. Pilgrims can walk the walk, marking each station.