Rural Route Images

Reid Dickie

More images from my summer travels around Manitoba. Click pics to enlarge.

Next to Hwy #16 east of Neepawa 

Coming from the west is the opposite sign

Fungus on dead tree, Riding Mountain National Park

Great running lights on the most macho truck on the road, Portage la Prairie

Old slumping banks of  Souris River, Wawanesa

Long abandoned elevators in Elva

Ancient outhouse on my cousin Vonda’s farm, south of Dauphin

Sign in washroom of Sipiweske Museum, Wawanesa

Muddy boots of seal coating crew, entrance Days Inn, Brandon

Percy Criddle’s telescope in Sipiweske Museum, Wawanesa (much more on this in later post)

Sunset on grid road, near Hayfield

Hebron School

Reid Dickie

Cities weren’t the only place the post-war baby boom occurred. Suddenly the countryside was alive with newborns who needed an education. To remedy that, just outside of Hayfield, MB, a one-room schoolhouse – Hebron School – was reopened which I attended for two and a half years. My account of those days is called Hebron School – 1 Room, 8 Grades, 30 Pupils, 1 Teacher 

I hadn’t been able to find a very good picture of my old school until I was checking out the Manitoba Historical Society website, a regular haunt of mine, and found this great shot of the place. The Classical Revival columns that supported the little portico roof were a sharp contrast to the bucolic scene around – open fields, rolling hills and dry dusty roads. It gave me a warm yet lonesome feeling when I saw this picture of my first school.

Once again I am grateful to Gordon Goldsborough, Webmaster, Journal Editor and Secretary of the MHS, for his diligence and integrity at finding and reporting Manitoba heritage sites. He has tracked down 3600 so far and now we can discover them first on this great map on the MHS website and then out there on the road. Thanks Gord.

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.

My Memories of a Ghost Town

Reid Dickie

Part 2 of 3

HAYFIELD, MANITOBA

This article about Hayfield along with a store picture was supplied to the Souris and Glenwood Municipality history book, published in 2006.

    I may be the last person alive who ever lived in Hayfield, Manitoba.

    My parents (Bruce and Helen Dickie) and I moved from Margaret, Manitoba in 1952 when they purchased the Red and White store in Hayfield. I was three years old. Dad bought grain in Margaret for Pool Elevators after he returned from the war and wanted a new experience.

   Hayfield provides my earliest firm memories. The country general store my parents bought was a huge two-story rectangular building with shed-roof wings, slat siding and Red and White Store emblazoned across the front. We bought the buildings, not the name, from Mrs. Canning after Mr. Canning passed away. Thereafter it became Dickie’s General Store though the white with red trim remained. As you came over the rise traveling west on Hayfield Road, the store, blazing white in the bright sun, stood against a rolling landscape of crop and fallow making it impossible to miss.

Front view of Dickie’s General Store in Hayfield. Note the handpump-style gas bowser. The child in the picture is me.

    The store, which faced east, had a flat roof and façade with a central entrance and sidelights bracketed by two large multi-paned display windows. The sidelights sported large Coca-Cola decals. On the façade a pair of narrow rectangular windows opened into the second floor. The wing on the south housed vehicles, the one on the north a storage area with its own entrance. A windbreak of trees to the north and west of the store helped protect it from inclement weather.

    Don’t mistake Hayfield for a town or even a village. It was mostly just a store. Besides my parents and me, just two others resided in Hayfield: the hired man, Lawrence Murphy who rented a room from us and an older man named Dave Rogers who lived in the only remaining house in Hayfield. More cats and dogs than people lived in Hayfield.

   On the main floor, our store sold groceries, dry goods, house wares and a few farm supplies. A soft drink cooler – the kind with a tank of cold moving water holding drinks like Kik Cola, Wynola, cream soda and a myriad of Stubby flavours – stood next to the front door. Customers came in from the summer heat, opened the large lid of the cooler and either poured over the vast variety of drinks or reached right for their brand, likely Cokes all clustered together. I accumulated a huge bottle cap collection from the sticky catch bin of the cooler.

    At the rear of the store, a post office offered the services of the Royal Mail. Mom was the postmistress and Dad delivered the mail to the local farms. In winter, he drove a horse and cutter, in summer he used a half-ton. The post office was the only place off limits to me, federal property and all – there and Lawrence Murphy’s room upstairs in the corner, personal property and all.

    Oiled wooden planks, likely original to the place, covered the floor of the store. I recall the slightly chemical smell of the crumbly green stuff we put on the floor before we swept it. In front of the store in the parking lot was an Esso gas bowser, the kind with the glass tank overhead into which you hand-pumped with a handle the required number of gallons then gravity pulled it into the tank.

   We lived at the back and above the store. Behind the store were our kitchen, family room and mudroom. A crude summer room led off the kitchen. Our bedrooms were upstairs, my parents in the front corner, Lawrence’s in the opposite back corner, mine along side Mom and Dad’s. These bedrooms all opened into a huge living room with linoleum floor and four wood frame windows across the south side We never had much in the way of furniture up there (our financial situation was modest at best) so I rode my tricycle around and around in the bright airy empty room.

    In one upstairs corner down a short hallway, a dusty storage room housed an enchanting assortment of things from the store’s past. A moveable type printing press, in pieces but with the type open and available to my little fingers sat next to store displays for products that hadn’t been made in decades and a few personal effects of families who lived there before us. I’m not sure why but my parents completely ignored this room and its contents. It became my secret place.

    The mysterious and intriguing thing that turned the storage room into a secret place was not left behind by a person. On the sill of a west window, I found the perfectly preserved skeleton of a mouse, bleached white by the sun. It provided my first exposure to death encountered suddenly in an unexpected place. I remember how the sheer brightness of the tiny bones reached out and grasped my attention, how I would stand and stare at the glowing white structure, arranged like jewelry on the grey wooden ledge, the sun pointing slanty fingers through the slowly moving dust.  My young imagination strained to picture those frail dry bones supporting a tiny body in a soft fur coat, tail sweeping back and forth, warm life pulsing inside. Over the years, I watched these fragile bones turn to a soft white powder.

This promotional item from Dickie’s General Store is a small first aid kit in a plastic box containing an antiseptic solution, cotton absorbent, a spool of tape and basic first aid instructions.

      By the time we arrived in Hayfield, only a short section of the raised grade across the prairie remained to remind you that railway tracks once ran through here. At some point Hayfield had at least one elevator but all that remained of it was a metal grain bin set deep into the ground, its shiny slanted metal sides gaping and open to the sky, a great danger to anything that fell into it. It usually held enough water in the bottom of the hopper to drown a child, a constant worry to my parents. I recall Mom’s frequent warnings not to go near the hopper. It was the most dangerous thing I ever encountered in Hayfield.

   North of the wooden store, two small sheds and a barn, all with gable ends, sat next to a corral. The last building in the row, a big wooden hall, provided me with endless hours of amusement. (This was formerly the Hayfield church.) The hall consisted of a large room with rectangular windows along both sides and an open raised stage at one end. Used for storing lumber, the place was full of planks in piles. I found some old drums left behind by a band that made music there at some previous time. The skins were broken but I can recall standing on the stage all alone banging on the drums with a stick singing at the top of my lungs to my captive audience of old planks.

   Being an only child in a rural setting without nearby children, I became a self-amusing kid, my performances to old lumber an example. I roamed the area with our black lab, Jet. Mom could always tell my whereabouts because she’d see Jet’s black tail above the tall grass or crop and know her son was safe. 

   left: Bruce and Reid at front door of Dickie’s General Store in Hayfield, 1955  below: Mom in front of store 1955

    Cats abounded in Hayfield. I recall one rainy day racing back and forth from barn to house excitedly reporting every new kitten our cat Freckles produced. A few barn cats tried to keep the mouse population under control.

     Southwest of the store, a dilapidated wooden fence encircled a space for an ice rink in winter, another hint of Hayfield’s past. Unused by the time we arrived, Dad would cover a small section of the rink with water, clean off a smooth patch with a rusty old ice scraper and let me skate. I learned to skate on this bumpy ice by pushing a small kitchen chair ahead of me.

     In summer, wild windstorms swept in from the northwest or, more scarily, from the east. Dust devils as big as funnel clouds came swirling across the black summer fallow, lifting cones of dry dust into the heat. The wind would pop out a pane of old glass in the upper floor of the store, sweep through the place looking for egress, punch out a window in the back room downstairs and continue its desperate journey across the prairie. I have jumbled, frightening recollections of the wind and thunder pounding outside while we frantically held pillows to the windows on the storm side of the house. On more than one occasion, the weather became our enemy, vulnerable as we were out there.

    Dickie’s General Store would be the last store in the old building. Newly mobile, people found Brandon nearby, alluring and centralized. Our country store was obsolete. In the fall of 1957, we held an auction sale liquidating the stock. Dad found a job running a Texaco consignee business delivering bulk gas and fuel oil to service stations, farms and homes in and around Shoal Lake, Manitoba out on Highway 16. He moved there first and we followed a month or two later. I don’t know the arrangement but Lawrence Murphy stayed on as caretaker of the Hayfield buildings. He may have run the post office for a few more years after we left. Later Lawrence lived in Souris.

The store and all the remaining buildings in Hayfield came to a sad but useful end in the 1990s when firefighters in training from Brandon and Souris used them for practice. They set the buildings on fire then put them out, set them on fire then put them out, and so on until they were gone. It brought a tear to Dad’s eye when I told him the details of Hayfield’s demise but we agreed the cause was worthy and a fitting finale.

Helen Dickie passed away in 1993, Bruce in 2001. They lie side-by-side in Shoal Lake Cemetery. I make a living as a freelance writer, working out of Winnipeg although since my wife Linda passed away, I am trying to retire. My areas of interest include urban and rural architecture, history, heritage issues, music and spirituality.

My years in Hayfield, ages three to eight, were formative in my life and in the world. Humanity emerged out of the darkness of a great war into a time of sunny optimism when hope invaded our hearts and souls. The future glowed with promise and prosperity. Somehow, that sense of optimism filtered through to our little family and gave us the strength we needed to move and survive in a new town.

Though I consider Shoal Lake my hometown, Hayfield, Hebron School and the Brandon Hills left indelible impressions. That was where the mysteries of life and death revealed themselves to me in obvious and subtle ways, where I learned lessons that are still useful and relevant to me every day. Hayfield is gone but I expect its lessons will last a lifetime.

A bluff of trees in a cow pasture and the grade of the lane suggest Hayfield but its only a suggestion against the big prairie sky.

Hayfield – A Manitoba Ghost Town

Reid Dickie

   

Part 1 of 3

Hayfield History

     Hayfield, Manitoba no longer exists. It’s gone, expunged, vanished. Located 10 miles south of Brandon on Highway #10 and 4 miles west on Hayfield Road, Hayfield sat at the western edge of the Brandon Hills just as the hills begin their final smoothing into farmland. Hayfield was west of the enormous broadcasting tower near the eastern edge of the Rural Municipality of Glenwood.

    An article in a September 1906 issue of the Souris Plaindealer stated, “Hayfield is to be the name of the new town on the Brandon Saskatchewan and Hudson Bay Railway, northwest of Carroll. A. Wilson will be the pioneer merchant of the future city, having decided to establish a branch store this fall.” Despite the best efforts of all the storekeepers and area residents, the City of Hayfield was not to be.

An early picture of Hayfield with the store on left, then barn and church. The railway station is obscured by smoke from the locomotive but the water tower is visible behind the train. The elevator was on the left out of the picture.

   The original store was built on the future site of Hayfield even before the railroad tracks were laid. In 1906, A. Wilson and his sons, Guy and Red, built the two-storey wood frame store. With the arrival of the Great Northern Railroad (the subsequent name of the BS & HB Railway), Hayfield began to grow. The store, which included a post office, did a thriving business.

    Over the years, Hayfield General Store became an important meeting place for the community. With the store open from morning til night, neighbours visited while shopping, discussing issues of the day. Besides groceries, hardware and dry goods, you could have a sundae in its ice cream parlour. My father used to call the men who sometimes gathered at the store in the evenings the Hot Stove League, no doubt due to their vast wisdom and willingness to share it.

    The Great Northern Railroad built a station at Hayfield in 1907. The busiest place in the community after the general store, the railroad station served residents and visitors for 22 years before being relocated to the place known as “The Diamond,” three miles west of Carroll. This was where the Canadian Pacific and Great Northern Railroads’ tracks crossed. Here it was known as Griffin Station and continued to operate until 1933.

   Station agents at Hayfield over the years included Bill Lauterwasser, Mr. Henderson, Glen Carter, Gordon Maxwell, Mr. Lenarz and Bill Oty. Hayfield was one of the water stops for steam locomotives. A water tower was built north of the station and water was piped in from a spring located a mile to the north. GNR built two residences at Hayfield for company section men and their families.

Bustling Hayfield Railway Station in 1908 alive with prim and proper children, ladies in picture hats and gents in bowlers.

     The McCabe Grain Company began construction of their Hayfield elevator in the fall of 1906 but a severe winter delayed completion until the spring of 1907. The company placed railcars on the siding in the fall of 1906 so farmers could deliver their grain but it didn’t move until the following spring.

     The McCabe Grain Company supplied a residence for its Hayfield elevator agents. That house was later moved to Carroll then to east of Log Cabin as a private residence for the Flickwert family. The elevator continued serving the area until the railroad ceased to operate. McCabe closed the elevator in 1935 and tore it down the following year. Some of the material was used to build the Newstead Elevator, which operated until 1982 and was demolished in 1986.

   Some of the agents who ran the McCabe Company elevator in Hayfield were Charles Davidson, Bill Cameron, Bill Rathwell, Bill Porteous, Sweeney Bergeson, Bob Anderson and Curly Law.

    Baptists built Hayfield’s first church in 1910. The building included a baptism immersion tank and all the church furnishings. However, due to lack of Baptists, it became a Union Church in 1912 and served all denominations until 1925. Thereafter, the building became Hayfield Community Hall operated by a board of trustees consisting of Aaron Johnson, W. E. Lawson and William Cameron. The hall was used mainly for whist drives and dances. In 1957, the year the Dickie’s closed the store for good and left Hayfield, the hall building was sold by tender to Russell Cunningham who moved it to his farm.

   In 1929, Hayfield’s new rink opened. Surrounded by an 8-foot fence with a small opening on the east side for spectators, the rink was situated southwest of the store. A small shed accommodated skate changing. For many years, the rink was flooded by water tanked in from a spring north of Hayfield. Ron Sopp witched a well in 1940 just south of the store and thereafter, the well supplied rink water. A gas engine ran a lighting system for night skating and hockey games. Saturdays were a popular skating day. Sometimes hockey players spent the whole afternoon clearing the snow off the rink for a night game. Teams from Kemnay, Brandon, Beresford, Carroll, Roseland, Brandon Hills, Little Souris and Souris played hockey in Hayfield.

    The original builder and owner of Hayfield Store, A. Wilson, sold the business to another man named Wilson – J. B. Wilson who also owned Simmington’s Store in Brandon. J. B. hired Robert Scott to run the store. Scott eventually bought the store and ran it on his own for five years. The next owners were the E. C. Drury family who sold out to yet another Wilson – Mr. & Mrs. Vic Wilson who were proprietors longer than any other owners.

    Vic Wilson had an Imperial Oil dealership and sold International Harvester parts. Vic started the first mail delivery service for the Hayfield district in 1915, developing two routes. Mail was delivered using teams of horses. Wilson constructed a barn just north of the store to house the teams. The first mail carrier was T. Upton who was paid $600 a year for his services, which include four horses. Going the extra mile for customer service, on mail delivery days, area residents could phone the store with their grocery orders and have them delivered with their mail. Vic installed the hand-pumped gas bowser in front of the store.

   Other mail carriers over the decades were Vic Wilson, E. Lawson, W. Turner, Frank Beckett, Donald McCollum, Harold Rogers, Jack Davis, Alf Lovatt, Morley Lovatt, Bob Lovatt, Harold Brown, E. Canning, Wilmot McComb, Bruce Dickie and Lawrence Murphy.

    In the 1940s, the Wilsons sold the Hayfield store to Steve Kowilchuk who sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Ermine Canning in 1946. After Mr. Canning died, his widow sold the store to Bruce and Helen Dickie in 1952. Our family was the last to operate a store in Hayfield. In 1957, we held an auction sale to liquidate the stock and sold the building to Lawrence Murphy who continued to operate the post office and mail routes until January 8, 1968. The store had operated continuously for 51 years.

   Lawrence Murphy sold the property to Alice Magel and her son Mike in 1982. They occupied the place for a few years but by 1991 the building was vacant, its story almost over.

Hayfield as it looked in the early 1990s, just before it disappeared.

    The store and the barn in Hayfield came to a sad but useful end in the 1990s when firefighters-in-training from Brandon and Souris used them for practice. They set the buildings on fire then put them out, set them on fire then put them out and so on until they were gone.

    All that remains of Hayfield today is a small bluff, a little patch of gravel and the elevation for the ¼-mile lane overgrown with grass, all surrounded by fields and pasture. The name remains in Hayfield Road as the sign on Highway #10 states. Once a home to hopes and dreams and a popular oasis for locals and travelers – it existed for almost 90 years – Hayfield has now vanished into memory.

All that’s left to remind you of Hayfield

You can find my boyhood memories of living in Hayfield here and my experience attending a one-room schoolhouse here.

BE HAPPY! Reid’s 2010 Year-End Review

           I begin my year-end review with a picture taken New Year’s Eve 2009, one week after Linda died. Snapped by dear Kenny at his celebration, people who saw the picture thought Leonard Cohen had attended the party.

         Alas, it is I, the horrors of the recent past inscribed on my face, a small attempted smile, sad eyes.  Since Leonard Cohen is 14 years my senior, I guess I got a little behind in my Fountain of Youthersize. I will conclude my year-end review with a picture from New Year’s Eve 2010.

TRAVIS

            When a good person dies, their benevolent energy is released into the world. It hovers nearby, surrounds those the deceased loved and provides angels to ease their grief. Evident angels bring casseroles and pies. More subtle angels appear seemingly by coincidence. You can recognize them because they always turn up in a timely fashion and they always know what to do. Travis was one of Linda’s angels.

            A licensed massage therapist, Travis was recommended to me in early January to iron out the tension and kinks my body had accumulated over the past few months. The moment I saw Travis I knew he was an angel, an Old Soul come to help. That day I received the best massage of my life. He knew what to do, what I needed. The subsequent seven massages he gave me became increasingly healing. While I tried to come to some kind of reckoning with my state of shock after Linda’s death, Travis kneaded and stroked grief out of my body with kindness, compassion and love. His hands found the pain of grieving my body held and gently, with coordinated breathing, released it, leaving me more relaxed than I’d been in months, unbound, at home in my skin again.

             It is a luxury to be understood. Not only did Travis recognize the needs of my body by relieving its tension, he realized my mental condition and offered solace of the most intense kind. Soul to soul, a bond formed between Travis and me that silently acknowledged the pain and the process required to survive it. In that bond, hope took root, was nurtured, grew and helped me immensely with proactively processing my grief for Linda.

Travis. Can you see the light behind his eyes?                    Click any picture to enlarge.

           Travis showed me grief wasn’t new to me. I had grieved for parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and pets in this life and others. Death is necessary. We are all tomorrow’s food. Grief ensues. I knew the territory and I knew the steps. I printed off the 10 steps of grieving, tacked them up at my desk and used the list as a map to figure out how to get through this.

            Travis returned to Vancouver in late March to his family and to pursue his career there. We have kept in touch in many ways. I have a feeling Travis and I will be reunited soon and he will again act as a catalyst to propel me fully into my new life.

THE DISTANCE

      The distance: just over 27,000 kilometres in 6 months from mid-May to mid-November, averaging 150 kms a day all over southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The vehicle: The Mighty Dodge Avenger.

The Mighty Avenger

      I am proud to report that at age 61 I have never owned a car or any motor vehicle in my life. I drive but choose not to. I am independent. This summer I needed to be mobile, to escape this hive and haunt the blue dome that nurtured and inspired me growing up in little Shoal Lake. I needed the elbowroom, the mental room to deal with my grief over Linda’s death, to run the grieving steps in a wide-open space that I knew and that knew me. Enterprise offered me a great deal on a month-to-month rental with plenty of free kilometres. I could not resist and didn’t. The Mighty Avenger arrived in my life. A little sporty, a little daddy, peppy and utterly reliable for the ensuing thousands of kilometres we spent together. We were a team.

   The Mighty Avenger at Pine Cree Park, SK, the farthest west we traveled this summer.   

            At the end of July, Mother Enterprise decided the 2009 Avenger had reached it rentability zenith and was ready to be sold, put out to pasture. Just like me! A lovely irony! I will always cherish and admire how the Mighty Avenger easily contributed to my personal mythology as I created a new life for myself, how every mile it accommodated Linda’s spirit and all the wild spirits we found along the road.

      We’d been comrades in kilometres from Bannock Point Petroforms in the east to The Convent B&B in Val Marie, SK in the west. We’d driven PLP to Wpg during the Once In Fifty Year rainstorm in late May, basked in the heat next to an ancient dancing ground at the top of the highest hill around, maneuvered the blind hills and vales of the Missouri Coteau and the sharp curves of the Canadian Shield with aplomb and dodged most of the gophers we encountered. After traveling 1800 km with me in the Avenger and driving part of the way, my friend Chris can attest that the Avenger is a most amicable driving machine. The Avenger is a mighty sweet ride! Arriving at Enterprise, I turned in my reliable friend, anxious about its replacement.  

The Mighty Avenger and I stopped on a tablerock on the Canadian Shield. 

      Little wheel spin and spin, big wheel turn round and round – it was another Avenger! Same design, same colour but a year younger, fewer kilometres, just a kid really. I would more than double the 14,000 km it had already gone. The myth of the Mighty Avenger lived on as we prowled the prairie hill and dale together.    Our adventures are recounted in most of the 12 Sacred Places reports 

      However, after six months and one week, it was time to say adios for good to the Mighty Avenger. I had extended the rental for three extra months and never regretted a mile of it. Over the summer, I kept all the gas receipts from the Avenger but never totaled them. I waited til just before I gave it back to add them up. Not to say it was hard on gas, it wasn’t but the whopping total made our parting much easier!

      My friends keep asking if I miss the Avenger but I don’t. I enjoy the slower lifestyle, the pace of walking, being patient, it’s familiar. I do miss one thing about it though: hearing the great break in “I’ve Got You under My Skin” by Frank Sinatra, arranged by Nelson Riddle, really loud going 110 kms an hour down a perfect highway aimed at the vanishing point.

ON THE ROAD

CHRIS

      When traveling any path, it is essential to have as many allies as possible in as many different worlds. I am blessed to have my young friend Chris as a spiritual ally. We’ve been friends for 12 years, grown together spiritually, traveled together, aided and abetted each other’s development and personal evolution. We are Old Souls, the ones who find each other in times of need and know what to do.

      If you have followed 12 Sacred Places, you have heard of Chris often enough to make you curious about him. In addition to being an effective and respected therapeutic drummer, imaginative musician, Old Soul and a fine writer, Chris is a deeply spiritual man. He is an embodiment of Universal Love. It shines from his eyes. Time and again when we talk of our lives and our challenges, Chris distills everything to Love for which he is a positive change agent and future attractor. His smile inspires hope.

     Over the years we’d discussed traveling together to the sacred places I told him about. This was our year. Starting solstice sunrise in June (Day 6 of 12 Sacred Places) we spent five blissful days together on the road, traveling through southwestern Manitoba into southern Saskatchewan visiting a dozen ancient places, contacting local spirits and getting grounded. Total kms of shared driving:1867 kms.

      To have an intent then watch for both the intended and unintended to occur is the heart of every sacred journey. Chris and I began our June journey with a simple intent: to humbly visit sacred places seeking grounding and discovery. Although I had driven this path many times, the journey was new to Chris, but being Old Souls, together we cleared the path to our intent. The journey gave both of us the clarity, courage and strength necessary to deal with our life changes.

        Sometimes Chris liked to get out and run along side the Avenger. I always waited for him to catch up when I left him in the dust.

All Mod Cons

       The town of Boissevain, MB in the southwestern part of the province is served by twin water towers, the tallest things in town. Of course, one is hot, the other cold, as you can see.

  BEST HIGHWAY: MB Hwy #68 west of The Narrows 

         Manitoba highways are still superior to Saskatchewan in some areas. The best road was MB Highway #68 west of the Lake Manitoba Narrows. Smooth and easy, no patching and few winter lumps. Infrastructure cash flowed like water this summer with highway construction around every corner of my travels. Brand-new sections of TCH between Portage and Brandon are so smooth they resemble runways and flight feels inevitable.

WORST HIGHWAY:  SK Hwy #18

          The worst is easily SK Highway #18 which I drove three times this summer. Seemingly, I just couldn’t get enough of it. Along the US border west of Estevan the highway dissolves into something the road map calls “thin membrane surface.” It means 100 yards of gravel, 100 yards of broken pavement, 100 yards, of not so bad pavement, back to gravel, no gravel and so on for miles and miles. Some of the most spectacular scenery in Saskatchewan, a dozen ancient holy places, constantly changing landscapes and geology and a broad assortment of rural eccentrics can all be found along Hwy #18 but I still don’t recommend driving it. You can deek in and out of many of these places from much better, more drivable Hwy #13 to the north.

      Curious Cowboy Picture

      On my second visit to Val Marie, SK in August 2001 I met a local woman named Lise Perrault.  Besides collecting original volumes of western writer Will James and offering interesting well off the beaten path tours of the mysterious Frenchman Valley, Lise was a painter with a unique folk art style. Her depictions of the prairie she saw every day and the critters who roamed it brim with simple honesty both in subject and style. Lise is in a personal care home now and her paintings have largely disappeared or been sold by her family.

      Today the Val Marie Museum retains two of Lise Perrault’s most evocative works. Painted in 1982, one is a hilly and treed vista that may have been the lowlands of the Cypress Hills just west of here.

           The other, from 1998, depicts two cowboys shaking hands in the middle of the prairie. Nothing in the picture suggests the men’s motive or meaning, no points of reference. There is amicability between them but mystery as well.

           It made me think of Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx’s well-spun cowboy story. Proulx writes mainly about Wyoming and Wild Westerners, so Val Marie, with its similar landscapes and lifestyles, could well have been a place she visited, saw Lise’s picture and got the notion for Brokeback Mountain. I asked several people in Val Marie if they knew of a visit by Annie Proulx. No one had. I’m probably just adding on here.

 Best Accommodations of the Summer

       I stayed in 30 different hotels, motels and inns over five months this summer, returning to a few of them several times. Quickly I realized there are two completely different business plans going on in hostelry. Most of them rent rooms for people to sleep in. Sounds right, what they do. A few others, the really good ones, sell sleep. They rent rooms too, but they also sell sleep. Big difference. That accounts for the hundred-dollar price gap between the Ramada Inn in Weyburn and Barney’s Motel in Brandon.  

       Ramada in Weyburn is Best Accommodation of the Summer thanks to their $4000 Simmons industrial mattresses that feel like you are being held in the hands of God, stylish and sophisticated décor, pool and hot tub, great continental breakfast, tremendous highway and railway view and a good night’s sleep.

      Also in Weyburn, the Canalta Inn is a runner-up. Next door and related somehow to the Ramada, Canalta Inns, an Alberta company with hotels in the three western provinces, offers almost comparable accommodation including a hot tub and wonderful wet steam room. They, too, are selling sleep.

       Adding charm to the mix, I recommend The Convent Country Inn in Val Marie, SK. An actual convent, saved from demolition at the last minute, is now a serene yet playful bed and breakfast run by wonderful people. I first met Robert and Mette Ducan over ten years ago not long after they had opened their venture. With years of experience behind them, they are expert hoteliers now. Here is a hot tip for recent empty nesters ready to take on a new adventure: The Convent is for sale! The all-in price is reasonable and the location exceptional. This is a Do Not Miss opportunity. Investigate.

The front entrance of The Convent Country Inn. The red brick has a beautiful patina, the renovations retained the serenity of the building and most of the interior design including the chapel. It’s for sale! (The building isn’t tilted, my picture is)

 

Worst Accommodations of the Summer

       A shoo-in, a hands-down winner for Worst Accommodation of the Summer: Miniota Inn, Miniota, MB, a shrinking village at Highways #83 and 24. What makes it a winning loser? Let me count the reasons. Comprised of either six or eight seedy rooms, the joint is just an excuse to have a pub to service the eight local alcoholics all of whom howled late into the evening. The room reeked of cigarette smoke and when I asked the guy at the desk, so to speak, for non-smoking, he said, “Oh, everybody smokes.” Ah, I was in the wrong town.

      Nonetheless, I stayed the stinking night on a flat saggy mattress below a rendering of Michaelangelo’s Creation on black velvet (truly) which was not bolted to the wall yet survived pilfering, that’s how bad it was. Adam appeared to be wearing jockey shorts. I wondered what velvet delights haunted the other rooms of Miniota Inn and shivered.

      Wait! There’s more. Miniota Inn wins again! A double winner! Add in Worst Restaurant Service of the Summer! My evening meal in their restaurant was reasonably easy and edible, breakfast more of a challenge. A hobbling, elderly man, I guessed in his mid 80s, was the morning waiter and cook, again so to speak. Morning clientele consisted exclusively of working and retired guys getting away from the wife and kids early to spend a few minutes of mindless camaraderie with men of similar destiny. The demands of the morning men were simple: coffee, cream, sugar. Luckily, for the waiter coffee is self-serve at the Miniota Inn giving him time to sit and wheeze. When I ordered toast, a completely new order of expectation, confusion and amusement kicked in. I eventually made my own toast when he brought out the toaster for me to use. This is somewhat of a default win for Worst Service since I thought the toast I made was just fine and I smiled when I brought it to my table.

      Wait! Even more? Yes! Miniota Inn is a triple winner! Not only was the inside ambience and décor of my room toxic in so many ways, the view out my window was Worst View Out a Hotel Window of the Summer. Here it is.

 Any guesses?

      Strangely, the lawn surrounding Miniota Inn is actually a miniature golf course. This structure suspends a swinging pole over the hole (Par 3) as its challenge. I shivered imagining the view out other windows here. Nutshell: Miniota Inn – don’t stay there.

          Runners-up: Barney’s Motel, Brandon, MB for the red ants in my room (Day 8 of 12 Sacred Places has the scoop on Barney’s); and Whitewood Inn, Whitewood, SK for dilapidation. The room was rumpled and over medicated. Their hot tub had a foot of what looked liked creamed corn in the bottom of it and nothing else. Their pool was jittery and toxic but alas, their dry sauna worked up a sweet sweat for a travel-weary Joe. Still, don’t stay at either of these joints.

Big Beaver, SK

            Situated SSE of Regina about 10 miles from the Montana border, Big Beaver claims a population of 20 people. At its height in 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, serving the hamlet and area is Aust’s, a classic country general store. Their motto is “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.” Aust’s, one of two businesses in Big Beaver, offers the full gamut of merchandise. Groceries, farm supplies, stationery, clothing, garden supplies and a myriad of merchandise fill three large joined wooden buildings. 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.

             My first of three visits to Big Beaver was in June with Chris. As we pulled up, I commented we would buy something completely unexpected and we did. See us sporting our new Big Beaver t-shirts.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Texaco Sign 

      This sign has a nostalgic meaning for me. My dad was a Texaco consignee (he delivered gas to farms and stations) for 10 years in Shoal Lake, MB. I grew up there and worked with him, even delivering fuel myself when I got my license. Dad wore a Texaco uniform and cap that featured the big red star with the green T emblazoned on the white circular background. The slogan of the day was, “Texaco. You can trust your car to the man who wears the star.” I saw this perfectly restored sign in front of a business on the outskirts of Dauphin, MB with the threatening sky beyond.

Best Music On The Road

Dave Matthews

Big Whisky & the Groo Grux King is Dave’s best music in 5 years.

Tom Waits

Joni

Frank Sinatra

Van Morrison

Martin Sexton

The Hip

Chris Scholl

CELEBRATION OF LIGHT AND LINDA

Leonard Cohen

Classic Country Vols. 1 – 4

CLASSIC COUNTRY

CLASSIC COUNTRY 2

CLASSIC COUNTRY 3

CLASSIC COUNTRY 4

 

Traveling Companions

      No matter who or if anyone sat in the passenger seat, Linda rode with me every mile this summer. We developed a loving contraction, for lack of a better term, where she watched over me, softened my loneliness, understood what I needed to do and believed it would be done.

      Webbed Flight, my spirit helper and guide, traveled most of those miles with me as guardian, less for me than for deer on the road. If I was approaching a deer, Webbed Flight gave subtle but firm notice of it. I dodged three deer that way this year. Sometimes he even predicted roadkill deer. Some of the sacred places resonated deeply for him.

      In addition to Chris, I was blessed to have several other organic beings share the road with me this year. Old friends joined me on some of my jaunts about this summer, like Terry, dear friend from my hometown. Together we explored eastern Manitoba in the Whiteshell and Pinawa area. I have known Terry for 50 years, both of us are mostly retired and we “pick blueberries,” our name for driving around, getting out of the car, exploring and just generally living. Easy company, fine sense of humour and long shared history make Terry a welcome passenger anytime. This is Terry’s picture of a metal sculpture in Pinawa.

 

      My good buddy Mitch comes from Emerson, MB (named for Ralph Waldo Emerson), which I had never visited til this summer when he gave me the guided tour one hot August afternoon. With his great memory for detail, I got the inside scoop on Mitch’s youth in his little town. It felt very similar to my upbringing in a similar environment, familiar, friendly and warm. We visited historic site Fort Dufferin, or the remains of it, just north of Emerson on the banks of the Red River. The site resonated strongly for both of us. Mitch’s diverse background meant he had a story about something along the way nearly every mile. We explored north as well, venturing out to Hecla Island, which was new to both of us. Very enjoyable company with fascinating stories. 

      Another friend from my youth, Susan, met me for lunch several times in Minnedosa, MB this summer. We ventured into Brandon one Sunday for lunch then toured around south of Brandon where I first lived. Sharing comparable life situations, it was terrific to have her company, familiar and easy, comforting and true. 

Working Up an Appetite

Off by itself under a tree in Rounthwaite Cemetery southeast of Brandon I found this simple epitaph.

 KEN WILBER

    No, this isn’t Ken Wilber. It’s a large knot on a tree bending toward the trail around Marsh Lake, an oxbow of the Assiniboine River in Spruce Woods Park, MB . Linda and I discovered this on our first hike there years ago. Pucker your imagination a little and it looks like a face, the North Wind in fact blowing down the trail! I just couldn’t review the year without mentioning Ken Wilber. Done. You can watch Ken stop his brainwaves on my blogroll. You really can. Similar reason to mention: Bill Hicks.

HONOURING LINDA

 

            Honouring and memorializing my beautiful Linda took three significant forms this year, all of them tremendously satisfying and healing for her friends and me.

 The DickTool Kit

             Thirty-five years in the making, nine months in production, The DickTool Kit, a compilation of Super 8 film, video and audio created between 1976 and 1984 by Linda Tooley and Reid Dickie, became reality this year. Linda and I had often talked about putting the old video art we did in our youth onto a DVD and giving it to friends. The actual DickTool Kit turned out to be more comprehensive. The limited edition of 100 Kits wound up consisting of four DVDs, one CD, a 64-page book I wrote describing The Kit’s content and some memorabilia from IF…, our vintage clothing store, all tucked into a metal box. Over six hours of DickToolery!

            Operating both as an archival project and homage to beautiful Linda, The DickTool Kit celebrates us when we first fell in love and how we used the enormous creative energy our union ignited. As it says in the accompanying book, “These are the images we chiseled onto the cave wall and lit with a tiny flickering fire.” How wonderful to be able to share them with our friends and family decades after they were created!

          I first approached Video Pool, the Winnipeg artist-run video production studio, about converting our analog video tapes into digital files on February 3, 2010. Rick Fisher, technical head of Video Pool, was open and very responsive to the idea. My good fortune continued when a young technician named Nicole Shimonek offered to work on the project. Together Nicole and I spent 73 hours in the studio over the next five months viewing, deciding, tweaking and digitizing the DickToolery on the tapes.

            After we created master copies, the DVDs and CD in your Kit were printed and duplicated by Ironstone Technologies who came highly recommended by local musicians and artists. I was not disappointed. Bryan Buchalter and his crew did a fine job.

 The whole kit and kaboodle.  The DickTool Kit and all its components: metal box, book, fours DVDs, one CD, IF…memorabilia

            I had considered various materials and styles as the Kit’s container but it was love at first sight when I saw the windowed metal box at Mayer’s Packaging. Although slightly larger than I needed, the metal box eventually offered a snug fit for the DVDs, CD and book with the addition of the soft foam insert. The metal box gave me the name for the compilation, as it resembled a tool kit. 

            After several months researching through the vast files Linda and I kept about our art endeavours, I wrote the 64-page book in the Kit. The book contains details about all the individual works on the DVDs and overviews of the CD and IF you have to get dressed in the morning, our vintage clothing store. In the envelope at the bottom of your Kit you will find several pieces of memorabilia from IF… which I discovered while researching the book. The introduction to the book gives a feel for the times and the lifestyles we were pursuing.

            I hired June Derksen of Junebug Designs to design the book. She did a great job of retaining the aesthetic of the video works in printed form. Admiral Printing completed the book. All production services and materials for the Kit were purchased in Winnipeg. After gathering all its bits and pieces, I assembled each Kit myself by hand, numbering and signing each one.

           A gift to family and friends, The DickTool Kit cannot be purchased but you can see 22 of the videos from the Kit on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/DickToolCo More videos will be added in January.

The Dust Blows Forward and the Dust Blows Back

             Linda’s favourite place was the Spirit Sands in Sprucewoods Provincial Park. We hiked there dozens of times over the years and discovered our special place at the top of the dunes overlooking the spruce forest below and the prairie beyond – a grand vista. This is where Linda requested her ashes be scattered. She gave me a short list of people she wanted to attend and all but three were able to come.

            It was hot and windy on Sunday, August 22 when we trekked out to Spruce Woods, our convoy of three Winnipeg cars meeting Linda’s cousin from Regina at the site. At the Spirit Sands, I had hired a private horse-drawn covered wagon and driver to carry us all out to the base of the dunes, below our special place. The private wagon left the parking lot of the Spirit Sands at noon and waited for us at the dunes while we did the ceremony.

Covered wagon ride out to the dunes.

            Chris and I had done several recon missions to discover the path of least resistance up the dunes to the site. We found several routes to the top depending on abilities; some of the angles are quite steep. Usually the Sands are 5 to 10 degrees hotter than the lowlands around them. Today it’s 30 degree C with a south wind blowing, the opposite of the prevailing northwesterlies that usually shape the dunes. In spite of that, everyone made it up the dune just fine.

            Our special place has a 360-degree panorama that encompasses three different types of prairie terrain. To the east and below the high dune is a green aspen forest against the rich dark green of the dense spruce. To the south, the forest opens into savannah with the distinct wagon trail disappearing in the distance. Behind us, to the north and west, stretches the desert, red and changing, muscular and soothing. 

            Once at the top of the dune, each of us spoke of Linda, remembering her, letting her go. Each of us spread some of her ashes in a shallow trough in the sand. Fittingly, I added the ashes of our dear old cat Teedy in with Linda’s. The light wind that blows almost constantly across the sand will do the rest. I intend to join them someday. A fine place to spend eternity.

The ever-changing vista. Late autumn view from our special place of the aspens, now bare and white, against the deep green of the spruce.

            My plan offered two possibilities to get back to the trailhead/parking lot. Riding on the covered wagon was a popular option in the heat.  Linda’s cousin, our dear neighbour and I hiked the trail back. It was an enjoyable and familiar walk for me, made special by the company and the occasion. The hike is mainly through mixed forest and savannah with a few moderate climbs and quite enjoyable.

            Our return to Winnipeg featured a stop at the Summer Shack in Carberry, just north of the Spirit Sands. Linda and I feasted on their chicken burgers and chocolate milkshakes after most of our Sands hikes. The traditional was well upheld as we all had some form of chicken. For details on Spirit Sands and Summer Shack, see Day 12 of 12 Sacred Places.

A Celebration of Light and Linda

“From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

            Kenny suggested last January that I have an event honouring Linda. “Rent the Park Theatre,” he said. The idea appealed to me but seemed a daunting and hazy affair in my state of shock. I filed it on my mental priority list for future consideration where it waited until one day in late August while driving out there somewhere when it all came together in my head. Even the name, A Celebration of Light and Linda, came to me though I didn’t know what the light part would be.

            On September 11, I booked the Park Theatre, an innovative conversion from movie theatre to popular multi-purpose venue, for the evening of Tuesday, November 9 for the Celebration, giving me two months to plan it. Suddenly I was an impresario!

             I had the first part of the evening: a screening of Stadium Trash, a 50-minute sampler of DickTool videos from the Kit edited into fast television format and shown on the big screen at the Park. Nicole and I had come up with the new Stadium Trash. The original was half as long, submitted to Video Culture Festival in Toronto in 1983 and was one of three finalists in the General category. What to do for a second half?

            I knew of Wild Fire, a local fire dance troupe, through Chris who does live drumming for their performances at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. He said they had a blacklight show that would work for the event. I connected with Stacy from the troupe, she “got it” and our show was on the road! Wild Fire worked up a completely original 31-minute all-blacklight show to mostly original music by Chris. I never attended their rehearsals. Instead, I tried to be a mystical muse, evoking, believing. My basic direction to Wild Fire was: create a sense of wonder and send them home talking to themselves. No pressure, kids. Using a jungle theme – minimum clothing, maximum body paint – the five-member troupe excelled. I had a show.

 

    Images of Wild Fire’s performance at the Celebration

         Invitations went out to about 140 people, in Winnipeg and elsewhere. It was a hard one to turn down as we had about 110 of our closest friends at the Park for A Celebration of Light and Linda. I greeted each one personally, did a 15 minute monologue on stage (which I secretly enjoyed much too much) and presented an evening of unique entertainment, something wild, retro cool and future primitive all at once.

 Detail of Wild Fire performance (time exposure)      

     My wonderful creative friends came together and made it possible for me to enjoy the event and my guests worry-free. Our friends enjoyed seeing Linda and I as young people, in our late 20s and early 30s, in Stadium Trash. For the Wild Fire performance, loud recorded music accompanied live by Chris and two other drummers throbbed through the Park, the darkness glowed with mystical figures inhabiting an arcane unknowable place where they held us transfixed for half an hour. Now and then during their show, I could hear Linda laughing in my head. She was having a ball, as was everyone else in the room. I know for a fact they did send some people home talking to themselves.

Five old buddies from high school around me at A Celebration of Light and Linda. “First you’re green, then you’re grey.” – Joni Mitchell

            At the Celebration, I reconnected with old friends I hadn’t seen in decades, had my picture taken with no less than FIVE of my high school friends who came to the Celebration, made new friends, young friends who keep me alive and interested and, best of all, Linda was well celebrated. The response afterwards was often astonishing. Here are a few quotes from emails I received.

“Great commemoration of Linda and your creative project.
Dancers were a marvelous addition and reflection on the novelty and creativity of your video art.”

“Thank you for the wonderful party last night. Suddenly I feel 25 years younger!”

“What a fabulous tribute to your wonderful lady and we could
all feel the unique love the two of you shared, through your videos and through your commentating.  We certainly felt her spirit there and you did a wonderful job of arranging that whole scenario at the Park Theatre.”

 “It was a wonderful experience. You could feel the love you had for each other, as you created your life together. I felt so energized by the end of the evening. I found it very inspirational. Linda would have loved it.”

 “Her memory will live forever in the hearts of us ‘peggers and hearing that she loved Winnipeg so much has made me open my eyes to the idea to try and appreciate our city and see it the way Linda may have.”

 “I always knew that Linda and you were quirky.”

            Quirky, indeed! That we were.

Wild Fire dancers and drummers pose with me after the performance. I’m the one in the suit. More photographs from the Celebration  http://www.flickr.com/photos/56088356@N02/sets/72157625302256879/

             The Celebration was an amazing emotional high all evening for me, buoyed by the love and respect of so many friends gathered in one room for one purpose. The high lasted for days. Linda and I had often imagined the party that unites our diverse group of friends and here it was happening around me! Well documented in both still photos and video, the Celebration will soon be distilled into YouTube format. More vintage DickTool videos will be added as well.

         When our videographer for the Celebration took ill, we lucked into Scott Carnegie of MediaCircus.TV who documented the event superbly. Here’s how Scott described the night on his website which includes a testimonial I did for him http://mediacircus.tv/2010/12/a-surprise-night-of-tribute/?utm_source=MediaCircus.TV+List&utm_campaign=4de10bf03f-MediaCircus_TV_Newsletter_November_2010&utm_medium=email

KENNY

              You’ve seen his name pop up here and there in my year-end review. Kenny worked with Linda for 15 years in retail and in the City of Winnipeg Film Office. They were an accomplished and amazing team. Kenny loved Linda beyond how best friends love each other. He loved her like family. It was a beautiful relationship. Loss has made Kenny and I true brothers. We have grieved together, understood and loved each other and always tried to find be happy in the warm afterglow of Linda’s life and love. Kenny is yet another Old Soul in my life. I am so blessed.  

 TAKE TODAY

           Okay. After a year of consciously driving my grief process over Linda’s death and reporting it willfully and honestly here and face to face with many friends, where do I stand in the big picture? Am I floundering at the deep end of the pool or floating blissfully on the the sunny surface?

          A fine friend sent me a quote by Gail Caldwell telling a friend about not knowing what to do or how to do it after the death of her partner. She writes, “He was quiet for a minute, and then he said something of such consolation that I will hear him saying it forever.  ‘You know, Gail,’ he said, ‘We’ve been doing this as a species for a long time.  And it’s almost as if – it’s like the body just knows what to do.’

           We do know what to do. Grief was not new to me, as Travis pointed out and, though intensely personal, I was able to put my grief for Linda into a larger context, follow the 10 steps of grieving and push push push it all summer. Although I have found much acceptance, I have not fully resolved some of the steps but at least I’m aware of them and how they effect me.

        I have never been alone on this journey. Never! I have found enormous clarity and inner strength from the shamanic work I have practised for 16 years, from the spirits I am connected with, from my wonderful extended family (The Four – they know who they are and that I love them all dearly), from old friends and new and all of Linda’s many angels. Thanks to all of you, I am doing well.

         Most of all, my dear Linda watches over me. always near. Her message to me in our many communications this year has always and ever been simple and direct, though sometimes not particularily easy – be happy! Be happy! I try to live that.

         On Boxing Day last year, the day after Linda died, in my journal where I’d written thousands of words about the past two months, all I wrote was that old 1960s nugget: Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Its truth rang loud and clear for me every day this year.

            Be happy!

                  Reid

As promised, Kenny’s picture of me New Year’s Eve 2010