Reid’s first novel now available at McNally Robinson

With gratitude and love I dedicate this book to my parents, Helen and Bruce Dickie, whose gifts I used every day of my life, and to Linda, who lit my way.

Available now at McNally Robinson

http://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/9781772800173/reid-dickie/play-the-jukebox

Moments away from puberty, young Jim Crawford begins to discover how his newly effervescent maleness gives fresh meaning and expression to manhood in his family, friendships, community and beyond. Set in a small Canadian prairie town just as the tumultuous social and cultural changes of the 1960s begin, Play the Jukebox is a character-driven story entwining bright wholesome and dark pathological expressions of masculinity. As his own unique gifts reveal themselves, Jim learns the heights and depths to which men will go to defend family and future and how shared experience creates diverse forms of camaraderie between men and women.

Jim’s life revolves around pop music and records. The 45 – the little record with the big hole – is king; radio disc jockeys, record players and jukeboxes spin the seven-inch discs constantly. He discovers intimate links between hit songs and his own development as he travels from town to town changing the records in jukeboxes with Percy Peel, a mystery media mogul who leaves lasting impressions on Jim. As they did for millions of 1960s youth, The Beatles play a defining role as one of Jim’s change agents.

McNally Robinson: If you are coming into one of our stores, we suggest that you confirm that the book you want is in stock by emailing the location nearest you: Grant Park, Saskatoon, or by phoning the location nearest you.

Linda’s Things

Reid Dickie

Today, among Linda’s things, I found this picture she had taken of Teedy, our lovely cat that lived with Linda and me for seventeen years. Clipped to the picture was a little piece of paper with this quote from one of Linda’s favourite authors written on it. “The slow petting of the beloved cat is the increasingly complicated heart speaking with the hand.” – Barry Lopez.

I just needed to share this with you.

Four Docs

Reid Dickie

I’ve been pillaging the Winnipeg library system’s terrific collection of DVDs for recent documentaries and have four to recommend to you. I’m sure you can find some or all of these on the internet.

Gasland by Josh Fox Wanna see a guy light his tap water on fire? Hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as fracking, is a dangerous and earth-killing technique that oil and gas companies all over North America use to release natural gas from shale deposits deep underground. A combination of water, sand and over 900 chemicals under enormous pressure is pumped into the shale, fracturing the rock. Trouble is, without any oversight, the drillers pollute the groundwater of area residents with natural gas and chemicals causing dire consequences. On the Canadian prairies, fracking is used extensively in southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan. It would be interesting to look at the groundwater purity in places like Waskada and Melita, MB and Stoughton, Carlyle and Weyburn, SK today and see what happens to it over the next year or two. Click the pic to watch a preview of Gasland.

Buck by Cindy Meehl Buck Brannaman is an American “horse whisperer” of sorts. Raised by a violently abusive father, Buck bucked the typical imitative lifestyle of the beaten-young and lived the opposite life, one of compassion, love and understanding for people and animals, especially horses. We follow Buck as he travels to various four-day horse-training workshops and we encounter the people and horses he meets and tames using his gentle technique which he teaches to the horse owners. We get to listen to Buck’s country philosophy delivered with humour and true wisdom. As Buck says, “Often, instead of helping people with horse problems, I’m helping horses with people problems.” I was honoured and humbled to spend ninety minutes in the presence of someone as highly evolved as Buck Brannaman and you will be too when you watch it. Click pic to see preview.

Exit Through the Gift Shop by Banksy When Linda and me first got together in 1977 we made all sorts of art including street art. Our outdoor work included putting fancy decorated bras on the “breasts” of fire hydrants, postering neighbourhood telephone poles with paper collages and so on. (You can find out much more about our early art efforts on my DTC Art page.) The spirit of street art has grown since then to the degree that one of the genre’s most shadowy figures, British graffiti artist Banksy, has made an Academy Award nominated documentary on the topic. Banksy tries to give us some direction here but this film twists and turns until you’re not sure who or what it is about. Fascinating glimpses into the lives of Shepard Fairey (OBEY) and Thierry Guetta whose role changes as the film progresses. Overall a statement on art beyond post-modernism demonstrating that the distance between graffiti on a brick wall in an alley and on the wall of a cocktail-muzak art gallery is very short. There is some indication the whole movie was a hoax, a prank by Banksy. Decide for yourself. Click pic for a preview.

Catfish by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost After a discussion on the veracity of the internet, my friend Kenn recommended Catfish to me. Thanks Kenn! Here we find a nice Jewish photographer who starts to buy art ostensibly painted by a little girl over the internet. Soon he meets her older sister, again over the internet. They talk on the phone, exchange pictures, check each other out on Facebook and he starts to fall in love with her. He desperately needs something to believe in but gradually things about her don’t add up so he and his filmmaker friends decide to visit her in Michigan. That’s as far as the trailer takes you and I’m leaving you there too. You’re on your own for the rest of this fast-paced eye-opener. I didn’t have much sympathy for the gullible photographer who seemed incapable of any kind of critical thinking, dumbed down and fully in the sway of Born-Yesterday Syndrome but I was richly entertained by the film. The upshot: Believe nothing you read on the internet, including my reviews, unless you can personally verify it, which in my case you can by seeing the films. Click the pic for trailer.

Four non-docs I recommend: Red State is a departure for that Kevin Smith and the antidote to Clerks. Tyrannosaur is a powerful British film completely peopled with despicables. The first season of British crime drama Luther features the incredible Idris Elba in the scary title role. Pirate Radio is a nostalgic romp that includes one of the best Beatles homage moments ever.

Nothing Virtual About It

Reid Dickie

Six weeks after I had double bypass heart surgery in 2002, I wrote this piece about healing and prayer circles.

Before we got our home desktop, whenever my computer-literate friends would talk about virtual reality, virtual communities, virtual museums, virtual anything, I would smile, nod and appear to know exactly what they meant. I didn’t, of course.

I understood the word ‘virtual’ and the concept they were using it to support but I was not adequate to their meaning of the term. It was the context I was missing. I didn’t have the necessary tool to create the possibility of something/anything being ‘virtual’ in my life. That changed the day I unpacked the computer. Soon I’d be keenly aware of the new meaning of this word ‘virtual’.

It was Valentine’s Day 2002 when I found out I needed double-bypass heart surgery. The stress test, angiogram and nuclear heart scan all pointed to the same conclusion: two of my coronary arteries were almost completely blocked. Surgery was recommended though not urgent since I could function with medication and moderation.

Ten years before, at age forty-two, I’d had a heart attack shoveling snow on another February day. It was my wake-up call! I paid attention. Changing my diet, habits and attitude, and walking twenty miles a week for a year at a rehabilitation-fitness centre saved my life. I had ten good years before my “genetic predisposition” caught up with me. The cousin who minds the family tree mentioned how many of my male predecessors had heart problems and attacks. The surgeon who performed the bypasses commented on how I’d gotten a bit of a raw deal genetically since I was slim, otherwise healthy and “young.”

There is a limit to the amount of responsibility for one’s situation you can attribute to “genetic predisposition.” The guilty food pleasures, the walks I should have taken but didn’t, the negative thoughts and aggression that always work against the heart; this is where my responsibility lay, how I started to jam up my own arteries. And now the consequence, the feedback was making itself known. Heart surgery!

Nothing virtual about it. This was a problem at the level of matter and meat. It was something we could fix, do fix everyday, almost routinely, with modern medical tools and skills. A re-arranging of arteries and veins, the right drugs for the various stages of the procedure and afterwards, the pump to take over from the heart and lungs, the drainage pathways required, the restricted movements to allow proper healing of bone and flesh – all this we are very accomplished at doing.

I had the surgery in mid-June. With at least six weeks of recovery after the operation, some financial planning had to be arranged and I needed to research the surgery and the alternatives. I spent many hours online reading about the heart, bypass surgery – often in full colour graphic detail – and the other resources available.

After weighing the alternatives, Linda and I decided the surgery would be my best option at this stage of life. I was strong and healthy enough to survive it intact, we were confident about the skills of the surgeon and the surgical staff.

One idea I came up with during this time was to create a prayer circle of family and friends online and elsewhere when the day of my operation neared; a ‘virtual’ prayer circle as one of my friends dubbed it.

As resilient and resourceful as the human body is, it necessarily houses a spirit that requires expression in the world and thrives on love exchanged between beings. That was what I wanted to tap into with the prayer circle.

I was on the cardiac surgery waiting list four weeks. On a Friday, I got my date. It would be in one week. Linda and I kept the date to ourselves during the weekend giving us a chance to mull it over and feel more settled about the whole procedure. It weighed heavy on my mind.

When we live more intensely, as in a pre-operative state, life begins to manifest itself in ways that are necessary and appropriate. As we began to inform family and friends about the surgery date, something wonderful happened! When we shared the burden of knowing, an increasing lightness started to grow in both Linda and me. The simple act of sharing the burden relieved the weightiness of the immediate future. With each successive person we informed, anxiety melted away. An unexpected confidence started to build in me, complete certainty that this was the right thing to do.

Two days before surgery I emailed the prayer circle request to about 25 family and friends. It was straightforward with date and time of surgery, approximate hospital recovery time and a simple sincere request:

“Please join together in a circle of love during and after my surgery with your prayers and positive energy. Your loving help means so much to us at this time and will aid in my full and speedy recovery. Thank you for sharing in my healing. Now that you have read this, the healing has already begun!”

Several people emailed me right back with their messages of hope and loving support. The rest I felt in my heart. On surgery eve, I was awash in the positive energies and expressions of love generated by the prayer circle; bliss in full measure took over my being. It was palpable. Linda felt it too. I had invoked the healing interplay between body, mind and spirit and wept at the sheer perfection of its unfolding. I was ready for the repairs!

 There was nothing virtual about it. The reality of love and friendship, expressed with singular intent across many miles from many sources, converged in me. This aura of love carried me through the surgery, the immediate recovery and onto the ward where I spent four days. I basked in the afterglow of this healing intent, aware of how it was fueling my recovery, abetting the natural regenerative abilities of my body and lifting me when I felt some post-operative depression.

This outpouring of loving support manifested in other ways. It helped me sustain a positive attitude during my hospital stay. The people who noticed this immediately were those angels of mercy, the nurses. They’d seen people deal with this same situation in all manner of ways, some more successful than others.  Maybe it was my spiritual preparedness or the intangible support that I brought with me; whatever it was, the nurses and staff recognized something extra was happening.

Looking back on this I now realize what was happening: the ‘virtual’ was being made real in the world. The prayers and loving intent that I asked for ‘virtually’ online became my reality. While the computer tool made the virtual prayer circle possible, it was the spirit and expression of our loving first nature that made it real in the world. I was living those special conditions.

And what was my responsibility? The answer came to me with such brash certainty I could not ignore it. It made perfect sense. The only way I could repay my family and friends for their limitless sharing of love was to recover fully, completely. It would answer their prayers. It was the exchange the special conditions demanded.

In the six weeks after the surgery, my recovery was nothing short of remarkable. My heart, with its new stamina, allowed me the increasing exercise I needed, the flesh and bone healed with little scarring and no infection. An unexpected benefit of the procedure was increased creativity. Suddenly I had all this extra blood flowing to my brain causing fresh new ideas to spew out of me. For a writer that’s almost a miracle! One of the risks of heart bypass surgery is cognitive decline. For the exact opposite to happen is an unexpected bonus.

The fact is, love lives large in the world and, when focused, produces amazing results! The love shared by my family and friends merged with Linda’s unconditional love and devotion resulting in a perfect healing environment for body, mind and spirit. Nothing virtual about it.

Read an earlier post about my heart surgery.

Banks don’t loan you anything

Reid Dickie

Would you like to acquire some dangerous knowledge today? Like to become part of the small but growing number of people who know how banks really work? My friend Chris, who has spent years studying the shadow world of our monetary system, wrote a concise, revealing and thought-provoking piece called Debt Crisis and posted it on his blog today. Please read it! Read it more than once.

http://loveartandfear.com/2011/10/20/debt-crisis/

The Real Work

Reid Dickie

“I recognize that waking up with love, embracing the world and being a source of peace takes work.  This is the real work.” – Chris Scholl

Since my dear friend Chris posted this line on his Love Art & Fear blog, I have thought a great deal about the real work required of us. By Chris’ definition the real work entails meeting each day with a loving heart that compassionately embraces the present world, creating peace within itself and, by example, in the hearts of others.  We have everything we need to do the job; we are spared nothing, but, still, it is not easy work. In fact, it is the most difficult thing we do.

The real work doesn’t make money or get you through to vacation. The real work makes a difference in the world by setting an example that changes people, inspires possibilities and leads others into a positive thoughtful future. The real work requires that every day, moment to moment, we live from our hearts, that we be and do from our hearts, loving until it hurts, à la Ken Wilber.

This loving expression in the world builds Soul, ours and World Soul. Soul-building is not just the purview of Old Souls; it is required of us in every lifetime, a web across eternity. Together we evolve in harmony. Or we don’t. Today, that choice, though undeniable, isn’t obvious to most people. Making that choice more obvious is part of soul-building, part of the real work.

We cannot do this work alone or without tools.  Our tools are forgiveness, compassion and, most of all, love – all useful, all perfect – but often we apply them poorly, without grace or true compassion. If we are lucky we have adequate others in our life to help us be more effective and to teach us to wield our abilities with skill and endurance.

I am incredibly lucky. My soul mate of 33 years continues to teach me daily, sharing her energies and love. Spirit has given me three other Old Souls with whom I actively pursue soul-building according to their needs and gifts, giving me useful purpose and great satisfaction. I have spent this summer traveling, performing personal and world ritual at sacred sites and recording hours of video for a number of current and future projects. Every day this summer I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. High luxury, indeed, for which I am enormously grateful!

My personal soul-building, on hold since late childhood, restarted when I re-encountered Nature as part of shamanism. Nature mysticism is a large part of shamanic practice and I was welcomed back to it by my power animals and spirit helpers. With the guidance of Spirit, my loving life purpose is being fulfilled, my soul evolves and my gratitude for it all is immense. The real work is being done.

Spirit Sands Hike

Reid Dickie

Today’s hike on Spirit Sands was perfect: warm, windy and sunny all day. Spruce Woods Park is going through its fall changes with the tamarack needles turning yellow along the highway and the final blaze of poison ivy as the predominant plant on the forest floor, obvious now in its yellow, red and orange stages. Leaves everywhere are in transition. The south wind today tossed the sand around in its own design.

Equinox Journey

Reid Dickie

The mighty Avenger and I are just back from welcoming in the fall season with an 800 km loop around Manitoba. The weather is way above normal and sunny, perfect days. On Friday morning I headed north out of Winnipeg up Hwy #6 along the east side of Lake Manitoba, Dauphin my destination for the night. The leaves on the trees in the early part of the journey were just beginning to turn but the further north I got the brighter and more spectacular the display became. My first stop was at Percy Moggey’s cabin north of Eriksdale to do a video report. Percy was one of Manitoba’s most notorious boogeymen. My report is coming soon to a blog near you.

I turned onto Hwy #68, one of the better highways in central Manitoba, and headed towards the Lake Manitoba Narrows. High dykes still protect the areas at and around the Narrows. For the first time this year I stopped at the Thunderbird Nest, just a few kms west of the Narrows, wondering if the peninsula it sits on had been flooded. No flooding was apparent, just a wonderful feeling of happiness which struck me as soon as I stepped out of the car and persisted the whole time I was at Thunderbird Nest. The site was peaceful and calming with unrelenting happiness. It was different from Linda’s Be Happy but just as effective. I felt blissful the whole time I was there. When I returned to the car, suddenly I received the story behind the happiness I felt.

I relay it: Not that long ago her family brought Old Mother, an elder on the nearby nation, to the Thunderbird Nest. She was so excited because she hadn’t been back to it since she was a girl and something very important had happened on that visit. Even though her family had to wheel her in her chair across the rough and rocky trail to the place, Old Mother stayed happy and full of laughter the whole time. As we passed a certain tree, she tied a gift to the branch of a tree, something she had made with her old and gnarled fingers. It was a piece of jute string tied around a stone she found with a striped feather floating at the bottom. When we got to the Thunderbird Nest she held her breath and when she let it out, it was full of laughter. The trees echoed her happiness back to her and birds began to call. She prayed and sang, tears of joy flowing from her old but keen eyes.

She told us why this place was special to her. When she was a girl she received her power animal here: it was flicker, a large woodpecker. They still frequent the bur oak forest in the area. She said the bird loudest in the forest was the flicker. We listened and sure enough a large flicker came flying through the trees and landed on a branch above Old Mother. She smiled and sang a little song to the bird. As they wheeled her back down the trail she said she had never felt more peaceful in her life and was ready to die. Three days later she died with a smile on her face. Old Mother was 93. I thanked Great Spirit for bringing me safely to this place and for the happiness message. I have recounted another experience at Thunderbird Nest here.

Though the quality of Hwy 68 deteriorates somewhat on both sides of the Narrows, mostly it’s smooth with wide shoulders, a pleasure. This time of year though it got a little gruesome with the number of dead garter snakes on the road. They are heading to their underground caves below the frost line for the winter, lots of them on the move. This was especially noticeable west of the Thunderbird Nest. Even writing about it makes me a little sickish, driving it was grim. By the time I got to Ste Rose du Lac, the snakes were much less frequent; skunks were the other unluckiest roadkill.

I stayed at the Super 8 in Dauphin (excellent steam room!) and wined and dined with two lovely and attractive women: my cousin Vonda and our delightful friend, Cheryl. A perfect sunset promised another hot day. After a leisurely breakfast at The Bully (Boulevard Hotel) with Vonda, I drove through Riding Mountain National Park. The north face offered a garish array of fall colours from the red and brown understory through to the lush electric yellow of cottonwoods, poplar and birch all broad stroked against the solid stoic evergreens. The south face was a few days less colourful. Best time to drive through RMNP for the fall colours is likely mid to late this week and next week (Sept. 28 to Oct. 8). Not many leaves falling yet but a frost or two will hasten that, along with a few windy days.

Mountain Road (PR 357) always has majestic Manitoba vistas, today dabbed with autumn hues. The view of the lakebed misted with dust and chaff was breathtaking and the chute to the bottom always a thrill. The harvest is proceeding well with fields of late crops now dotted with combines and trucks. I passed through Neepawa, Tim Horton’s in hand, and went south to Carberry where I did some visual heritage recon and gleaned great shots of two old historic sites near Carberry. I will have full reports on both sites but here is a picture of each.

The hike on Spirit Sands today was perfect at 25 degrees C, sunny, slight breeze I wished was a little more frequent once I got to the dunes and the fulfilling effervescence of Spirit that percolates through me. Boots off, feet bare, the sand is hot today, cool an inch below. At our special place I sit and commune, Linda reaffirms a recent message: “I’ve only been gone a minute, Reid.” Her wonderous experience of eternity and her attempt to tell me what it’s like sends me into new realms of bliss. I laugh and roll on the sand. Linda died 21 months ago.

Since it opened for the first time this year in early August I have visited Spruce Woods Park several times. Sinkholes have appeared by the side of the highway, another aftermath of the flood. Some have sunk due to residual river water and have small fish gasping for oxygen swimming in them. Others appear to be more recent and their water has a slight emerald tinge to it not unlike the punchbowl.

On my return to Winnipeg along Hwy 2, I saw several massive flocks of blackbirds, thousands of birds moving as one across the blue sky. It went on for about a mile with birds arising from the trees along the road to join the throng.

Eternal Romance

Reid Dickie

“I was a key that could use a little turning.”

 – Soul Asylum

Water and wind and their eternal romance with rock, etched into the weary flesh of stone, glowing eloquent beaches appear and disappear in a flash. On the prairies, in blissful perfection, their story never stops.  Here we are humbled yet throbbing, ecstatic.

There were moments on the Missouri Coteau this summer under a sky that opens up toward you and away from you at the same time when I could feel the mule deer mating just for the fun of it and prairie dogs chasing dragonflies just for the fun of it and evolution happening just for the fun of it! The eternal romance, The Imperative, echoes of Spirit bounding and rebounding everywhere!

Last Friday evening I sat under ancient silent cottonwoods and watched the red September sun sink below the Trans Canada Highway just north of Carberry, MB. I was staying at the Robin’s Nest Motel and Cafe (for the price, I recommend it). It is dry now and harvest time so the sunset was tempered with a fine yellow haze that lingered on the horizon all day. Swirls of sylphs dreamt above the setting sun. Silhouettes of dog walkers moved against the yellow horizon, crickets chimed the eternal temperature, the motel buzzed and the TCH hummed along. The dust turned the dusk to pink deepening to red, wisps of pale yellow meandered across the haze. The night cooled from near 30 degrees C.

 

Under the friendly cottonwoods I thought of what I had gained over the past two days of travel in southwestern Manitoba: my energy level was very high due to lots of sunshine and discovery, on which I thrive. I was learning, yearning and leaning – everything a man could need!

I was doing what I had yearned to do: to travel, see new things, meet new people, get ideas, feel at home wherever I go, bring Spirit out in myself, set the example, be the change!

The next day I returned to the city but detoured to Beaudry Park just west of Headingley for a couple of hours in the shade. It was a hot, hot day and the trees were alive with voices. In the distance I kept hearing trains. I had wanted to videotape a fast train. I love the noise, horizontal movement and the earth moving up and down with the weight of the speeding train. When I left the park I explored toward the sound. I crossed the Canadian National Railway mainline on a gravel road and shot a video of a fast freight that came by about 20 minutes later heading west. If you don’t have to be anywhere in a hurry and you’d like to watch a long fast freight train go by close up with great sound, click this into your life. Shot Saturday, September 10, 2011 at the CNR mainline crossing south of Beaudry Park on Manitoba PR 424. Train freaks will get a chubby, guaranteed! Watch for the engineer waving.

 

On the prairies in late summer – around now – there is a moment when the heat holds its breath and the cold sneaks in, a glimpse of our inevitable future, making the skin on our brown bodies tighten. Today that moment, the hinge, arrived. The north wind chills us today, reminds us today.

Take a Hike on Spirit Sands

This is the video of my hike on Spirit Sands yesterday.

First Spirit Sands Hike of the Summer

Reid Dickie

Yesterday I found out the access road to the Spirit Sands had been rebuilt and opened so I immediately planned a day trip out. Today was the perfect day! About 21 degrees Celsius, constant breeze and an amazing cloudscape. I arrived about 11:30, two other cars in the parking lot. The trail was warmly familiar and I was relieved and quickened to be back there. The Sentinel gave gracious consent to proceed and I enjoyed every step of the trail. Because of the extra moisture and no one to trample the growth, the dunes are heavily overgrown this summer. Lots of grasses and yellow flowers in bloom, the bearberry fruit are bright red against the waxy green leaves and the juniper berries are turning colour. The vistas are still breath-taking, the sand sensual as ever under bare feet and Spirit abides in every grain. I took plenty of video of my hike and the dunes but for now here is a series of pictures from today’s hike.

The last picture is of trees the Assiniboine River uprooted and slammed against the bridge, now piled next to the highway. The pile is 20 feet high! The park will have plenty of firewood for the next five years.

Spirit Sands Open!

Reid Dickie

Great news!

I just talked with Manitoba Conservation in Carberry and the access road to the trailhead and parking lot for Spirit Sands has been rebuilt and is open as of today. The hiking trails have been checked and are safe and hikable. Highway #5 through the park is now open from Glenboro to Carberry. See you out there!

Quote of the Day

“There comes a time in life when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh, forget the bad, and focus on the good. So love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who don’t. Life is too short to be anything but HAPPY. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.”

Source Unknown

North American Tribal Proverbs

HOPI PROVERB

“All dreams spin out from the same web.”

KIOWA PROVERB

“There is no fear where there is faith.”

LAKOTA PROVERB

“When man moves away from nature his heart becomes hard.”

OGLALA SIOUX PROVERB

“We should be like water, which is lower than all things yet stronger even than the rocks.”

OKLAHOMA PROVERB

“When a man prays one day and steals six, the Great Spirit thunders and the Evil One laughs.”

Linda Tooley – Memorable Manitoban

The Manitoba Historical Society keeps a log of people who make significant contributions to the province and its people called Memorable Manitobans. Recently Linda was added to the list. You can see her page here http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/tooley_l.shtml

I am very touched by this. Thank you to Gordon Goldsborough and the MHS for honouring Linda with this recognition. It is well-deserved. I keep encountering people who tell me beautiful stories about Linda and how she made a difference in their lives. Her gifts live on. Reid

Happy Birthday Linda Tooley

I usually list a number of quotes the birthday honouree said. Today, because it’s my love’s 63rd birthday, there is just one Linda quote I want to share with you. I heard it thousands of times during our decades together. It is, “I love you, Reid.” Love you too my Beauty.

Spruce Woods Provincial Park Flood Update – June 24, 2011

Reid Dickie

There has been little change in the status of Spruce Woods Provincial Park since my last update. Most of the park’s amenities remain closed and inaccessible due to flooding, including Spirit Sands and Punchbowl, Ispuitinaw Trail, Marsh Lake, the lower area of Kiche Manitou Campground, concession stand and canoe campground.

The upper campground and yurts at Kiche Manitou Campground are open and accessible with the parks call centre taking reservations. Access to these campground sites is only via Hwy #2 from the south, but not the Trans Canada Highway. This map shows the detour. By the way, for the third year in a row, there is no entry fee to visit Manitoba’s provincial parks. They are free! Great deal! Camping fees still apply.

There’s not much to do this year at Spruce Woods but a few of the trails are open or partially open. Using Carberry and TCH access from the north, Epinette Creek is partially open, that is to cabin #2 and Juniper Loop but the trail is closed at start of Tamarack Loop. Arriving from the south, the Hogs Back Trail is open, Spring Ridge Trail is partially open with some flooded sections. This trail has been expanded. Warning signs are posted. The Trans Canada Trail east of upper campground is open, equestrian trails are open with some sections flooded and the main equestrian campground is open.

The prognosis for the park reopening is not good. Ominously, the Souris River joins the Assiniboine just upstream from Spruce Woods and, with the volume of water rolling down the Souris today, it is conceivable Highway #5 through the park will remain closed for the summer, and, depending on the extent of damage, possibly for the year. Though the bridge is still holding, there is massive wash-out of the highway on either side.

As one who hikes Spirit Sands at least a dozen times every summer, I’m having hiker withdrawal this year not being able to walk the land. Linda’s beautiful photographs of the sands in this post will have to do for now. The Assiniboine has probably inundated the low-lying Punchbowl but the sands themselves are at a much higher elevation and escape flooding. I’m imagining how pristine and pure the untrodden dunes must be, how delicately the rivulets of water have drawn their paths down the sloping trails and how the log ladders are buried from disuse.

Linda In the Pool

My Fixer-Upper – Nine Years Ago Today

Reid Dickie

Nine years ago today my body was opened and a man held my heart in his hands. Good Dr. Singh, with whom I had established an immediate positive pre-op rapport, sawed my sternum in half, separated my ribs and changed the landscape of my heart. Specifically he performed a double coronary artery bypass graft (CABG or double cabbage) by taking a vein from my lower right leg and connecting it to my heart so blood bypassed a blockage. He did the same thing with an existing artery behind my heart. During this procedure, my heart was stopped, a machine kept me vital while the reconstruction occurred. Then the team wired my sternum back together, closed me up and sent me to ICU where I remained all night until gaining the step-down room in the morning. That first day, one day after the surgery, they had me up and walking even though I was thoroughly attached to various medical devices. Four days later I was released from hospital and into Linda’s amazing care. I couldn’t have survived it without her constant loving presence and compassion.

The surgery was a real fixer-upper for me. I was given a new life! The two grafts remain open and functioning to their maximum as shown by an angiogram in January. On this anniversary I have great gratitude. Thank you Dr. Singh and your skilful hands. Thank you Linda for your sweet bedside manner and thank you to my friends who prayed for me and partook of the prayer circle that held me firmly in warm security.

Another post about my heart surgery is called Nothing Virtual About It.

You can read my account of a dream I had my first night home after the double CABG surgery on my About page.

Be Happy on the TCH

Reid Dickie

Since her death nearly 18 months ago, Linda has communicated one simple and helpful message to me repeatedly: Be Happy! It has come in many forms – from her beautiful gentle voice saying it in my head to suddenly implied by gestures I see in others to full-blown experiences of the spirit world in trance to small bliss currents that happily billow through my consciousness. Whatever the messenger, the message is the same: Be Happy!

Last Friday afternoon, as I was driving down the Trans Canada Highway coming home from my flood tour, I was beset with anxiety about returning to the city hive and its noise and bother. I’d spent the morning sitting in a camp chair about a quarter of a mile up the north side of Riding Mountain, looking out over a forty-mile view that included Dauphin and the Duck Mountains beyond. Idyllic, quiet, peaceful and the opposite of what I was heading into. Just as these thoughts arise, a sporty candy-apple red SUV passes me. You couldn’t miss this vehicle. Its licence plate said, “B Happy.” I chuckled heartily and thanked Baby for reminding me in yet another inventive way. Thank you Linda, my angel.

Reid