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

Sacred Places Update – Minton Turtle Effigy July 2011

Reid Dickie

I visited Minton Turtle Effigy on July 3, a hot and breezy day in southern Saskatchewan. The dirt road up to the site had about a foot of water at its lowest point so I opted to walk rather than drive. Donning my rubber boots I slogged through the damp spots to the top of the highest hill around. The grass at the effigy site is tall and thick from the year’s abundant moisture, making the effigy difficult to find for first time visitors. But it drew me in and I felt the welcome warmth and compassion I usually experience when I come here. With my new video camera, I took a panorama of the horizon from the site.

Looking southwest from the turtle effigy, this picture shows Big Muddy Lake, usually a dry bed rimmed with white alkali, fluid and blue on the horizon this year.

The Saskatchewan government has recognized the site by erecting three explanation boards for the place.The archies are still trying to figure out what the heck this thing is!

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.

Sacred Places – Castle Butte, SK

Reid Dickie

June 20, 2011

“Enticed back, fulfilling an unspoken responsibility.”

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

This picture shows the butte holding a cloud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DickToolCo Art Page Expanded

The year-by-year history of the art Linda and I created when we first got together now covers seven years. On DTC Art page, you can find our art actions from 1977 until 1983 with plenty of links to the videos we made and other DTC art attractions. Collage, performance, video, audio, fashion, design, public art – DickTool Co used multi-media to probe the world and its all documented. This picture is from June 1985 when Linda and I were married and is a screen shot from a short video of the casual reception. We were happy kids!

Tiger Bear Eagle

For more information on power animals, see FAQ

North American Tribal Proverbs

APACHE PROVERB 

“It makes no difference as to the name of Spirit, since love is the real Spirit of all the world.”

BLACKFOOT PROVERB 

“Those that lie down with dogs get up with fleas.”

 CHEYENNE PROVERB 

“When you lose the rhythm of the drumbeat of Spirit, you are lost from the peace and rhythm of life.”

LAKOTA PROVERB

“There is a hole at the end of the thief’s path.”

OGLALA SIOUX PROVERB 

“Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.”

North American Tribal Proverbs

ANISHINABE PROVERB 

“No one else can represent your conscience.”

BLACKFOOT PROVERB 

“Life is not separate from death. It only looks that way.”

CREE PROVERB 

“Never sit while your seniors stand.”

 FOX PROVERB 

“When you have learned about love, you have learned about Great Spirit.”

 HOPI PROVERB

“The rain falls on the just and the unjust.”

North American Tribal Proverbs

MINQUASS PROVERB

“If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself.”

NAVAJO PROVERB

“There is nothing as eloquent as a rattlesnake’s tail.”

SIOUX PROVERB 

“The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.”

CROW PROVERB 

“One has to face fear or forever run from it.”

HOPI PROVERB

“Work hard, keep the ceremonies, live peaceably and unite your hearts.”

Five North American Tribal Proverbs

MINQUASS PROVERB 

“The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears.”       

NEZ PERCE PROVERB

“Talk to your children while they are eating; what you say will stay even after you are gone.”

PAWNEE PROVERB 

“Death always comes out of season.”

WINNEBAGO PROVERB

“A man must make his own arrows.”

CHEYENNE PROVERB

“Let us all be meat, to nourish one another, that we all may grow.”

Five North American Tribal Proverbs

       One of the intentions of this blog is to share ancient wisdom. I have created a page called Proverbs which stores and updates all the tribal proverbs that arise on this blog. Find them here now.

CHEYENNE PROVERB

“Our first teacher is our own heart.”

INUIT PROVERB 

“Life’s greatest danger lies in the fact that man’s food consists entirely of souls.”

HOPI PROVERB

 “You must live your life from beginning to end; no one else can do it for you.”

IOWA PROVERB 

“The man who freely gives his opinion should be ready to fight fiercely.”

PUEBLO PROVERB 

“Cherish youth but trust old age.”

The Most Complex Crop Circle Ever?

This is the most complex crop circle ever found in a British field. Discovered in June 2008, it is an encoded representation of pi to the tenth significant figure  3.141592654              

Michael Reed, an astrophysicist, said: “The tenth digit has even been correctly rounded up. The little dot near the centre is the decimal point.

“The code is based on 10 angular segments with the radial jumps being the indicator of each segment.

“Starting at the centre and counting the number of one-tenth segments in each section contained by the change in radius clearly shows the values of the first 10 digits in the value of pi.”

Five North American Tribal Proverbs

UTE PROVERB

“God gives us each a song.”

SIOUX PROVERB

“Speak the truth in humility to all people. Only then can you be a true man.”

KIOWA PROVERB

“Walk lightly in the spring; Mother Earth is pregnant.”

PIMA PROVERB

“The smarter a man is the more he needs Great Spiritod to protect him from thinking he knows everything.”

CHEROKEE PROVERB

“Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.”

Five North American Tribal Proverbs

ARAPAHO PROVERB 

“If we wonder often, the gift of knowledge will come.”

ZUNI PROVERB 

“After dark all cats are leopards.”

ASSINIBOINE PROVERB 

“Most of us do not look as handsome to others as we do to ourselves.”

PUEBLO PROVERB 

“Never go to sleep when your meat is on the fire.”

MOHAWK PROVERB 

“Remember that your children are not your own but are lent to you by the Creator.”

Five North American Tribal Proverbs

COMANCHE PROVERB

 “All who have died are equal.”

HOPI PROVERB

“Keep the top of your head open.”

LUMBEE PROVERB

 “Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.”

SENECA PROVERB

“Every fire is the same size when it starts.”

DAKOTA PROVERB

“We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.”

DAD

DAD

 Reid Dickie

My dad, Bruce Dickie, died January 28, 2001, ten years ago today. He was 83. It was his time. I miss him every day.

 

This handsome devil is my dad, taken when he was about 20, strong, farm-fed, athletic. He watches over some of the shaving brushes and razors he would use on that face over the decades. 

            “A man is a man only when he measures himself against something more Universal than the morality of his own time.”

            That acerbic 20-word challenge found its way out of Sam Keen’s mind into a 1991 book called Fire in the Belly, subtitled On Being a Man. Dad and I had several long evening discussions about this very quote, defining the Universal, searching our own lives to find our personal Universals then figuring out how we measured up.

Dad and I decked out in our Sunday best in front of Dickie’s General Store in Hayfield, MB about 1955. He has his cigarette, I have my thumb.

            If I remember it correctly – this was in the mid and late 1990s – we decided on three Universals: love, conflict and spiritual growth. Both of us were incredibly lucky in love. We both found life partners who loved and understood us. Conflict and Dad’s experience during World War 2 overseas were his most significant Universal, the one that shaped and informed everything else in his life, including the other two Universals. My most important Universal is spiritual evolution, personal growth. That’s what directs the flow of my life.

One of my favourite pictures of us. A Polaroid taken by Mom in our kitchen in Shoal Lake on Christmas Day 1981. We are both sporting our new cozy duck flannel shirts. That’s Mom’s writing along the top of the picture. 

            Dad never talked much about his big Universal, about The War. Some uncles never left the battlefield, couldn’t shut up about it, showing tedious souvenirs but not Dad. He couldn’t wait to get home to his little wife and make a little family on the wide Canadian prairies and forget all about it. The horror, the horror would change him, he knew that coming back. He was already having the nightmares on the boat home. But life ensued, distracted him, challenged him anew. He laughed like crazy at Basil Fawlty’s “Don’t mention The War to the German guests” skit. Still, even as an old man, there was a flicker of Hell left behind his eyes, battle scars, indelible.

 In this photo you can see the haunting impressions of  war in Dad’s eyes, taken in Boscombe on England’s south coast in February 1945 after he’d seen action on the battlefield.

            Dad was very curious about shamanism. He was a great listener, patient, quiet, not waiting to talk, really listening, thinking along with me. I’d be explaining away wasting words galore then he’d say something short, concise and perfect. I remember one time about 1998 I was talking in a very animated fashion about something that happened out there in Saskatchewan for me, sharing it deeply and suddenly he said, “Son, you could teach that. Are there people who want to learn this? You could teach anything.” It was one of the most life affirming and prescient things Dad ever said to me. Mom had been the teacher.

The last picture of us together. Taken in his apartment in Morley House in Shoal Lake, 2000

            Turns out there are people who want to learn about shamanism and everything else. Dad knew that someday I would find my audience, that I would “little bit know something” that others need to know. He is still wise, wise beyond his years. That kind of wisdom is Universal. Stand tall, Dad. You know you measured up with flying colours to your Universals, all of them. With your unwavering inspiration, I will keep trying to prove myself against mine. Thank you. I love you Dad.

                                                 “All goes onward and outward

                                                  Nothing collapses

                                                  And to die is different from

                                                  What anyone supposes

                                                  And luckier.”

                                                                        -Walt Whitman