Sunrise Meditations

Sunrise is my favourite time of day. After a good night’s sleep, alone on the patio where we are staying, facing east, listening to the chorus of birds and watching a squirrel perform a tight rope act along the electrical wire running from a pole in the neighbour's yard to the house. It is possible to set the whole tone for the day sitting quietly with a cup of steaming coffee.

Utah’s Mt. Olympus rises in the background behind the uneven V shaped space between two homes next door, turning, for a short time, light pink just before the sun breaks above the horizon to the north. The few conifers covering its limestone face appear almost black when the light hits them at this early summer angle.

I’ve gone back to meditating every morning, and when the mood matches the sites and sounds of dawn, it is possible to realize completely the oneness of nature. Even the slowly increasing sounds of city traffic as people travel to work in steadily growing numbers isn’t disturbing. They too are part of nature, and are no more separate from me than the squirrel, which momentarily has stopped along the high wire as if caught up in a meditation of its own.

If only every morning started this way, I think, I could handle anything. But the next morning is different. No, the morning is the same. My frame of mind is different; stress, a less than good night’s sleep, trying too hard to deal with expectations – my own and other’s that I have allowed to get to me. It’s gone now. Awakening is a process, not an event. Keep at it. There will be other mornings like it again because they’re all like it, if we take the time to see.

Memo to self: Life is a journey and Canada is a destination

Friends and family will tell you I’m fond of the expression “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.” If the past two or three weeks have taught me anything, it is that I had forgotten, or perhaps never really understood in the first place, what that expression really means. Canada had become a destination I was focused on, and too many lessons the journey had to offer were ignored or overlooked.

We left Vancouver Island with relatively few resources. Economic circumstances and the expenses of our first year there had bled us dry. After applying for more than 40 summer jobs through the university, I submitted my application for an off campus work permit and we hit the road. I was as much or more determined to remain in Canada as long as possible in hopes things would turn around before we had to leave as I was to witness some of the endless beauty Canada provides and learn from experiences along the way. The possibility of needing to return to the states for a while to try to find work and save up a little money for the coming year was in the back of my mind, but I didn't want to acknowledge it directly because the goal was CANADA, and the journey was secondary. Leaving Canada meant defeat.

As a result, I began experiencing anxiety attacks as the reality we would soon be crossing the border back into the United States couldn’t be avoided any longer, and by the time our car finally seriously broke down in Brigham City, Utah, firing on only three of its four cylinders as we rolled to a stop at one of the city’s main intersections, I experienced a breakdown of my own unlike anything I’ve experienced before. If it hadn’t been for my wife, family, two good friends, and the fact Zeus wouldn’t know how to stop loving me if his life depended on it, I may not be here writing this today.

When you truly hit rock bottom, you’ve really got only two choices: adjust your attitude or give in to self-pity and quit. Fortunately for me, those just mentioned above were quite insistent I choose the former. As a result, over the past several days I have been reflecting more and more on what it really means to let go.

I read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” for the first time when I was about 18, and have had an intellectual grasp of the basic teachings of both Buddhism and Taoism for years. But a basic intellectual awareness does not necessarily translate into an understanding. It was one thing to be able to wrap my mind around the concept that the key to inner peace was letting go of my expectations of others and of how life in general should go, but quite another to really know peace will be elusive until I do. Anger, resentment, a sense of moral superiority and false pride, just to name a few, are all the fruits of making my life about the destination and not the journey. I had allowed the goals I was striving for to become the goals I was living for.

I have a long ways to go yet. A nervous breakdown followed by a few days of significant reflection and rereading of Robert Pirsig’s timeless book on motorcycle (i.e. personal) maintenance is only the beginning of a new journey, one that hopefully will continue for the remainder of my life. But I’ve begun opening each day reminding myself to give my plans over to the care of the universe. Shit happens. Cars breakdown, money runs out, the best-laid plans encounter detours, or sometimes don’t work out at all. And all that is to say nothing of the fact that, being human, sometimes we just fuck up. While at the moment I know these are no reason to stop travelling altogether, I’ve also learned I need to constantly remind myself it’s no reason to stop travelling altogether or risk forgetting it. I had my doubts, but my existential GPS was really working all along after all. I’m exactly where I should be.

Niagara Falls: the final stop in Canada…for now

It’s been a few days since we posted about our travels because, well, we’ve been on the road and we’re no longer in Canada. I’ll explain more about that later. Our final stop before leaving our adopted home for a while was Niagara Falls, a place neither of us had visited in at least 25-30 years.

The power of waterfalls is always impressive. What Niagara lacks in total height compared with even many much smaller waterfalls, such as the one we witnessed pouring off the mountain near our campsite at Anderson Beach in BC, it more than makes up for in sheer volume and width. Looking at the bolder strewn base of both American and Horseshoe Falls, I was reminded of something I’d seen on television once regarding the steady retreat of Niagara Falls at a rate of about 3 feet a year up the gorge toward Lake Erie. As I recall, one of the scientists on the program indicated that around 7,000 years ago Niagara Falls was more than a mile downstream from its current location.

Zeus was one of only three dogs we saw mingling with the human crowd gathered taking pictures, eating ice cream or a hotdog, just watching the water plunge over the lip of the falls, or staring into the sky at the column of spray they produced. He could smell the water well before we had reached the walk above the river, and on several occasions he hopped up onto his hind legs setting is front paws on the stone wall along the sidewalk while trying desperately to gaze over it to the water he knew was below.

As with most black labs, Zeus’ behaviour around water is one of the things truly defining his personality. We humans like to give lip service to moderation, but like every other animal, we all have things we just can’t say ‘no’ to. Whether its bungee jumping, ice cream, cigarettes, candy, or sex – the list is endless – we all have something that, when given the opportunity, obliterates our will power like so much dynamite against the door of a bank safe. No amount of intellectual or emotional security, no matter how carefully built up and maintained over the years, can protect us in those instances. With Zeus, it’s water. Throw a ball into the river a few metres above the edge of Niagara and he would be gone, though he would have died a happy dog.

Our intent after Niagara was to find a campground and spend a day or two on the northern shores of Lake Erie. Our resources were nearly exhausted, and we knew our trip across Canada was coming to a close, but neither of us was quite ready to leave yet. We were also talking about looking up Craig and Mistee, the couple we had meant in Kingston, and see if we could take them up on their offer to spend a day or so with them at their home in London, Ontario. Whatever we decided to do, what we actually did was absolutely not on the list of ideas under consideration.

I had become a bit lost driving around Niagara, and was more than a little tired to begin with. While trying to find the route that would take us along the shores of Lake Erie, we found ourselves getting closer and closer to the US border. Suddenly a sign over the highway appeared reading “Final highway in Canada next exit”, but the first exit just beyond the sign was for the duty free store on the border. Once you’ve entered the duty free area, you’re crossing into the US whether you want to or not. Our time in Canada was up for now. The only thing that could have made our mood even worse was a search of our car, loaded to the hilt as it was with camping supplies, clothing, and food. We feared taking such a load into the US and being so far from home might be seen as a bit suspect. Between the BC plates, the Canadian and BC flags on our dashboard, and the American Passports, the customs officer seemed a wee bit confused about the actual status of our citizenship and asked us which country we were actually citizens of. But he let us through after we listed all the items we could think of stuffed in the bag on our roof or taking up our backseat and told him our passports and his computer were both correct, we were indeed US citizens, all the cognitive dissonance we were producing not withstanding.

Now we’re back in Salt Lake. We’re both staying with friends and looking for a little temporary work that will help us survive another school year in Canada. If you live in the Salt Lake City area and have anything that needs doing, we’re available. In the meantime, we’ll keep blogging now and again as something comes to mind to write about. Hey, it’s good therapy whether people read it or not. Thanks to all of you for following us on our all too brief journey across Canada. We’re still hoping to make it to the maritime provinces someday, and Churchill’s polar bears are a must see before they’re gone for good, so we hope there is much more to come in the months and years ahead.

Kingston, Ontario; friendships new and old

This post won’t be about a place so much as it will be about a turning point, or what feels like one at any rate. So much of what has happened here is deeply personal that it is difficult not to give in to the temptation to speculate how we will feel about our time in Kingston in the future.

In addition to the opportunity for me, at least, to reconnect with a friend, we continued our pattern of finding new and interesting people. Upon my return from Algonquin Provincial Park, Chris and I met Craig and Mistee, a couple who had moved in to the motel room next to ours for a day or two while taking a break from a long motorcycle trip through Ontario. We ended up spending a couple of days camping with them at the Loughborough Lake Campground just north of town.

There we spent a couple of late nights together talking, laughing (a lot), and generally having a great time. While we were the only ones in the tent section of the campground, we remain somewhat surprised those staying in trailers just below our adjoining campsites didn’t file a complaint regarding the noise on Monday night.

Zeus took to Craig and Mistee almost at once, even flirting at one point with the idea of going into their tent with Mistee. When Zeus takes to someone that way, it’s impossible not to conclude they are good people. We exchanged email addresses before parting, and though we’ve only known them for a few days, the opportunity to spend some time with them will likely be our fondest memory of our time here.

In all likelihood, we’ll never see again most of the people we’ve met so far, or those we have yet to meet on this journey, though Craig and Mistee have invited us to their home in London, Ontario. While this blog is something we willingly share with family, friends, or anyone who just happens to stumble across it on the web, it really is primarily a record of our experiences Chris and I can look back on in the future. Still, those we’ve encountered who took the time to help us out, offer some hospitality, or spend some time with us have us thinking a lot about being open to new friends, and the power and nature of relationships with others generally.

Encounters that cause us to try something new, develop into meaningful conversations, or see things from a new perspective can have a powerful effect, even if those involved never communicate again. When we allow prejudice or fear to filter people out until only those with a similar comfort zone remain, or define the terms of friendship narrowly, we shut the door on opportunities for growth and transformation. Everyone we meet, even if only briefly, changes our lives somehow, and you never know when that change may turn out to be huge.

But when we judge, insist people and relationships fit neatly into certain categories, and over analyze we limit our perspective and inhibit the potential for powerful relationships or experiences to emerge. At least at first blush, that’s what we’ve learned from our time in Kingston. This may seem a strange post for a travel blog, but then anyone can learn about the local points of interest simply by searching Google or buying a travel guide, and journeys should be about much more than just the scenery and tourist attractions.