Tag Archives: lake

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Scree dream

In September, I hike with the three friends in the Ragtag Daily Prompt photograph. I have not really backpacked into back country in years. The last time I carried the pack was in Italy with my daughter, a few years ago. She wanted to plan the trip as we went and stay in hostels. We did.

We hike in the first day, up switchbacks from the parking lot at about 3200 feet, to a pass at 5400 feet, over and down to a campsite. The sites for cooking are separate from the sleeping sites and there are serious big metal bear boxes. We are to put everything in them, including the deet and toothpaste and anything that could possibly interest a bear.

We pack day packs the second day and climb back up to the pass. We peel off there to the trail to Sahalie Glacier. After being on oxygen at sea level for a year and a half, I am beyond delighted that I can actually do this. We go up and up and the trail gets worse and worse, until it is rather nasty scree. Two other people coming down say it is even worse, slippery, unstable, if we go on.

So, like sensible people, we stop for lunch. The slope is very steep and we each find a place to perch. Lunch tastes good. Then the other three want to go on. I don’t. I want a nap. They go on, I find a slab and the view from it is the photograph: down, down, down to the lake far below.

They will get me on the way back down.

And I do go to sleep. It’s all that night time call I’ve taken over years and years. I can sleep practically anywhere, including in a noisy casino in the past. I tuck up against the rock and the sun is almost warm.

I wake up. Two other people have come by. My inner clock thinks my people should have come by. Do I wait? Do I stay? There are more ominous clouds building up and this will be much more slick and dangerous if it starts raining. And we are exposed, for lightening.

Then I see a hat, on a curve of trail below me, moving. I swear it’s one of my party. But how did they go by without seeing me or waking me. THEY ARE DITCHING ME ON THE MOUNTAIN. No, that is ridiculous. Hmm. She is not with either of the guys. I debate for a minute, shout and then grab my things and head down.

I catch her. Once they left me, there really was not a clear trail. There were multiple sort of trails. And it was tricky. They separated a bit. She lost track of the other two and then picked the least difficult way down, which seemed to be a trail. It was NOT the trail that went by me, but she didn’t know that.

We found one of the guys below us, waiting. The last came down a bit later. None of them had come on the “right” trail by me. We headed down and stopped to put on rain gear. It rained lots! We were also above the tree line, but also I would say that we were above the marmot line. We saw eight hoary marmots marmoting around on our way down. They did not seem deterred by rain at all.

So that is how I was left in the scree to dream. I would have returned by the time it started raining anyhow, and the trail was good once we got past the scree. Not all the way to the lake in the photograph, the trail ran along a ridge that is not in the picture and wound down near the lake.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: scree.

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Early morning table

Taken at Lake Matinenda in Ontario in August 2012. I love being out in the early morning and watching the sun rise and the color flood over the lake. With tea or coffee. I was up there with my daughter. I would tiptoe out early when she was asleep.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: table.

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More fours

I am at Lake Matinenda, enjoying time alone. I think, well, I should really go spend time with my family, so I get up and go to the cabin. There is no one around, just the remains of breakfast. I eat and then lie on a bunk and read. Again I think, I could spend time with family. I will do the dishes, too. I hope I can do something enjoyable with my family.

I go in the other room and my sister is there, flanked by my cousins, X and Y. My sister raises her eyes to me and I know that I have walked into drama. X and Y are looking at me, as if I am to blame or need to do something. “I guess I had better fill you in,” says my sister. I wish I was not in the room. “Our friend, Ella, got pregnant and had a baby.”

So what? I think. “Who?”

“You remember Ella! She can’t take care of it. You need to take the baby while she is getting well.”

“Ella.” I say. I vaguely remember an Ella. There is a black puppy wandering around the room. Why the hell would anyone add a puppy to this? We are at the lake in Ontario and it’s a monumental pain to try to take an animal across the border.

“The puppy too,” says my sister. My cousins are looking at me expectantly.

I am calm, but I think, no. This is not my baby, I barely remember Ella, and I do not want a puppy. I don’t say anything, just wear my most calm face. My sister cannot read me any more because I now have boundaries. That still feels weird.

Later I am holding the puppy. The others have fallen asleep. I get up to return to my tent. I pat the puppy and let it go in the cabin as I leave. I think it will wake them, but it is not my puppy. I hope they can sleep some.

_________________________

This is another dream of fours. If the people are all parts of me, what do they represent?

My sister represents drama. She draws people in to help her with drama. I have been drawn in but I don’t want to anymore. I will not take the baby or the puppy.

X is an academic and seems to be channeling the absent minded professor. We are trying to sell a piece of land and after a year he tells me he doesn’t know how. He has a PhD. I say, “Didn’t you buy your house?” I wonder if his wife does all the non-PhD related work. Ugh.

Y is a grade school teacher and loves tea and roses and flowers. Sweet sweet sweet on the outside. But this history is of triangulation and believing my sister’s stories about me without ever checking. The dark side.

I leave the cabin to go to my tent. I will not join this drama, not try to talk sense into my sister, not engage with my silly role-playing cousins. And at the same time, I am letting go of the part of myself that likes the drama, that tries to rescue, that is the mix of sweet and dark, that chooses to not know. The cousins and my sister are all aspects of myself, that I am gently letting go. Quietly.

This is a healing dream.

_________________________

Dreams have layers of meaning.

I am still thinking about the puppy.

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Daily Evil: L is for Longing

Is longing evil? I don’t know. Rumi writes that all longing is longing for being reunited with the Beloved and is a form of prayer. I think that is gorgeous.

L is also for Lake. This is a 9 by 12 inch watercolor, dated 1991. I don’t know the title. This is Lake Matinenda in Ontario, north of Michigan. My grandparents bought land there and we went up in the summers year after year. I have not been there since 2018 because of Covid and distance. I do know that stretch of shoreline.

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Keep

The older we get, the more we learn
which bridges to cross, which bridges to burn.

What shall I keep?
And shall I burn that bridge before I cross it
or after?
I did not know that was a bridge
I would burn
And I grieve as a I learn
But the sledgehammers and bombs
loosed by the family
have left a bridge
that is all but falling
Into an abyss.
It is stone and old.
It won’t burn, but it barely holds together.
One heavy rock, thrown in the middle
and it will fall
down down down.
What shall I keep?
What shall I let go?

I wonder what my parents think
and grandparents
and sister.
Do they think at all
or do they let go with death
and let joy overcome them
in reunion with the Beloved.
I hope where they are is joy.
It is ok, loves.
It did not turn out well
but people make their choices.
I can’t rebuild the bridge alone
and on the other side they prepare new IEDs to blow me up
if I attempt to rebuild
or cross.

I keep my children away
from the web of triangulation
and so they are not attached to the land
nor do they play the family games.
I am so glad.
I am still attached to the land
and my dead.
Not the living but the dead.
My sister, my mother, my father
grandparents, uncles, aunt.
All the dead.
Forgive me, but I can’t keep the bridge
going
and I will let the land go.
My children and I will be dead
to those living.
We have family and friends
who are loving and not hating
and not cruel.

I still love my dead
and even though the place reminds me of them,
they are not there.
They are in my heart.
I keep them safe
and let the bridge
and the land
go.

____________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: keep.

My sister is paddling the canoe. I took the photograph, in about 1980.

And here is music:

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Q for quiet

I am blogging A to Z about artists, particularly women artists and mostly about my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway.

Landscapes can be so quiet. This watercolor is of Lake Matinenda, in Ontario, Canada, where my family has summer cabins. They are one room cabins and old and very beloved. I love the rocks at the lake and the reflections in the water. I spend every minute that I can outdoors there. If it is pouring rain or I am cooking, I am in the cabin. I sleep in a tent, because we slept in tents when I was growing up there. I like to feel the earth under the tent and the sound of the water on the rocks and the wind in the trees.

ATOZBLOGGINGCHALLENGE2022 #art #Women artists #Helen Burling Ottaway #ATOZCHALLENGE #Christine Robbins Ottaway #APRILATOZ

For more information about the #AtoZChallenge, check out this link.