This Moraine's Terminal

  Mornings in Winter, Afternoons in Spring It’s that time of year again! The contest is on, the struggle is underway, as the rallying strength of the sun seeks to re-assert itself over its lost domain in the North. Darkness has had its day. Gloom and cold have been found not invincible. The great push to counter this seasonal coup is amassing strength, and the march is on, relentlessly on. The earlier dawns, the later settings, and the noonday intensity gives us hope that icy dormancy shall inevitably yield to the demand for a new lease on life. And so we endure the AM chill, the need for heavy clothing still, the bundling up against the elements, as the sharp, star twinkle night gives way to the mounting power of the sun, cresting the barrier peaks every new day. We grab our gloves. We hat our heads. We scrape our windshields. We live our mornings in Winter, but we know our afternoons will be lived in Spring! Yes, by the time lunch rolls around, after we have toiled through the la...

  As Goes the Caribou Frequently the scene of exquisite majesty, on this day, however, solid cloud spans the ranges of the  Athabasca  valley, obscuring the heavens and the heads of its supporting peaks. At the tail end of a long Winter, the filtered and weary light makes a muted blankness of the day, a kind of Creation behind tarps and scaffolding,  “under construction” , touched up for some approaching opening day. For being en-coffined so, the spirit revolts at this slotted reality.   There is something deficient, almost alien, about daylight that refuses to en-color; a dog-eyed world, monotonous in its mono-chromism. And is there not something truncated, incomplete, inscrutable about steeply wooded slopes that refuse to display their rock en-crowned snowy heads, a world of colossal statues all shoulders and torso? There are days when we feel happily at home in the world, and then there are days when we wonder if we have lived too long. Without vision, full-c...

  The Angelic Glacial Backdrop The angelic glacial backdrop to flower-strewn Cavell Meadows. The unprecedented melting of the polar icecap. The bugling cry of this year’s prize bull elk. The carcass of a dead bear beside the highway. The carved walls and frozen waterfalls of the canyons. The cyclone that drowns thousands and leaves many more destitute. The crunch of an Autumn apple, fresh peas from the garden. The quaking earth that rubbles whole cities into dust. The wondrous entrance into the world by a newborn child. The savannah turning into desert, scorching winds, withered trees, yellowed grass, cattle gaunt by boney people. To deify Nature, to claim her as Mother,  naturally  leaves one with the question: “Why is dysfunction written into this most very basic of all relationships: this supposed parentage of Earth over Mankind?” On Mother’s part there is her catastrophic contrariness of nurture and negation, of life and death. A  Caribbean  island can make ...

  Bent Roads and a Vanishing Light  And there is not now upon Earth any place abiding where the   memory of a time without evil is preserved. For…the world was   diminished, for Valinor and Eressa (the dwellings of the gods) were   taken from it into the realm of hidden things…and they longed ever   to  escape from the shadows of their exile and to see in some   fashion  the light that dies not; for the sorrow of the thought of death   had pursued them over the deeps of the sea. Thus it was that great   mariners among them would still search the empty seas…But they   found it not. And those that sailed far came only to new lands, and   found them like to the old lands, and subject to death. And those that   sailed furthest set but a girdle around the Earth and returned weary   at last to the place of their beginning; and they said: ‘All roads are   ...

  The Rough Places Plain “The Rough Places Plain”  Recent history shows that trains derail. Slap a thousand box cars,   coal cars, grain cars, container cars behind a couple of locomotives   and set them down a track and it’s destiny on a timetable, business   as usual, until…    Not long ago we rented out a spare office at 300 Patricia to a   gentleman needing a place to work from. Before we did, we decided   to renovate, the biggest concern being the ancient carpets covering   a  sloping floor. This room is not big. The length is only 9 ft, but in   that  short space the floor drops 3 inches, like a ship caught on a   perpetual swell, never to right itself again. We spent the money to   correct the problem and that former feeling of nausea associated   with  that room seems to have been dealt with. It’s good to be on the   level!  ...