On nights when the news finds a way to slip into the bedroom
and casts shadows on the wall that bury bookshelves into darkness,
I think instead of the people whose hearts burn through their chests 
and envelope the world with a kind fury.
On these nights, when I can not sleep, I look to the sky overflowing with stars,
brighter as they fall and demanding the world to see.
They fizzle against the backdrop of our home, silently,
until the world is awash with rays and drowned out in pink.
These days, I won't look away.

I'll be watching when the moon eclipses the sun;
I'll be watching when the world grows dark and daylight's extinguished;
​I'll be watching when it feels as though the power's gone out.

These moments are deafening.
They reverberate with a weight undeserving of seconds,
with the gravity of a bomb and the fear to match.
To blink is to miss it, for those not looking,
but those who see are swallowed by it.

Until it's over.

Then, just like that, the light returns.
With a fervour that rushes to fill every inch with energy,
sending shadows scurrying for cover and squeezing darkness into corners.
And I can't fathom why I thought the darkness would take us,
why those seconds in time that didn't even allow for the stars to shine seemed to last forever.
why we observed so intensely in the day but not in the night.
But I can't dwell on what was not seen.

Even in the night, with the radio on,
I know good things to be true.
And I have to know that if I choose to be enveloped in emptiness,
eventually I'll see the lights, if I just open my eyes.

I got hit by a car today.

The driver apologized and gave me his card.

​He was a Funeral Assistant.

​

The things that I can not share with you
could crowd a street.

They could line a beach
edges brimming with sand,
and filling up and spilling over.

They could make a trail
of all the places I have been
that you do not care to see.

They could mark my way back
to the places I wish I was.

​And you would never know.

I may be home
​but I'm not all here yet.

As it so often goes, it's when I'm not searching that I uncover something completely unexpected! I was recently in the Maritimes for the very first time, hiking around the Halifax area. My friend and I spotted an owl perched on some rocks by the ocean... a popular spot for gulls, cormorants and ducks, but an unusual spot for an owl! After some internet-help verifying the ID, we confirmed that this is actually a burrowing owl, very far from home! A species-at-risk in most parts of Canada, this little one likely came up on a cruise ship from Florida as they aren't endemic to the maritime region. This was completely a case of "right place, right time" spotting, and I hope that the NS Bird Society will let the people in the area know that there is something very special in their backyward that they should protect!

WHERE: Yukon & Alaska
WHEN: May 20 - 27, 2017
WHY: Girls' road trip!

​

I fall so easily back into these spaces,
the dislodged, unmade bed of a mind half-asleep.
One eye open,
curled lashes,
the drowsy weight of thoughts half-considered and debts unpaid.

Today I am purple and blues,
the change of habitat rendering my arms bruised
and my face shades of indigo.
I couldn't find sleep here, but I chase dreams anyways.
I can't find stability in the sky, or the clouds -
precipitous metaphors; precipitation imminent,
I follow them north until they open with such force 
that I have no choice but to become clean.
All the night there is raindrops,
and the sound of a million tiny heartbeats.
My own is lost in the pulsing,
​but I am louder in my anonymity.

WHERE: Vancouver, British Columbia
WHEN: April 12 - 17, 2017
WHY: Vancouver Indoor Highland Games

And so it begins! 

​

WHERE: Aberdeen, Scotland
WHEN:  February, 2016
WHY: Returning home, albeit briefly.

Looking through some old photos on my computer and feeling nostalgic, not for places necessarily, but the feelings that accompany them. 

WHERE: The Banff Centre
WHEN: March 12 - 14, 2017
WHY: Conference

It's 7 a.m. and I'm physically wired but mentally exhausted. I find reflective practices and continuous conversation with strangers draining, but these feelings subside when I look out the window or find time to myself. I'm supposed to be journaling - and I suppose that I am doing that now - but I'm distracted and disconnected.

Yesterday, I volunteered at a session on "Resilience as a Path to Transformation". As with all sessions at conferences like this, I'm more interested in the facilitation strategies than the content. Delegates were led through a guided visualization exercise that asked them to imagine themselves the way they want to perceived, and finding strength in their values and within themselves.