Come Down To Earth

A meditation with memory and landscape.

It’s 6am in December. 

In my mind, I zoom out to see myself sitting on a couch under a blanket, with the little woolen and wooden lamp my younger son made last year glowing behind me.My cat and dog breathing quietly near me. Everyone else is sleeping. Twinkle lights in the window. 

The glare on my glasses from this laptop screen.

Floating higher into the dark, I can see our house, a faint glow amongst many others in this 1970s neighbourhood. 

Next to the house is a strand of thick yarn, plied with the bare branches of riparian cottonwood, willows and invasive bird cherry trees. 

The wooly yarn winds around our snowy suburbia, showing the shape of the creek bed as it twines between houses, under roads, thru the woods, away to the man-made lake in the distance.

From up here I can point to where the creek was straightened during the development of the neighbourhoods and city streets. You might notice how parts disappear as the creek goes underground, under the lighted intersection and beneath the strip mall parking lots. 

Follow it further, and you might be able to see it reappear, laced with others, traveling towards us from the northeast, flowing from the mountains. 

Higher still, far away and up into the heavily clouded sky, we see the shape of urban Anchorage stitched together with streetlights in tones of sodium and mercury vapor, shades of incandescence, fluorescence and LEDs. 

Blink it all away. 

Leave only the soft black of trees and trace the shorelines of the snow covered lakes. Breathe. Remember.

Remember where you are. 

When people are displaced, they are displaced from materials, foods, seasonal change, landmarks, and more. Even if this modern migration is by choice, this affects a person’s ability to see themselves as part of the environment, to understand or make sense of what is available as these teachings and knowledge take time, practice and teachers.

Breathe. We have time. We can practice. We are learners. We are teachers.

The new day shows a seam along the horizon. Snowy white tops of mountain ranges reflect the atmospheric glow while the blackness of the ocean is interrupted by jagged tidal ice flows.

Down below, red tail-lights blink on and off. Headlights crawl.

. . .

It’s nearly 9am now. Sunrise is still an more than an hour away. 

The dog sleeps at my feet. The cat watches me type with heavy lids. I can hear the tinkle of hot water moving thru the baseboard pipes and the hum of the refrigerator. 

I’m coming back down to earth.

*doodles by me.  

A way to learn about your home landscape is to study the aerial and satellite layer of your area using google earth or maps and see if you can find the nearest, smallest, dearest waterways.

Love Oona