Currently, I live in Northern Quebec in the Waswanipi Cree First Nations community. I've lived almost my entire life in the suburbs of Ottawa and now I live in the Boreal Forest! The forest surrounds the community and starts at the end of my street, which is called Tamarack, the name of the only evergreen tree in Canada to lose its needles during winter. Sometimes, I walk through the forest path to get to work, so that I may enjoy the aromatherapy and calming sights that it has to offer. So far, I've seen a wolf a few blocks away on the community's edge, many foxes along my bike trips on the highway, moose, black bears and lynxes! Unfortunately, over 90% of the Waswanipi traditional traplines have been cut down, pushing moose, caribou and many other animals into corners. Greenpeace was here last spring to help fight to help keep the last of the traplines safe, the decision has yet to come. The picture below is part of a trip to visit the original grounds of the community, which they refer to as Chiwedau meaning 'Let's go home'. I felt inspired by these close encounters with nature to write the following:
Rhythm of the Earth
When we live in the city, life escapes us with constant fast movement and deadlines.
Make your way to the forest and for a moment you would think everything around you is ‘dead’, it is too quiet.
Nothing moves too fast apart from the odd chipmunk zooming around or the tiny black flies flying around your head.
Take a moment to sit and then you recognize that are surrounded by life, that in some ways, it is much more alive than the streets of a city.
There is a biodiversity that reveals itself over time, in small doses
A fox that cuts across the road;
Moose minding their business eating acorns;
Fish swimming around your feet;
Maybe a wolf or a cougar watching from a distance, keeping itself invisible;
Hundreds of plants growing slowly, budding, going through yet another cycle.
Nature’s cycles are mostly slow, are they not?
Maybe it is us who have moved ahead too fast,
So fast that we have forgotten the liveliness of other species around us
So fast that we don't mind chopping away vast swaths of land for our own benefit
Forgetting the consequences of cause and effect
Consequences that may be too slow to appear, but the benefits are quick.
Our pace has become that of industry, that of an abstract economy that benefits few
When will our pace return to the rhythm of the earth?
