The Cree word “takakkaw” translates as “magnificent” in English. “Magnificent” is one word that describes my night sleeping near the base of the Takakkaw Falls in Yoho National Park, British Columbia. Others are: “restorative”, “immersive”, “elemental”. On my autumn road trip through Alaska and the Canadian Rockies, this wasn’t my only numinous experience of feeling […]
Category: Blog
In 1965, Jackie DeShannon first sang “What the World Needs Now is Love”. More than half a century later—chronologically and culturally long past the hippie era of free love—this world now seems all the more wanting of love, sweet love. But what kind of sweet love does the world need, exactly? What kind of love […]
A mother and son’s enlightening travels across the “great, big, broad land ’way up yonder” Part 2: Travelling Liam-style: Way up north and deep down inside The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness – John Muir The title of this post might be somewhat misleading. To be truthful, I’m talking about […]
A mother and son’s enlightening travels across the “great, big, broad land ’way up yonder” Part 1: Travelling Liam-style: You might say it’s “rudimentary” It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder, It’s the forests where silence has lease; It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It’s the stillness that fills me with peace. – The Spell of the […]
In the house I grew up in there were invisible beings everywhere. One was my guardian angel; there were various saints (dead holy people); there was Mary, Jesus’s beautiful, pure, perfect mom. It goes without saying that God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost were also around. Early on, these unseen entities were even more amorphous […]
This article explains how it’s impossible for you to be just an “average” person. It includes a quick, unscientific, fun personality exercise you can do to illustrate you’re anything but average, or a “middler” as I think of it. In fact, it demonstrates your uniqueness. The article begins with my brief personal story about overcoming […]
Dedicated to Josh and Liam Ah, but two hours of pushing broomBuys an eight by 12 four-bit roomI’m a man of means, by no meansKing of the road. From “King of the Road”, sung by Roger Miller In 1965, when Roger Miller sang “King of the Road”, specifically the bit about how “two hours of […]
We Ontarians have the strictest Covid regulations in all of North America, our Premier recently announced. Was this a point of pride for his government? For me, it was the straw that broke my camel’s back. I’ve been thinking a lot about restrictions since being drenched in the first Covid wave, and now immersed in […]
What if Lake Huron was to take the U.S. and Canadian federal governments to court for criminal negligence causing death of its biodiversity? Far fetched? Less far fetched than it used to be. In early 2021, a river—the Magpie River in the Cote-Nord Region of Quebec—was granted legal personhood status by a regional municipal government […]
Ahas!—those sometimes little, sometimes big jolts of surprise, realization, and joy that come with a new discovery—I gotta love em! I had an aha! the other day in the moment of realizing that having ahas! is one of the things I most enjoy in life. Experiencing them is a core value for me, right up […]
