Three Things from Edmonton podcast - Episode 60: evolution, banner day, art of spring

Here are three things that delivered some happiness and gratitude this week, which is saying something.

Podcast, episode 60.

1. Evolution

I’ve been doing a lot of walking.

This is not an earth-shattering observation, but it is worth reminding myself that when it comes to walking outside at this time of year in Edmonton, as winter melts into spring, when it behooves all pedestrians to beware the ice of March, I am able to adapt and slow down and stay upright. None of this is to say that it doesn’t matter if people shovel their walks or not. It does. They should. Keeping public sidewalks free of ice in the winter isn’t about winter. It’s about kindness to others. Shovelling snow and chipping ice isn’t about the state of the concrete, it’s about the state of our hearts. And none of this is to say that I am not aware that I am able. I am. I am not as lithe as I once was, but am not yet deterred from heading out in any conditions, unlike many.

But I had a breakthrough last week. Out walking with Auntie Shelagh, navigating a stretch of unevenly cleared sidewalks in upper Crestwood, I watched her slow her pace as she moved over icy patches, successfully. Whaaaat? I contrasted her simple technique with my own, which was even simpler. My routine was to spot the icy patches, identify them, look towards the house to see if I could spot a homeowner, and then slip and crack an elbow. For good measure, I would then take a photo of the unsafe conditions.

Here’s the more pragmatic plan: slow down, don’t fall, keep going. The clarity with which this insight struck me—this realization that I could read the conditions and react to them and regulate my forward motion—was like a kind…of…freedom. Not freedom from ice or snow or cold, not the freedom to gun it and move as fast as I would like to, not any kind of economic freedom, but, still, a kind of freedom in the sense…of…self-government. Government from the Greek word kubernan, meaning to steer…



2. Banner day

It’s an eerie image, but I can’t stop staring at it. It’s me, from the inside. Not all the inside. Just a portion of my upper spine, along with the outline of my chin, my lips, the ramp of my nose and what I am guessing is the ganglia of nerves and blood vessels that feeds my brain. In that image, my cervical vertebrae sit in a slight arc, as if they were the partially exposed segments of an ancient spear from an archeological dig in a National Geographic photo. What I’m trying to describe in an MRI image of my own neck. My nerves are unhappy these days. The pain can be like an electric storm in my shoulder and down my right arm. This year the pain knocked me off my beloved Flying Canoe Volant team. It’s not a good idea to race down an ice track at the Edmonton Ski Club, work one half of a two-handled saw through a frozen log and then toss axes at a target.


This year, my friend Molly will take my place on the team with my coureur de bois friends, Laura, Eden and Darren.I will be there to watch. I will take consolation knowing Molly is way tougher and stronger and faster than I am, so, this is the year our team—we call ourselves Mister Darren—wins it all. I take comfort in knowing my odds of ending up in emergency are slightly longer than they would be if I were working a saw and throwing an axe this weekend. And I am cheered by knowing the team flag that will whip and snap in the wind off the back of our team’s plummeting canoe will be adorned by a reproduction of my MRI photo. Thanks for keeping me aboard, friends. If we win, it will be by more than a neck. I can feel it.



3. Art of spring

I walked down to the MacKinnon Ravine to check on the little spruce tree. We had planted two seedlings last summer. By the first snow, only one had taken root, and it was that little survivor that I had been wondering about lately, wondering how it’s faring out there under the snow. Will it live to see the spring? If it doesn’t, I’ll try again this year. I’m not overly attached to that particular tree, but I am drawn to it. I walked up the slope near the 142nd Street bridge, knelt down and brushed snow away from the area I judged it would be. Years ago, Shelagh taught me about an enduring question in Picasso’s Guernica. The painting captures the carnage of the bombing of the Basque town in the Spanish Civil War. The question is, is the flower near the bottom of the painting, the flower close to a dead man’s clenched fist, is that flower uprooted and about to wither or is it a green shoot of life? I couldn’t find the little tree. Too much snow. A bit frantic, I stopped digging and disturbing things. I took a breath. I will wait for and walk hopefully toward some kind of spring.

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