In June of 2013, the devastating flood in Calgary sent us on a delayed and detoured trip home to Vancouver and that road trip led me back to Athabasca Glacier, where I hadn’t been in something like thirty years. Standing by that glacier was an emotional experience. And it unexpectedly returned me to a child’s fable; to thinking about glaciers, ice and dirt, time and passings, histories and stories. It reminded me of how much I value deep listening and slow processes.
Last year, health issues brought me back to remembering the importance of daily practice and slow processes, as a way of managing pain and also as a way of building and sharing works. In this new year, 2014 (in this Year of the Horse), I hope to be in slow conversation with this glacier once again and to further work with the stories that began to surface in my bookwork a child’s fable.
(Thursday, January 2nd, 2014)
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Photographs that I took at the Athabasca Glacier when I returned in August 2014, were later used in creating the bookwork a frail history: thirteen poems disguised as a passage.