One evening I parked on a cliff on the most north part of Nova Scotia. It was raining softly, and the sun was getting low. I got out to walk with Fynn before it was to dark. There was a little trail up a hill, so we started to follow it. In the soft rain and strong wind, walking up-hill with Fynn, after a day of trucking. I felt strong, my stride had a certain vigor to it. I felt two hands on my back guiding me upwards, so I decided to follow them.
We walked for quite some time, did some energy work with some trees, but the hands kept pushing me up the hill. Until I found myself facing a tree that I call an I-take-space-tree. They are always a bit intimidating, they hold the other trees at a distance with their branches. Where other trees share the space, these ones don’t. This one was a small spruce tree, about five meters high and it was dead. The feeling of two hands on my back were gone.
I did my thing with the tree, asked it if it was ok to connect with him and started talking, sharing information. As usual the first bit is just about my own thoughts, sort of decompressing the day to make space for a deeper conversation. Then I just asked, but what about you? What do you have to say to me?
“RUN”
It was so clear it was almost loud. I looked around, like, what, really? Nothing but a smirk back. Ok, I’m here for the trees so there we go. I ran as fast as I could downhill, Fynn jumping happily next to me. Of course, my head was racing. Why run? Is there something with the truck? Do I need to run more often? I want to. So maybe.
After about fifteen minutes of downhill running and wondering why I was running, I got back at the truck. Nothing unusual. I picked up Fynn and put him in the truck, I climbed in after him, shut the door and about five seconds later it starts pouring rain like crazy.
All smiles.
The practice of my journey is to keep reality in the lead and not my story about reality. No idea, or plan is leading but what emerges. It means to sit with the whole and let the parts emerge from it, instead of trying to construct the whole from the parts. Ceremony is my ally for this and the hardest thing about it, is to be able to sit with the ugly side of reality. I’m so trained in focusing on what I want to see and not allowing reality to present itself as it is. All the well intended advise to “count your blessings” and “look at the positive side of things” is just keeping you trapped in your own imagination.
The first month in Canada looking for old growth forests and ancient trees led me to beautiful places. Nature is wide and seemingly infinite here. The hills of Nova Scotia help with nice panoramic views on the tops and a good overview of the forests from the valleys. Especially in Cape Bretton where the world famous Cabot trail is and the largest area of old growth in Nova Scotia.
As a Dutch person, I’m still amazed by hills and mountains. Because we have so little in the Netherlands, they keep surprising me with their beauty. They are good reminders of the earth we walk on. You don’t have to look down and see only a tiny bit. They show the power we walk on.
I started to experiment with drone videos and guided meditation style ceremonies so people can join the embodiment of reality online. It makes me feel rather stupid. Standing with a stupid selfie stick and a stupid microphone in an old growth forest. It heavily increases my respect for content creators though.
It's difficult to be fully emerged in ceremony and thinking about sharing it with others. It really is the difference of the brain hemispheres as Iain McGilchrist explains. Left is busy with eating; right is busy with scanning the whole to see if it is safe to eat. Left is about how can I use this situation? Right is about where am I? Recording a ceremony puts me in the eating mode. Thinking about how I can use this moment. A ceremony is about reconnecting with the whole, so it is intended for our right hemisphere way of thinking. Recording a ceremony is a difficult mix.
So far, I learned it doesn’t work if I plan the ceremony. It also doesn’t work if I first do the ceremony and then try to recreate it. A ceremony is being true to the present moment, it’s a performance. It doesn’t let itself be tamed. Every ceremony is a new encounter with life as it is. And typically, I try to make it way to technical by trying to explain everything, while the power of ceremony is in intention and openness, so it helps to keep the act itself very simple. Like a song, a dance, or a prayer.
Doing ceremonies does work its miracles. It puts me in a state of being that experiences everything as the miracle of life. It helps to feel the forests, the complexity, the deepness, hearing the silent voices, appreciating the colors, the smells, seeing the relationships between crowns of trees, between stem growths, seeing the children of an older tree standing ready next to it for when it falls. A forest becomes one breathing body.
And then I saw it. Visiting Peter’s Farm, a biological farm community. Where one person points it out to me. I must have seen it hundreds of times before, but it never really hit me like this. This time it hurts. Looking to the hill on the other side of the valley there was a clear cutting in the forest. Like a bite from a belly. He said the children inherited their parents land and the first thing they did was take a bite from the forest. When you focus on reality, you’re forced to see the beauty as well as the ugly.
In the middle of the picture.
Discussing clear cuttings in Canada is like discussing Black Pete in the Netherlands. Some immediately agree with you it’s very dumb and they become sad thinking about it. Others see it as their right and their way of living and they become angry talking about it. As a foreigner they both look very stupid. I’ve never met a foreigner who isn’t dumbed struck by the blatant use of Black Pete for a children’s party in the Netherlands.
A clear cutting is a good example of a barbaric thing. It’s unnecessary harming something else. You can take wood from the forest without hurting the fabric of life, but it requires attention, design, planning, skilled labor.
Same clear cutting from up close.
It’s very tempting to focus on illegal clear cutting, because then it pretends that the real enemy is people who go against the rules. While the largest contributor to clear cutting is -by far- legal clear cutting. As contributing to the world’s greatest challenges today is completely legal. Maybe it has always been this way, I don’t know.
After decades of activism for the trees in Canada there has been made some rules. Some areas of old growth are protected and it is law there needs to be at least five trees left per acre (0.4 hectare) when you cut a forest. Which is better than none, but very far from maintaining the fabric of life. Again the story and reality are very far apart in this country. If you read the story of the government they are doing great, while the forest is being destroyed rapidly.
At the farm where I stayed was also René, a 37-year-old forest manager. Living in a trailer on the land. Coming back to life after 18 years of drug addiction by working in the forests. He wants to help the trees. He explained to me that the biggest reason for the local clear cuttings is a huge paper factory in the area that gives good money for the wood. Preferably wood from Spruce trees because it’s soft wood. So unsurprisingly the start of the problem is the way we live as modern people and not the people who do the clear cutting itself. They also just follow the system as they see best. Just like I am doing.
To counter the harmful consequences of clear cutting, the paper company is subsidised to hire “spacers” and “weeders”. René is a spacer and he goes to former clear cuttings and he cuts the little trees that grow back to give space to the biggest trees. He is instructed to specifically safe as many Spruces as he can. Weeders do about the same, but they cut everything so people can plant new trees. Which is another subsidised program, popular among young people to do over the summer. You can make decent money ($400 a day) and it feels ‘good’ to plant trees. Right?
The catch is that the trees they plant are only Spruce trees. So why really are there spacers, weeders, and planters? Exactly, to make sure it’s suitable for clear cutting again as fast as possible. The forests are even sprayed with chemicals to make sure the wood is soft and ready for the paper mills. It’s a good example of how myths easily beat well-intended improvements on a system. If we add stuff to a wrong myth, it never really helps, because it leaves the problem intact. The logging evil in Canada even has a family name: Irving. One of the richest family in Canada. If you want to see where all the millions of logged trees go to. Check it out.
René was so nice to let me work with him for a day. He showed me the ropes of the game and let me work for two gas tanks. Standing in a clear cutting is a very weird experience. What comes back after a clear cutting is pure chaos. All kinds of trees, very close together, all fighting for the same light and space. It clearly misses the mother trees; the organization of intergenerational co-existence. It also feels weird to do forest management with a forest cutter in your hand. The only thing you can think of is what to cut? Very little room for talking to the young trees here. We’re on a schedule and only payed when there are results.
René does about 4 hectares a year, where in his region there is 120 hectares in need of spacing and he is the only one cutting. So, he can ask almost any money he wants. It’s hard to find cutters because it’s physically very demanding. Most people quit within the first 14 days.
We did another job in the forest. Cutting trees to make space for a renovation of an old building. For this job we got the help of a horse to drag out the heavy logs. It was an amazing spectacle, seeing the horse work. So strong, so manoeuvrable, so happy with doing a task for the owner. Peter said no machine available comes close to the abilities of a horse in a forest.
Peter’s farm is all biological, manual, human work. With a good-looking house on a hill, close to a river and he is kind of the local hero. Always busy with what he can give to the community and not so worried about what he receives from it. Hand-picked vegetables, flowers, plants from his nursery, weekly working with the local children. Building a shack in the woods together, playing games, learning about food. Great example of a farm as an open system.
At dinner I shared with them how blatant stupid a clear cutting seemed to me. They agreed and said the problem was culture. It made me share about the open blatant stupidity in the Netherlands. Of course, Black Pete, but also being one of the biggest exporter and importer of food in the world. While being one of the smallest countries at the same time. Raising and killing each year 500 million chickens, 17 million pigs and 2 million cows. Most of them kept in horrible conditions. Slaughtered in even worse conditions. The animal genocide, the nitrogen crisis, climate change and the clear cutting of the rainforest because of the soy we need are all hidden for most eyes. It makes them difficult to point out to people who are trained to believe that the story we live by still makes any sense.
There is a certain blessing in the open stupidity of a clear cutting. It’s easier to talk about it, point to it and experience it. Although it might also just be the blessing of being an outsider. Traveling is the best way to see your own ideas of normal in a new light. The clear cuttings here are very visible, just go and look on Google Maps. Hover over New Brunswick and zoom in on any square brown or light green patch in the forest. It’s all destroyed.
The other hidden blessing of my my first experience with a clear cutting is that I can now feel and appreciate an old-growth forest much better. If you look for beauty, you’ll see the wounds. If you touch the wounds to heal them, you’ll find your beauty.
Peter walked me through his forest. How he takes what he needs and gives what the forest needs. His neighbors clear-cutted their forest up to his borders twelve years ago. It’s still a mess. When I tried to connect with it, it just screams. All I hear is screams.
This clear cutting is from twelve years ago. On the right you see Peter’s forest.
After a week at Peter’s farm I left for New Brunswick, the state next to Nova Scotia. I stayed mostly in the Kingston Peninsula. Beautiful nature and views. The tides here are the highest in the world, about 7 meter. Pretty crazy to walk on the ocean floor on this side of the Atlantic. I stayed on land of a friend of Peter, Sam, a carpenter, who builds his house here for his family. Who also wrote a book, The call of the mountain and who experienced the quality of solitude himself. Where Floortje Dessing made a documentary about. His neighbors also clear cutted their forest.
Sam’s new house in the woods.
After a week with Sam, working on his house, meeting his family and kayaking the river with Fynn. I left for Montreal to pick up my new love Monica. A little angel from Mexico who I met just before leaving the Netherlands. She went back to Mexico, I went to Canada. It didn’t feel complete anymore without her and happily, she feels the same way. So the fellowship is now four. The truck, Fynn, Monica and myself.
Letting go of the idea to do this journey alone is difficult though. Sam told me that the tree next to his house has a berry that’s called “service flowers”. Because the moment they blossom is the moment the ground is no longer frozen, so the dead of the winter could be buried. On a big rock in the oldest part of Sam’s forest I offered some of the flowers and buried my idea of traveling with just Fynn and the truck.
We stayed for a few days at a river just outside of Montreal. Doing ceremony with a tree and adapt the truck to an extra passenger. Sharing our life’s stories under the trees branches. Ceremony is where the spiritual journey of Monica began and it’s like second nature to her. So I’m looking forward to learn a lot from her. And it’s true what they say. If you give a woman a house, she makes it a home. She’s awesome.
In a few days we’ll go to Quebec and meet the indigenous ceremonial teacher of Peter, called Mike. Also known as little half-moon. Who is currently walking from the East coast of Canada to the West coast in California with his partner. For healing, reconnecting with the land and the union of the divine masculine and feminine. Very curious about meeting them.
I almost forgot, I also finished translating my book. Embodying Reality - a new paradigm for sustainability is the English title for now. Just have to read it a couple more times, find an editor and design the eBook. So almost ready. What I said about the Dutch version for about a year. So we’ll see how it goes. Reality leads.
On y va.