The sun came out again for a brief few hours Friday last. Having become lately local, I dropped all plans of the moment, obedient to the urge to play outside.
The Fav Tribal Elder and myself made an unplanned pilgrimage, a local Stations of the Cross. To the dock, to the House of Awakened Culture, to Chief Seattle's grave and then finally to Doe Kag Wats, the local wetland where fresh water, made amber gold from roots, meets and mingles with salt water of the Salish Sea (aka Puget Sound).
So often, during my time in this foreign land, this little spot has been a place of succour for me. It is a cathedral of sorts, a temple, a place of sanctity and original naming, and certainly most sacred to the Suquamish Tribe whose ancestral lands encompass this and far more.
The calm beauty of the geography of the place was restorative that morning. In the thin winter sunshine (yes we had bundled up against the sharp edge of wind off snow capped mountains to east and west) we could lay our heads on logs and squint at the breakers, imagining, for now, the swoop and tilt, the sheer lyrical lilt of vessel riding the edge of waters such as these.
It was one of those split second perfect moments life affords those living without expectations. Just the presence of sun in winter in this far northern land warms to depth, reaching layers one hadn't even realised were become etiolated from lack of luminosity.
We didn't even need to carve our shared initial on the logs. Someone else with chain saw had preceeded.
My personal mythology is woven through with experiences at Doe Kag Wats. This was the first beach I walked on this continent, on my first day in the United States. The welcome party Doe Kag Wats laid on that day, eight years and some few weeks ago: a man with a rifle and skin the colour of the amber golden water which runs into the ocean here. As I approach, the man lowers his rifle : "You are okay. You are not a bear." He gestures for me to pass. Not-A-Bear I have been ever since. A naming on ancestral lands is indisputable, I have later come to find out.
In spite of the cold Friday, I dabbled my fingers in the salt water, thinking about how, in that moment, I joined hands around the world, touching salt water which laps in turn at every shore, every continent. By salt water are all ancestral lands joined, blended, merged and dissolved: that dead weight of our ancestry we carry with us in every moment, relieved by dissolution in salt water.
What then is immigration but a dissolving of one's ancestral weight in salt water?
And yes, I restrained myself, but only just, from dabbling that same cold salt water on any exposed amber golden skin I could find on the Fav Tribal Elder....
Elemental, my dear Watson. The simplicity of elemental things. Sunshine. Salt water. A beach. Hope.
And restraint. Always restraint.
Yes, people in the United States really do have a strange notion of what constitutes appropriate work wear. Come late October, that strangeness of dress code is amplified some several decibels by the Hallmark hysteria of the moment. Weird, I tell you. Weird.
Recently, amongst others, People of Walmart met Medusa, with a side order of demure Minnie Mouse and Frida for dessert. You gotta love 'em, they are some of the finest.
Authorial Note and Disclaimer: No animals were injured in creating these images and all permissions were gained.
