Spring Time in Ontario

My weekend is at a retreat centre just north west of Caledon to attend a Spring Tonic Writing and Yoga Retreat. It is spring cleaning time for the mind and body. Where will my creativity take me this year as I unfurl myself from winter’s hibernation? My winter has not been all huddle and trying to stay warm. February’s icy penetration was cut short by spending a week in San Diego followed by a journey of a 1000 miles from top to toe of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. There I was exposed to the glory of the desert with shapes and colours, textures and smells that awoke some primal memory in me.

In April, when Ontario could not release itself from winter, I was welcomed to the hospitality of the south visiting Charleston South Carolina and Savanna Georgia. By the beginning of May I could absorb Ontario’s warmth, its lengthening days, its full moon and its promise.

This is the third retreat at Swallow’s Bridge that I have attended. One tradition is to take a slow meditative walk through the forest to an open field at 7am each morning. Last year much of the land was under water and a cold wintery wind blew.

This year we were blessed by mellow spring days. In our solitude we focused on the sensory stimulus around us. The haunting honking of Canada geese that did not appear, the presence of a wild strawberry flower beneath my feet as clumps of clover pushed higher, the diamonds sitting on the blades of grass soon to evaporate as the sun rose.

I heard the sore throated call of the red winged blackbird. I saw the sun make the bare red oak trees stand silver but mottled with lichen, beneath them a carpet of last year’s brown foliage. When the bed of leaves first were exposed by the receding snow they lay flat. Now healthy strong blades of grass pushed up to claim the sunlight. They moved the leaves aside and sometimes speared them.

A stand of Tamarind trees shake off winter and tufts of needles appear on the branches, some of last year’s cones still clutch the branches.

I ponder nature’s renewal and its ability to grow out of the past. I am coming to the end of my sixth decade. Am I the person I wanted to be? Am I living the life I dreamed I would live? Around me I see the shells of last year’s glory, remaining now only as fragile dried stems. The Queen Anne’s lace, the milkweed, are still recognizable, with a few clinging seeds as yet unshed. Can this be a reflection of me? The slow meditative walk makes me focus on what is. This truly grounding exercise reminds me of who I am now, what world I have created. What desire still rises for future endeavors.

I had the career which fulfilled my needs to make a contribution, to leave the world a better place. I have the world in which I travel, enriching my soul with every journey. I have the friends, some lifelong; some intimate and now departed; some friendships of short duration but fulfilling a purpose. All has unfolded, perhaps as I had hoped. At the end of 2014 I could have said I was fulfilled, complete with a life the way I wanted it. I had become the person I had wanted to be.

But into this contentment still filled with curiosity, I walk into a new chapter of my life. I found a person who wanted to share it wholly. I have found the person with whom I want to share me till the book ends.

Yes, a surprise chapter I had not anticipated. Yet I find myself quite willing to navigate this new and rewarding situation. It is springtime on Ontario with new beginnings all around including for me.