In August, I spent seven days in the silence of a meditation retreat on the edge of a lake in sub-arctic Saskatchewan. In the summer, with a generously stocked picnic hamper, a water-tight tent & a good sleeping bag, I felt I was an integral part of the forest. One of the deep emotions I unexpectedly arrived at was that of knowing myself anew as a stranger in a strange land. I saw that when the nights grew long & the snow started to fly & the devilled eggs & fancy rice crackers were but a memory I could not survive even a few days in that tough landscape. I heard around me the soul-piercing cry & echo of the loons at home in the depths & reaches of their glassy black lake. Loons are regal birds, their backs covered with the splayed pattern of the Milky Way, their eyes red as the last light of the dying sun... certain of their majesty... of their place in this most forbidding, beauteous world. This is a world that requires no human presence. It does just fine without us. I am willing to sit witness at the edge of the many different non-human Kingdoms of Creation.... the Kingdom of the Asteroids beyond Mars... the Kingdom of the Bacteria living abundantly in my large intestine... the Kingdom of the Whispering Birch. I bear witness... in joy... a visitor... a traveller from afar in the Kingdom of the Loons.
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