On being here and there

The ducks are in the sky. Hundreds of them flying over the house, forming themselves in to the distinctive arrow that points them north. It happens every year at this time. Later when the fall comes they will retrace their route back.

As I watch them I am transported north myself. I find myself wondering about my friends Jane and Emily, Roderick and Phillip. I had the opportunity to work up north in the Cree nation for a few years, and as the ducks fly over I go back there – in memory and remembered experience. I wonder if they are ready for the geese (a major source of food). I wonder if the villages are empty (as everyone heads to the bush to hunt).

As I have these thoughts I remember other moments and experiences we shared together: like driving through the winder snows (reflecting of the day just finished); like learning new skills I had never even known existed (how does one make bannock anyway?); like developing a different way of appreciating nature (a rabbit changes color with the seasons). Like what it means to just “be” with another person in a way I had not known before, or what it means to learn through observation.

Fortunately these are fine memories. And I know that they could be otherwise. As I am reflecting on my memories, I am also thinking about how easily a simple experience, like hearing the geese fly over (they do fill the sky with their signaling), can send us to another place, another time, another realm of experiencing, transporting us from here to there.

I think about the young people and families with whom we work. They too are sometimes transported to another place. A touch can send them back to childhood experiences; a song can evoke strong lived memories; a sight can send them off to another place. And I am reminded how we all inhabit different worlds at different moments. Sometimes when I am with a young person, he is someplace else. Sometimes when the young person is with me, I am someplace else. It is one of the wonders and mysteries of being human: we can be in more than one place at a time.

Sometimes I don’t understand a young person: why she is behaving the way she is; why she experiences things differently than I intended; why she is suddenly in a different emotional place than she was just a few minutes previously. At times like these I think I would do well to remember my experience of the geese. For while, to an outsider, it may have looked like I was simply standing on the balcony watching the geese fly over, inside I was transported. I was both here and there and, truth be known, a bit more there than here.

Sylviane calls me. My phone has been ringing. I hadn’t noticed. There were no cell phones up north so I never listened for them.

Thom