These Wild Winds

How can I look at another When I only see you.

i know time, time like the back of my hand like the scar on my chest like the catch in my lungs i know time like a river cutting the line deeper as if washing away were washing clean time, they say god, i live in fear

Maybe you’re getting older, she said  Maybe, I replied, turning a slow circle on the sidewalk - or maybe we’re all just less resilient right now.  - Wild Winds

Your eyes are wild and earnest, and I’ve seen that look before, it’s the same that echos the halls of my own  late at night with no one there to follow. A desperate searching for answers, for questions never fully formed, through muddled brains and half-formed pains, and a small voice beneath the latter. The one that hides beneath the swirl, the deep buried creature within their shell, fearful of the words to come,  and those that never will.  - Wild Winds

I sit through the festival and wonder the whole time,  Through each epic shot and thrilling ride.  I get in my 4x4 chevy tracker and ask my sister as we drive home,  Snow-chains stored under my seat and roof racks awaiting kayak.  The next day at the climbing gym we hash out our favourites, I ask the guys but they seem nonplussed. It is two days later and I am still trying to count the number of women portrayed to equal more than one hand. One finger really, but need for this to not be quite so absurd allows me to count that one guy’s wife I saw a flash of, as ‘portrayal’.  It eats at me, snakes around in my stomach,  In my most favourite environment, my place I feel most like myself, most at home, most belonging -  Apparently, I do not belong.  And then it hits me harder:  Did I see one person of colour in this film fest of ode to the outdoors?  Where were the queers sending it on the wall?  Minorities who have been made resilient by every damned day.  Where the hell are they?  Not on the big screen, evidently.  - Wild Winds

This year, I am disappointed.  Don’t get me wrong, it was thrilling.  I go back and play them again,  The music pounds into my bones and I feel a rush as bikes whiz by,  Breaking white trail,  Smashing through the friction that is a mountainside.  And the German guys using human power alone - Wow. I am in awe, Or, more to the point, disbelief, In the power of the human body. (And maybe a few shreds of insanity.) They bike and ski across the snowy peaks of the Alps,  And oh man, do they deliver.  But, I can’t stop thinking,  Where are the women?  Oh good, thanks, I think, the one woman who graced a shot,  Of 8 reunited mountain biking guys,  Oh good, a wife was allowed.  Cool.  The evening’s MC introduces a film, including the phrase,  “He’s got it all, lives in Tahiti, a blond wife, and gorgeous children.” The words leap at me,  Entirely unexpected.  Our MC is a woman.  And finally, the best film of the evening,  The only one this year with an actual narrative,  A story to share beyond flashes of adrenaline and powder marked by the rally cry of music to remind you that these men are warriors,  There’s Margo.  A 19 year old woman crushing it in the world of climbing,  Quietly, crushing it, I must add.  An unexpected source of badassery, apparently.  Or so says the 7 minute prequel to her climb, A running list of boys (yes, boys, I must say),  Expressing their shock -  Their aghast!  We never expected, we never thought, WHO COULD OF KNOWN!?  And why would they? Why would they ever have expected their friend Margo, who could climb 5.14s, to even WANT to climb a 5.15, let alone send it?  A female? Pfff, we never even considered it.  And send it she did,  Not even needing the pounding music to let you know that her skills were epic,  Just bloodied hands, silly faces, endless falls, endless tries, and finally -  Raw tears of success.  - Wild Winds

When I was young, I was going to save the world. Animals, in particular. Whales, to be exact. I devoured animal facts books, watched every episode of Kratt’s Creatures, wrote poems about extinction and deforestation.  It has been a standing joke in my family that I would one day end up on the Sea Shepherd.  I wish I was that brave.  Is it brave though? Not that it doesn't not require bravery, no doubt, but rather, is that what I lack? A simple bucket of courage that fills only three quarters?  Perhaps it is direction that I envy.  A single, dedicated, steadfast, determination.  A means to an end.  A tunnel of focus.  I have moved through my life with all manner of goals, from Greenpeace Warrior to Business Owner.  First it was a shared dietary-friendly bakery with my sisters, a clear response to our many allergies at a young age and the 90s that delivered cardboard bread in reply.  Most of my life contained the background (or at times, foreground) determination that I’d be a writer. There was a short spurt with novels and short stories, and lasting love with poetry. Children’s books have forever held my heart. As I grew and business and reason and communication with others entered my mind I began to imagine writing for magazines or papers, capturing minds with spun words of the outdoors and nature. At times I momentarily let myself flirt with the idea of having the dedication to write a philosophical rumination on waterfalls, a real live book, before hurriedly stuffing that thought back in the bottom drawer, don’t be absurd.  Then there was my high school life, where I was sure I'd attend art school, be an art teacher or graphic designer. Perhaps write and illustrate books like Shim Shimmel or Robert Bateman, inspiring the world to action with my work.  A flicker of time when I decided to open my own clothing shop, quickly turning to opening my own cafe. Growing my own ingredients and being an example of an environmentally and socially responsible business.  Somehow in this, I went to university for philosophy. Because of course, the only direction I could choose was the study of something with no direction, decisions, or tunnel vision. A study of fences and the joys of sitting on them, appreciating every single bit of matter one could see (and even the ones we could not).  I inevitably added Environmental Studies in as a second major, because one field was hardly enough with the whole wide world of passions out there, and soon too, a business minor, to convince the world I had some sense after all.  And then I fell hard, discovered ethnobotany, the study of plants and people, grew my first peas, signed up for working on organic farms across the world, and never felt more connected to life itself. Food, our terrible agriculture systems, community and connection through plants - this was the answer to our world’s problems.  I would become a farmer.  And I have.  A philosophical, environmentally-educated, business-background, art-weilding, writing, dreaming, farmer.  And I have loved every minute of it.  And then this.  it has come over me recently, this slow lurking in the back of my mind. It arose completely unaided, maybe a week and a half ago, like the steadied glide of a cat’s tail, wagging back and forth, back and forth.  One knows better than to ignore that particular swish of a cat’s tail.  Easily unnoticed, yet filled with meaning.  This sudden fear has overcome me, a gnawing at my heart that, my friend,  - what about the whales? 

Have you ever been so in love with a moment, or a story, or an idea, that you teared up with excitement and love, just telling about it?  That is what I am chasing. 

Sometimes it is hard to remember, when it feels like the winds have done nothing but blow their icy cold at my back, and my hands are numb and legs so tired, - it was their wild I loved in the first place.  - Wild Winds

It is my best friend’s youngest sister’s 19th birthday and we take her dancing at the country cabaret. We laugh and dance and sweat like crazy as we spin and stomp in our cowboy boots, alive with the music. I’ve known these girls for fifteen years and there is nothing like a reunion of the sisterhood to the anthem of Shania Twain. Somewhere in between the band’s set, amid the DJ’d music, on comes Girls Just Want to Have Fun, and a sea of shouted approval rises up above the dance floor. Laughing, I join in, turning to my best friend, I sing out, “Girls, girls just want to have Funnnn-DAMENTAL RIGHTS!” She laughs and throws me a high five and joins in my alternate lyrics. We throw our arms up in the air and I spin, spin, spin. There is nothing, nothing better than dancing, losing yourself to the here and now.  We laugh, but somewhere in the back recesses of my mind I feel a twinge, that constant reassessment of thought I can never quite turn off, because when we arrived tonight we stood in a circle and went over the ground rules. No one goes to the bathroom alone. We stay as a group. If you want to sit down or get a drink, tell us where you’re going and one of us will go with you. We tell her youngest sister, who had nervously waited in line outside with us, never, never take your eyes off your drink. And when we dance, even in the magic high of movement and music, any male that moves to join our circle brings a quiet nervousness into my stomach, and I instantly move to rearrange ourselves away from him, feeling like a jerk as I do, yet unwilling to take the risk, unwilling to let my friends younger sisters, my younger sisters in many ways, have to feel that horrible uncomfortable knot in their stomach, trying to quell justify that they’re just being silly. Later, when I finish a dance with my best friend’s brother, another male we do not know reaches out for a fist bump with him. It makes me feel like the man is implying something I do not like. Because I half swing-danced in a country bar with my best friends little brother I’ve known since he was six.  We leave at the end of the night and we’ve had an amazing time. But I think back to that song and I can't shake that sadness, the disillusioned feeling that I worry I’ll never get to lose. That I worry so much for her, as she turns 19, incredibly tall, thin, and beautiful, self-conscious and young - please take care, I think.  - Wild Winds

“What do you want to do?” they ask, and I am alive with passion and colour, cheeks pink with excitement as I detail the world I want to create.  Then, quietly, “So why aren’t you doing it?” I ask myself, afraid of the answer.  Because what does it mean if I cannot do it?  - Wild Winds

It takes three minutes to taste garlic rubbed on the sole of your foot.  It takes forty-five minutes for ocean salt to travel from your bare feet on a beach to the top of your head.  Our bodies are not nearly as solid as we imagine.  Sponges, open channels, we soak up each interaction we have. It takes three minutes to taste garlic rubbed on the sole of your foot - a fraction of a second for the taste of negative words to settle in your mouth.  Surround yourself with inspiration. With positive ideas. Words that set your heart alight. Surround yourself.  You are a permeable membrane.  Our walls we envision, are just that - envisioned.  You are fluid. Alive. Growing. Changing. Mixing.  Surround yourself with positive. It takes only a fraction of a second.  - Wild Winds

“You are stronger than you think,” I tell them, watching as they struggle, muscles clenched, body clinging tightly to the wall. “Trust your arms,” I say, but still, only time will convince them.   How did this happen? How did we learn to forget how powerful we are? The magic and might of our bodies, of muscle on bone and skin on frame. At what point were we taught to put a damper on that burning fire inside it all? - Wild Winds