Gibsons are not cat people.
There, I said it. And yet, while it’s true it’s also not true. Maybe I should say that most Gibsons are not cat people.
I grew up with a dog in the house. Was I a teenager before I heard the whispered reports of a time before my consciousness when a cat had lived in our house? Before I noticed that my father was a cat-whisperer, making friends with them wherever he went, while my mother stood at a safe distance? Maybe.
The work of Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, has shown time and time again that experiencing awe—watching a beautiful sunset, listening to moving music, witnessing a master at their craft—leads to self-transcendence and feelings of spiritual connection.
– Brad Stulberg
Well, there you have it: the science is settled or, at least, replicated. Experiencing awe leads to self-transcendence and feelings of spiritual connection.
What does that have to do with this blog? Well, for goodness sake. Go back and look at the list of things that prompt awe: watching a beautiful sunset, listening to moving music, witnessing a master at their craft (cough, cough).
Post-Covid as we are (the country, more or less, and us, certainly), our usual May/June Western swing (not to be confused with Western Swing) has been reinstated this year. That means stops for me in Calgary, and in Edmonton and environs, and a taste of places that will always be home at some level, whether I ever live there again or not.
Picking up the various threads of my life is different this time and yet also like every other time: A remembrance of what was, a celebration of what is, and an anticipation of what is yet to be.
On days ranging from decent (sunny but windy) to truly awful for late May (overcast and blustery winds reminiscent of sleet in November), I wandered a bit. On the awful days, truly only a bit. (Cold. Wind.)
Calgary’s compact downtown and adjacent river offer numerous vistas and perspectives, all worth exploring. Next time, for example, I want a step ladder to try different angles/elevations for the right-hand shot. And I want a warmer and bluer-sky day, which I’m just mentioning now.
In passing, the City also offered old and new versions of mind-and-or-mood-altering substances, none of which are recommended to be combined with ladders, step or otherwise.
Edmonton was sunny and windy but never felt as if sleet were imminent. That encouraged me to drive out to Lois Hole Centennial Provincial Park.
Pro tip: Unless you want a seemingly endless (Turn left, turn left, turn left, turn left. Repeat.) and ultimately fruitless tour of Alberta’s range roads, get driving directions from the website, not from Google, which has some weird location information in its database for this location. Or Google “Lois Hole boardwalk” not the park itself.
Having visited the boardwalk last September in a sleeveless top, shin-length leggings, cute little sweater, and sandals while everyone else had broken out the ski jackets, tuques/toques/touques, and gloves, I went prepared this time with many layers, most of which were not needed. This seems often to be the way it is with preparation.
But my mind was soon not on what I was wearing or carrying. In contrast to the slim pickings last fall, this visit was a natural bonanza.
In the field beside the parking lot there was one coyote, padding along with his eyes closed or mostly so, I swear. Maybe he left his sunny-day glasses in his other coat?
Is he just squinting or are his eyes *completely* shut? Perhaps he’s visualizing his next pounce, as the golfers and curlers do with their next shot.
When I got to the boardwalk over the swamp, one muskrat appeared and then disappeared too fast for an artistic portrait.
A great blue heron took off just before I got to the viewing platform: I snapped a shot without much hope.
Tens of black terns swoop-chased airborne insects above the swamp (presumably successfully), changing direction too quickly for any portrait. I snapped a few tens of shots, trying just to keep these acrobatic aerialists in the frame, and got one shot at quite a distance.
The one in the water is the muskrat.
There were the unmistakable and unforgettable male red-winged blackbirds all over the place, and presumably corresponding numbers of the much-less-obvious females.
The one on the upper left is the female.
There were birds I may well have seen before but forgotten: a blue-winged teal and a gray catbird.
The one on the right is the mysteriously named gray catbird.
There were two kinds of swallows: barn and tree.
The one on the right is the tree swallow.
And the highlight of my day? Another look at a spectacular bird I’d only seen once or twice before and that in Arizona, despite it being common in Alberta during the breeding season: the yellow-headed blackbird. As near as I could tell this was a single individual going back and forth from the boardwalk to dried bulrushes about 30 or 40 yards away (a nesting area?), well out of my range at maximum zoom.
I’m not sure if destiny is all (as Uhtred, son of Uhtred, avers), but patience is close to all for bird photography. What isn’t patience is luck. If someone else hadn’t scattered that popping corn there, this guy might never even have poked his head up out of the swamp.
The one.
I’m in rehab.
Not from my not-completely-done-but-trending-nicely bout with Covid-19. Not from the rehab Johnny Depp apparently needs. No, I’m in physio rehab, roughly 40 minutes/day, for tennis elbow and runner’s knee.
It doesn’t seem fair. After all, it’s been several decades since I played tennis or even played at running. But it turns out you — well, I — can achieve results indistinguishable from those nominally athletic injuries in other ways. To wit . . .
Dismay. That’s the only way to read these oddly panda-like faces.
Who would be so cruel as to toss aside this entire mysterious cohort (Are they siblings? Colleagues? A volleyball team?) without, apparently, a second thought?
I sometimes make videos that pair music clips with photos. It’s amazingly hard to do well: to edit the visual changes to align with the auditory ones, even when the photos are just, you know, standing there.
Once I accidentally picked music for a video of a squirrel where the squirrel jumping coincided with a change in the rhythm of the music. Woot!
Maybe that experience is why I’m so impressed with mash-ups that combine clips from old musicals — you know, where people are doing anything but just standing there — with a soundtrack that they weren’t dancing to. Here are two great ones.
Victoria Day is a Canadian statutory holiday celebrated on the Monday preceding May 25 in every province and territory. It honours Queen Victoria’s birthday.
Doulton Fountain, Glasgow
Every province? Really? Quebecers celebrate Victoria Day?
In Quebec this holiday is called “National Patriotes (sic) Day”
(Journée nationale des patriotes or Fête des Patriotes).
National Patriots’ Day (Journée nationale des patriotes) is a commemoration of the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837. This holiday is celebrated on the same day as Victoria Day. (emphasis added)
#12 – What is the most embarrassing thing
your mother or father ever did to you?
Here’s a resource I wish I’d had earlier: 20 Questions to Ask Your Mother.
#17 – What’s a rule you secretly love to break?
So, what was the biggest event this past week?
May the 4th (be with you) Day?
Dutch Liberation Day, also on cinco de mayo?
Your results may vary, but the biggest event in our household was none of these: It was testing positive for COVID-19.
And so we have passed the week: sleeping, head-aching, coughing, wince-swallowing, sneezing, lethargizing, turning up our noses at food, dragging ourselves out of bed and back into it, lying awake in a state of general crumminess and completely justified self-pity, collapsing into chairs after two full minutes of standing, whew, and enduring wakefulness in periods supposed to be for knitting up the ravelled sleeve of care. Not that COVID cares. Or has sleeves.
Posted: 2025 May 17
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
This space is available for other submissions.
