Sundog Stories

Sundogs, like all moments in time,  are fleeting  - we only notice them if we pay attention, (if we’re lucky enough to look up at the right moment), and our brief experiences of them sift through our hands - as does life. This story is about a black dog, and speaks about the moments we live. (photo credit: C. Milne, "Sundogs North of Swift Current")

Conscious or not, the sorrows, secrets and the guilts we keep don’t rest peacefully.  They are working on us, reminding us of our failings - usually more than fits the crime. I’ve watched guilt at work, have learned that it will not set you free, will not atone for your mistakes. 'Fossils', explores a deep lake, what lies beneath, and the sorrows we keep. Photo Credit: Q. Gall.

 I know that I am not telling you anything new. But, do you know the answer to this: is this it, is this all that life is, and will be? And should the question make you shudder? Or is it an invitation to wonder? Snakes and Ladders, spins together dancing men,  a canoe trip into the wilds,  and the question: is this it?

This Yoga Nidra practice will take you down into a deep well.

This meditation includes a body scan to relax the body.

She sat down and told us that when she was a small girl, growing up in Eastern Europe, she too had warts on her feet. Her mother took her to see a wise woman in the village, who told her to take a bite out of an apple and bury it under the next full moon. According to our doctor, this cured her of her warts. Searching for a cure for warts and other questions and quests.

I had heard that cats bring dead, or half dead mice, to their human owners to teach them how to hunt. Given our lack of responsive learning,  I have always been impressed by Lola’s patience, her unwillingness to give up on us. But recently I came across a different theory: that animals might leave us presents to show their gratitude. A story about our cat Lola, harvesting brussels sprouts and...

I once read that lightning fixes nitrogen in the soil. The lighting bolt's electric charge breaks the stable strong  bond that exists between the nitrogen atoms that fill the air. The separated atoms rearrange and attach themselves to oxygen and rain delivers these molecules to the earth.  It can burn you too. The shoreline remembers the power of such storms in its blackened trees, which...

This Yoga Nidra practice journeys into the forest to listen to beetles and other life in a nurse log.

This meditation anchors you in the moment through your breath.

Last winter a man I met in a small northern community told me that when he was young he would hunt for Caribou with his uncle. One evening, at dusk, he watched as thousands of the large lumbering animals moved not as one, but swirled in all directions. He said that the ground moved and shook with noise and motion. But the caribou don't migrate that far south anymore. Impermanence, toads, caribou a...

Of course there is no guarantee that change, and the stirrings of a thousand earthworms will restore life, there is always the chance that it won't. Life is not predictable and it might not end as happily as you once hoped. Nonetheless, even if choice seems faint, do remind yourself that you don't have to wait for the frail promises of your unraveling life. Silkworms spin together no-till farming,...

Remnants is a story about memory and the clear and blurred remnants that mark us.

Take a quiet walk through a forest in this meditation.

This Yoga Nidra practice will take you on a brief journey to a waterfall.

At our small cabin, the lake is moving and churning today, thunder threatens, the light bounces off the waves. I step into the water and pull myself under the surface and open my eyes, as beams of light reflect off tiny particles. And I become aware that I am this too, a tiny particle in an ever changing sea of light and life. Entanglements is about the connections we share with the big and small,...

Perhaps stories,  our mental maps, our perceptions of the world are only illusions, marked by clear or faint, experiences along the path. We do seem to have an insatiable need to create meaning, to connect seemingly random memories, to help us make sense of the world, and our place in it. This story threads together maps, owls and wolves.

This meditation will take you on a journey above the sea, and the earth.

This Yoga Nidra practice walks you across the fields of a farm.

Very early, on the second last morning of my month in India I crossed the clear, blue-green Ganges. The narrow, usually packed footbridge was quiet. Ahead was a woman, her dark pink sari fluttering in the breeze.  The mountains rise up north of the town, cast their long shadows, keeping the air cool in the late winter morning. This story is about a conversation at the edge of the Ganges.

One summer afternoon a thousand strings of light emerged from this wall of green and drifted into space, each end strapped firmly to the tiniest of spider babies, little parachutists, bravely and willingly allowing themselves to be carried by a faint breeze into the unknown. This story weaves together images of parachuting spider babies, an ancient turtle, love and loss.

I was hiking in Utah once and had to keep myself from diving off a cliff. L'appelle de vide, it is called. The call of the void. Surprisingly there is little written about this. Doesn't everyone feel the urge to enter the  void at some time in their life? Maybe not.) Find helpful instructions here on what to do when you are lost in the woods.