Living up here in Calabogie for the past several months has been... wonderful. So many changes in the pace of life, in relationships, in oneself coming out of this pandemic and that productive but hectic disconnected work-work-work and build mode. Coming back to Life, returning to creativity, looking around and seeing how much has changed. Moving forward into all kinds of new adventures, thrilling, scary at times, so often utterly beautiful.
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Building a house in the woods in the middle of a pandemic? Challenge accepted! And a challenge it has been. Feeling so productive but not at all creative. Feeling disconnected from so much... people, myself, the flow of natural energies, so much more. Living in the future too much, not enough in the Now. On the other hand, getting so much done! Very much looking forward to emerging from this tunnel and reconnecting with what matters more, though there is a sense that much has changed and some things will never be the same.
Sigh. Things are rough all over, what with the covid... it's been talked to death, so nothing I feel like saying about it. Thought I'd put a post and reminisce about good times with friends and family. Before the pandemic we had a very fun toga / greco-roman party. Built a cabin up on our property. Jams with friends. Other stuff. Life these days feels repetitive, stagnant, flat.
We bought 200 acres of land! This has been a lifelong dream for both of us, and we've been talking about it for years. Then, last spring we were talking about it and just decided to start seeking. Our quest took most of the summer... we visited many, many beautiful parcels of land, until at the end of August we found this one... the right one... in gorgeous Calabogie, Ontario. The more we hiked around its fragrant forest, took in the tranquility of its two lakes and pond, the more we felt the energy there... we knew this was the place. The property is surrounded by crown land on most sides and just feels wild, wonderful and alive. Yesssss! We've been camping there every chance we get! We've both always wanted land to play in, to preserve and protect, and this is it. We want to eventually live there full time. Feeling incredibly grateful for this place.
You gotta get through winter somehow. Throwing a Space-themed costume party in the middle of a blizzard in February is one way. Nothing takes the chill away like warm creative friends!
My good buddy Tony owns a beautiful hotel in Cuzco, Peru. I did a number of small flower paintings for some of his rooms and he flew me down there for a fun week full of good times. It was my 4th time in Peru, and probably my last for quite a while.
Settling in to life back at home. Enjoying time with family and friends. Not feeling much like painting, but getting into an RPG with friends and having lots of fun learning to make terrain for our game (I built that castle out of foam!). Getting into sound... gongs, chimes, drums. Winter is here.
Working from home in my new office. Doing 16 new flower canvases for my friend Tony's hotel in Peru. Spending time with friends and family. Getting into playing D&D with friends and learning to build hand-made foam RPG terrain and other fun props for our games (turned out great, if I say so myself!).
Back in Canada. Found a pleasant place to live, in Ottawa with the Rideau River right in our backyard and surrounded by trees - the closest to nature we could find while still in the city. Experiencing so many wild places while traveling reaffirmed for both of us our need to be closer to nature. Re-opened my practice there, and Carr went back to work downtown. In the end what brought us back was our connection to family (especially my new granddaughter!) and friends, not to mention wanting to start making a living again.
From Chiapas we traveled west to the coast of southern Oaxaca, to Puerto Escondido and Playa Zicatela, Mazunte and Zipolite and other beach towns. We were looking to decompress, and spent almost a month hanging out at various beaches, taking in the sun and waves, relaxing and getting good and... well, bored. But it was a good boredom, a boredom where your mind goes into neutral and just kind of stops and you are processing some profound things without realizing you are reflecting on anything, and you are deeply recharging without any active effort or intention to do so. Easy living. And yet, toward the end of that stay, mind activity ramped up again as we began to prepare for the journey back to Canada. But first, Oaxaca City and the Yucatan!
We spent a couple of weeks in San Cristobal de Las Casas in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, over the new year. This town and the surrounding areas feel very soulful and vibrant, despite it's troubled history. Lots of living art and music and utterly delicious food. We met lots of great people and made good friends with Rocio and Gus, a couple we stayed with. Good hearts and good minds. This was my second time here and this time around was even better than the last!
After many long conversations, weighing together the many pros and cons of staying on the road versus other options, we made the decision to begin (slowly) heading back to Canada. A lot went into that decision, and in so ways it was a difficult one... this had been an utterly amazing adventure within our greater love adventure, and it was hard to even conceive that it would be ending eventually. We decided to head to Mexico and spend a couple of months there, exploring Chiapas and Oaxaca, before flying north. We crossed the land border into Chiapas and headed to San Cristobal de Las Casas. We visited the Mayan ruins of Palenque, a load of gorgeous waterfalls (one of which I had been to in 2012) and San Juan Chamula, the most fascinating, trippiest church I have ever seen, with its syncretic integration of catholic and Mayan deities and rituals. WOW. Look it up. ;)
I wanted to return to Atitlan because the last time I was there, all sorts of magic was present and happened. But just as you can't step into the same river twice, an experience reflects a particular point in spacetime when you are in a certain place in yourself, and those you are with converge into the spontaneous creation of that magic. Lago Atitlan, while stunningly beautiful, felt a little less vibrant this time around. I had changed, quite a lot. San Marcos had changed, too - like so many places I'd visited before, it had grown bigger, more touristy, more commodified and lost some of that special quality I had found there previously. Maybe part of it was also because after almost a year of traveling around the world, we were just already full, saturated with worldly stimulation. Still, a lot happened there. I shaved my head. We decided to slow down the pace of travel, and to find a place where we could go into a deep chill. We also started talking about what to do next with our lives. Were we going to keep traveling? Buy a hotel on Lake Atitlan and settle there or somewhere else in Latin America? Or head back to Canada, where our families and friends were?
From Ecuador we headed north to Guatemala, stopping first in the beautiful city of Antigua. I'd had a fabulous adventure there six years prior, and it was great to revisit some of the same sights. This really brought home the fact that while you can go back to the same physical location, the experience will be vastly different because you are there are a different point in time and in your own journey. While there the Volcan de Fuego ("Volcano of Fire", aka ChiQ'uaq), a stratovolcano about 15 km away from the city, began erupting. It continued to do so the whole time we were in Guatemala, resulting in several fatalities. We could see it spewing bright red lava from as far away as Lago Atitlan.
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