Some of you might be wondering how the Phantom Trail Race on November 12 went. I must say, it was one of the best races I’ve ever run. It was as if I had my own personal race course set up for me in the forest, with an aid station, and volunteers at every turn of the course to cheer me on and show me the way.

I ran the race with my friend Tim Kelly. For some reason, the organizers decided to start the race a few minutes early. Tim and I had been waiting in his car for the race start, because it was very chilly out. So when we got to the start line, we found out we’d missed the starting gun. Oh well! All the other runners were well ahead, and soon Tim had disappeared into the distance as well.

A short way into the course I met a race volunteer who was looking for some lost sheep–runners who had strayed from the path. They were soon found, and we did a short technical section of the trail, involving steep, slippery stairs, together. Then they were off into the distance, and my own personal race began. For the next two hours it literally seemed like I was the only runner in the forest.

Two more hours, you ask? For a 12 KM race? Yes, this is part of why it was the most enjoyable race ever. I treated it like a Sunday run in the woods–a long, slow run. I didn’t try to go fast, but just let my body go at the pace it wanted. For the entire race! It was cold, wet, muddy, and raining, but I was in heaven. There was lots to interest me, as much of the course was new to me; a mystery around every turn. I had a map to guide me, which kept me from getting too anxious about not knowing where I was.

The scariest section of the race was an extremely steep mossy, slimy wooden staircase that led to a narrow wood suspension bridge over a very deep gorge, with rushing waters far below. I slowed to a snail’s pace for that bit, terrified that I might lose my balance, slip, and fall into the gorge. I didn’t, of course, and after a short climb on the other side of the bridge, came to the aid station. The folks there were very kind, and offered me all manner of goodies. I had a tiny Clif bar, and a drink of some sweet pink substance, and felt very energized to continue for the second half of the race.

As you might expect, given my late start and my very slow pace, I was the last runner to complete the race. But this was not a problem for me. I felt tremendous pleasure at running for 2 hours and 15 minutes straight, at my own pace, in my own private race. What a gift! Thanks to all the organizers and volunteers who made this incredible experience possible.

I went for a gorgeous fall run yesterday afternoon, running along the Burrard Inlet on the Trans Canada Trail. I left for the run at about 5:00, and it seemed so sunny and warm that I just wore my running skirt and a t-shirt. But by the time I got to the trail it was in the shade, and there was a crisp fall chill in the air. Let me tell you, I haven’t run so fast since I did the Longest Day Run with my fastest-ever 10K race time.

It was so cold, the only thing to do was run fast to try to beat the cold. And it actually works! It was a brisk half-hour run, and the endorphin high was unbelievable! I feel stoked for my next race, the Phantom Run 12K trail race on November 12. This will be the second trail race I’ve done at the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve (you might recall the famous Hallow’s Eve Half), and I’m excited about running up the Homestead Trail to the finish line. But I think I’m going to dress more warmly that day.

So please help if you can. You can make your online donation now, here. Or send me an email to kyrempel [at] gmail [dot] com with your pledge amount. I’ll let you know how I do and collect from you at the end.

A few years ago I was thinking of doing the Peacemaker Institute’s Street Retreat, living as a homeless person on the streets of Vancouver for 3 days. I thought this would be a way to find out how I am not different from the homeless people, learn to have compassion for others (instead of fear and revulsion), and overcome my fear of ending up homeless myself one day. But what prevented me from participating was the requirement to raise money as an “entry fee” by asking for donations from my friends and family. It was too hard for me to do at the time.

So I am happy to find out that I feel okay with asking now—just for 50 cents a day. I had thought of asking for $1 a day, but that was outside my comfort zone. So please, make a piddly donation if you can. Thanks!

Tonight, running on the trail, there were glimpses of the lovely moon, near full, gleaming through the trees. At other times, the trail was in deep shadow. I literally could not see if there was a trail in front of me. Running into the shadows I felt the night thick around me, a palpable presence. Velvety, luminous, warm, and contactful. Those precious moments reawakened the enchantment of life.

Other night runs I recall have been equally entrancing. I remember vividly a long run along a deserted paved road in the White Mountains, winding up towards the Bristlecone Pine forest, home of some of the oldest living beings on earth. Running in the dark, following the faint glow of the painted line down the middle of the road, the night was a luminous dark mist around me. Another amazing night run was the Klondike Road Relay, which I have described to you before. The road led from Skagway, Alaska, through a mountain pass and on down to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. If you recall, that run began with a white mouse crossing my trail.

The adventurous Nancy Wake, who was a spy in World War II, died recently. She was also known as the White Mouse. I am sure she had many night adventures, much more daring and harrowing than the moments I have recounted here. What a zest for life she had! May her spirit be at peace.

For those habituated to high levels of internal stress since early childhood, it is the absence of stress that creates unease, evoking boredom and a sense of meaninglessness. People may become addicted to their own stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, Hans Seyle [pioneering Czech-Canadian stress researcher] observed. To such persons stress feels desirable, while the absence of it feels like something to be avoided.

As I reported in an earlier entry, I have been experimenting with removing sugar (and also caffeine) from my diet. I expected this would lead to a much calmer state overall, without the artificial stimulants in my body. I also changed my meditation practice from evening to morning, so that I would be starting the day from connection with the ground of my being, and have that calm as a touchstone throughout the day.

In spite of these changes, I’ve been finding that the symptoms of stress in my body are growing! Not reducing, as I would have expected. How is that possible? Because I started working 45-50 hours per week, in a very stressful work environment, on a chaotic project with impossible deadlines. Oh! The curious thing is to realize how much I enjoy and seem to thrive in this environment. I feel energized all day. I love the rush. I usually come home feeling tired and satisfied (on the days when I am not up in arms or completely frustrated)!

I realized when I read the preceding passage from When the Body Says No that I am indeed addicted to stress, and the hormones that come with it. To slow down feels uncomfortable, each day and every time. Even just anticipating it feels scary. Who will I be if I don’t do this crazy thing? A big nobody! I am laughing at myself, but the feelings are true. It is the most difficult adventure of all to quiet, and allow space for the unknown to emerge within my soul.

P.S. I took the top photo on a country road near Horsefly, BC. I was very moved that the people who lived there cared for their child, and wanted to protect him or her by placing this sign up for all to see, so that drivers would be aware their child might be on the road and unable to hear the coming vehicle.

$349 includes teaching fees and delicious organic vegetarian lunch, snacks, and tea

Location: Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve, North Vancouver

9:30 – 4:30, Saturday & Sunday

Guides: Angela and Karen are teaming up for the second year in a row. For a glimpse into the awesome time had by all at last year’s ChiRunning and yoga retreat, see here.

• Learn to run free of injury!
• Learn to run effortlessly!
• Learn to be energy efficient!
• Learn how to create Chi Energy Flow!

Angela no longer has Achilles tendonitis since using the ChiRunning form, which combines the inner focus and flow of T’ai Chi with the power and energy of running to create a revolutionary running form and philosophy that takes the pounding, pain, and potential damage out of the sport of running. The ChiRunning program increases mental clarity and focus, enhances the joy of running, and turns running into a safe and effective life-long program for health, fitness, and well-being. Angela has run 20 marathons and completed Iron Man Canada in 2008.

Karen has developed a yoga practice that supports long distance running. Combining yoga with running helped her overcome knee pain and IT band problems, to cross the threshold from the 10K distance to the half-marathon! Her most adventurous race was the Klondike Road Relay from Skagway, Alaska to Whitehorse, Yukon. Yoga is a millenia-old discipline that provides the perfect complement to your running practice. It brings suppleness to the entire body, builds core strength, and safely releases the lactic acid that builds up in the muscles during a run. The relaxation that yoga brings allows your body to run for longer distances with ease.

This 2-day non-residential retreat in the beautiful North Shore mountains will teach you the fundamentals of the ChiRunning form as well as a post-run yoga practice that is more fun than the old stretches you learned in gym class!

Mornings will begin with a group check-in in the crystal-clear mountain air, followed by running and yoga. In the afternoon we’ll teach you methods for connecting with the Chi energy in nature, and then give you a chance to practice what you’ve learned with more ChiRunning. The days will end with a final yoga session to send you home feeling relaxed and connected with nature and yourself.

This weekend retreat will give you time and space to connect with your body and with nature, and you’ll return to the city feeling refreshed and enlivened.

Optional reading: ChiRunning: A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-Free Running, by Danny Dreyer and Katherine Dreyer

To register, please fill in the online Registration Form. For payment information, see Fees. We’ll send you directions and a suggested gear list when you register.

Potatoes not Prozac

My sister Kirsten turned me on to a book called Potatoes not Prozac, by Kathleen DesMaisons. Kathleen describes how what we eat, and when, affects three biochemical systems in our bodies that affect mood: blood sugar levels, serotonin (a brain chemical), and beta-endorphin (another brain chemical). She also advances the theory that some of us are “sugar sensitive,” which means that our body chemistry responds more drastically to sugar and other refined carbohydrates. I was very interested in this theory. Years of meditating, yoga, running, and seeking of self knowledge have had very little impact on the reactivity that goes on in me. It has seemed to be totally beyond my control, no matter how hard I try or how good my intentions.

Sugar sensitivity is common for people who have addiction in their families, and as Gabor Maté and others have written, brain chemistry is a strong factor in addiction. Since brain chemistry is affected by genetics, as well as early experiences, it is not surprising that addiction and the type of brain chemistry that is sugar sensitive would run in the family. Kathleen discovered the impact of eating habits, including sugar consumption, on our feeling of well-being through her work with alcoholics. This prompted her to pursue a PhD in addictive nutrition, so she could study the subject more deeply. Over the years she has worked with thousands of people. In some studies she has done, those who follow her plan have a 92% success rate in achieving sobriety. Previously in the field of treatment for alchoholism, a 25% success rate was considered good. That’s a pretty strong testament to the effectiveness of her plan in helping people with addictions to create lasting change!

By now you may be wondering whether you are sugar sensitive. The test that Kathleen offers in her book is to imagine that you walk into your kitchen at home and find a plate of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies on the counter. Their warm chocolatey smell greets you as you enter the room. You don’t feel hungry. No one is around to defend the cookies or observe your actions. What do you do? Evidently, there are some people who would not eat a cookie! Can you believe it? This is hard for me to imagine. For me it’s a no-brainer. In real life I might wonder who had put the cookies there and whether they were poisoned. But in the imaginary exercise, I would not hesitate to eat a cookie. How about you?

Kathleen also has a checklist of ten items to determine whether one is sugar sensitive. Interestingly, one of the items is “I have a history of anger that sometimes surprises even me.” Wow, there it is in black and white. This is probably the first time I have seen an articulation of a connection between sugar and anger. The history part is true for me too, and it does surprise me.

A history of anger

When I was at Monkey Valley I looked through a box of journals, in order to select the ones that contain my record of vision quests I’ve been on. I glanced at a few other journals at random, just to see what I’d written about. There was a journal from grade ten. In it I was raging at my father, swearing in every sentence, angry and hateful. What a shock! I didn’t remember feeling that way, much less writing it down. I flipped open a journal from 1995 or so. I saw an entry in which I was raging at a friend for something she had done. Angry, reactive, hateful sentences filled the page.  I looked at a journal from 2007. Rage at another friend. The same kind of angry, hateful language. I was really shocked to discover this. Although I know I am prone to anger and reactivity, I truly did not recall writing these entries, or having those feelings towards my friends. And to see that the pattern stretched back thirty years! What a revelation. And I don’t doubt that my sugar consumption really mushroomed in junior high, once I was earning my own money and could buy sweets whenever I wanted. Add that to sugary breakfast cereals and sweet desserts every night with dinner, and there was a lot of sugar creating havoc in my body. Could early and continuous sugar consumption have had a co-relation to decades of anger?

Reading this book was like finding a life-line that maybe I could cling to and use to pull myself out of the swamp of reactivity that I have been swimming around in my whole life. Obviously I can’t reveal the contents of the entire book here, but I’m going to hit a few of the high points.

Blood sugar level

Some of the symptoms of low blood sugar:

• Feeling tired all the time
• Feeling tired for no reason
• Restless, can’t keep still
• Easily frustrated
• Trouble concentrating
• More irritable than usual
• Gets angry unexpectedly

These are all things I experience most days.

Serotonin level

Some of the symptoms of low serotonin:

• Depressed
• Flies off the handle
• Reactive
• Craves sweets (some people crave bread, pasta, and cereal)

Again, I’ve selected the ones that I experience the most, including the ones related to anger.

Beta-endorphin level

Some of the symptoms of low beta-endorphin:

• Low pain tolerance or tolerance for discomfort (jumpy)
• Tearful, reactive
• Low self-esteem 
• Overwhelmed by other’s pain
• Feelings of isolation
• Depressed, hopeless
• Feels “done to” by others (blaming, being a victim)
• Craves sugar

She’s been reading my mail!

Optimal levels of these three

Sugar sensitive people have a brain chemistry that is disposed to producing low quantities of serotonin and beta-endorphin, which is why we seek to simulate the effects of these brain chemicals by using sugar. But when all the levels of blood sugar, serotonin, and beta-endorphins are optimal this is how we would feel:

• Energetic, and tired when appropriate
• Relaxed, clear, focused
• Able to deal with problems effectively
• Easy going, even-tempered
• Hopeful, optimistic
• Reflective, responsive
• Able to seek help
• Sensitive, sympathetic
• High self-esteem
• Compassionate
• Connected to and in touch with others
• Takes personal responsibility
• Euphoric!

I was especially struck by how these three aspects of our physical chemistry can affect our self-esteem and whether we feel isolated or connected to others. For me, I have often avoided contact with others because it triggered so much reactivity, but the price I paid was feeling very isolated, alone, and that nobody cared about me. It is remarkable to learn that eating habits played a role in this dynamic!

Keeping a food journal

The first step towards balancing sugar sensitivity, in the first edition of Potatoes not Prozac (1998), is to keep a food journal. I’ve been doing that for two months now. The idea of the journal is just to actually see what I am doing, clearly, in black and white. Not to judge it. As many of you may know, for the past few years my breakfast has consisted of two bars of exquisite organic dark chocolate. So that is what I put down. I also noted when I ate, and how I felt both physically and emotionally. What a goldmine of information! Kathleen talks about how this journal becomes a way of listening to my body speak to me. And it has been telling me a lot!

What I was struck by, after I’d been keeping the journal for about a month, was how erratic my eating habits were. The times for the various meals fluctuated wildly, with dinner sometimes as late as 11 PM. And when I was too busy to stop for a meal, I discovered that I used sugar to keep myself going. So depending on the day, I might have a chocolate at 6:00. A toffee at 7:00. Maybe an apple at 8:00. Another snack at 9:00. And finally, a proper dinner at 10:00 PM. Now that I knew the effects on my blood sugar from eating sweets (and what the body does to try to re-establish homeostasis), I felt sad to see how much trauma I was subjecting my body to by snacking this way. I also felt sad to see how I was treating myself so badly by forcing myself to wait to eat lunch and dinner. (Accomplishing things and “doing” was more important than stopping to care for myself.) Just seeing the patterns helped me to feel compassion for my physical self, and the desire to treat my body better.

The seven steps

Kathleen’s plan is to gently and gradually shift to healthier eating habits for life. It is a seven-step plan, and I’ve followed a few of the steps now. In the new edition (2008) of her book, step one is to start eating breakfast with protein and a complex carbohydrate (for example, whole wheat toast or oatmeal), within an hour of getting up. It doesn’t even require giving up the chocolate, just adding the protein and complex carb. For me this was a huge step, to shift away from my chocolate for breakfast habit. Just contemplating eating something else first thing in the morning felt distasteful to me. So I waited for a time when my life was making very little demands on me, so I could make this big change with as little stress as possible. I did it while I was at Monkey Valley, earlier this month.

I have now had a breakfast with 1/3 of my body’s daily protein requirements, and a complex carbohydrate, within an hour of waking, 19 times! I have also been following step three, which is to eat three meals a day with protein, no more than 5-6 hours apart, and if snacking, to include a protein and a complex carbohydrate. I’ve done that for 19 days too. I also drastically reduced my sugar consumption. In this time period I’ve had not even two whole chocolate bars. If you can do math, you will realize that with my prior habits, I would have consumed 38 bars of chocolate in this same amount of time!

Beforehand (the first week I kept a food journal), my feelings were all over the place. I looked like the queen of the mood swings. Lots of highs and lows. And some anxiety.

Although I have had many of the same feelings and physical sensations since shifting my eating habits, I haven’t had the buzz or high from the sugar snacking, and overall I feel much more balanced and stable, with less anxiety. Mind you, in the “before” I was working and dealing with a lot of people and different situations, while during the “after” period I am on holiday. That could account for the lower anxiety!

Anyway, it is early days yet, but I believe that by following this food plan I am treating my body much better. I feel that eating a regular breakfast and having dinner at a normal time are huge accomplishments. I like this change in lifestyle and the feeling of stability it brings. I know that my brain chemistry will continue to adjust over time.

I am so excited about the potential for healing and balance that Kathleen offers in Potatoes not Prozac. She calls her plan “Radiant Recovery.” I bought copies of the book for my family members, and I’m sharing the news with you here, because I truly believe that for some of us, this new information about brain chemistry could solve the mystery of why we never feel quite right. For me, I hope it will be the final missing piece in the puzzle of anger.

I have long been interested in sacred ceremony and ritual, and first learned the pagan method of working with the four directions. Interestingly, the four directions, which often correspond to the four elements of water, earth, air, and fire, are used in many cultures the world over. The pagan rituals I learned had their roots in Celtic traditions. When I studied to become a vision fast guide, the same four elements were assigned in the same order around the wheel, but a quarter turn further along! This usage arose out of the ways of the Native American traditions of the Lakota people. However, the roots for the Lakota medicine wheel are said to arise from the ceremonies of the ancient Mayan people. It can become very confusing and perhaps impossible to determine which traditions originated where.

But what is clear is that earth-based peoples the world over have identified the usefulness of a nature-based psychology and ceremony that uses the four directions, orienting by the path of the sun across the sky from east to west and the north and south poles of the earth. Similarly, different cultures have selected similar elements as being significant to work with, including the four I’ve named. Other cultures sometimes incorporate additional elements too. For example, in both Buddhist ceremony and pagan ritual the element of ether or space is sometimes used. The Dagara people of West Central Africa use the elements of earth, water, fire, mineral, and nature (green growing things).

I’d like to tell you about a way of beginning a ceremony that I learned at the School of Lost Borders. This ceremony is used by many different Native American and First Nations peoples. It involves calling in the spirits of the seven directions (earth, sky, and centre are the other three) with the use of the smoke of the sacred sage plant.

I put an egg-sized amount of dried sage leaves into a seashell bowl, and lit different spots with a wooden match. I blew on the embers to help the leaves burn. When the sage was smoking nicely, there in my kitchen, I began by greeting the spirits of the east and asking them to be with me in the ceremony. I named a few of the qualities of the east direction, and offered the smoke of the sacred sage to the spirits. Then I repeated this for the other six directions. This act is called “calling in the directions” and it is often performed at the beginning of nature ceremony.

The second step is to smudge oneself with the smoke, for purification, and also to help shift consciousness into a ceremonial openness. If there is a group, the smudge bowl is usually passed clockwise around the circle, and each person smudges the parts of their body they feel moved to cleanse. I smudged my whole body from head to toe, using an eagle feather to brush the smoke over the front and back of my body.

Now I was ready to greet the owls. My plan was to drive to the North Shore, and run through the woods until I came to the place where the owls lived. Since I would be running, I didn’t want to bring all the gear to do the smudging in the woods. But I will tell you, this is the first time I’ve done a ceremony in stages like this. Which is a teaching about ceremony: it is creative, flexible, and responsive to circumstances! Before I left the house, I did tuck a few items for the ceremony into the pockets of my running jacket. Plus of course grabbed my driver’s license and cell phone in case of emergency! I had another ceremonial object waiting in the car, which I would carry while I ran…

I drove over to the North Shore, taking the route up Lynn Valley Road rather than Lillooet Road because I knew I wouldn’t be finished before the gates at the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve were locked. It was getting near dusk already. I parked near the trail that crossed Lynn Creek, and ran through the woods until I reached the place where I had the two owl encounters. I had noted well the tall dead tree that the owls had perched on during both encounters, beside a small creek at a bend in the path. I’ve been on this trail hundreds of times, so it was easy to find the spot again. From their behaviour, I believe this tree marked the edge of the great grey owls’ territory. 

I have to tell you, I felt somewhat fearful that the owls would appear during the ceremony, and perhaps attack my poor head again.  I even wore my glasses while running (something I never do) so that I would be able to see them better if they appeared. So I was on the alert for their presence, and performed the ceremony rather more quickly than I might have otherwise.

I carefully climbed down the steep bank in the semi-darkness to a very wide root that was at the base of the owl-tree. Following my wise guide’s suggestion, I had brought a bouquet of flowers for the owls, which I tucked behind the root so they stood up nicely. Then I took out a small pyrex bowl and placed it on the wide root. I filled the bowl with a mixture of sunflower seeds, flax seeds, and sesame seeds. I blessed the spot with my hands using Reiki. Then I climbed back up onto the path.

Whew! No sign of the owls yet. But I was sure that they were aware of my presence. I faced downhill, into their territory, and addressed the owls quite loudly. I figured it was unlikely anyone would come along the path since it was almost dark, and the creek was bubbling away at high volume, so my voice was drowned out anyway. But I trusted that the owls would hear what I had to say.

First I thanked them for the blessing of the encounters I had with them, and told them that I had meant no harm. I expressed my appreciation for the learning I have received, and told them I heard their message that they and the other wild creatures need wild places to live in. That people are encroaching too much, and not leaving them the room they need to thrive. I expressed my intention to help protect the wild creatures and wild places. I also explained about the offerings I had brought; the red and yellow of the tulips represented the red strength of the owls and my golden joy at meeting them, combined together into a single flower. The seeds I confessed I didn’t think they would eat, although some birds do eat seeds. But perhaps their favourite prey, the vole, would eat the seeds. Thus my hope was to nourish the creatures that would feed them. I wasn’t about to bring some voles or mice as an offering! (But I didn’t say that.)

After I had said everything I could think of to the owls, I blessed the land and all the creatures who live there, again using Reiki. I bowed, rose, and then turned and headed back up the path. An interesting thing happened as I was driving home. It was now dark, and all the tail lights, head lights, and traffic lights appeared as bursts of colour. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw that my pupils were very dilated, like the eyes of the owl! It just so happened that I had an eye exam earlier that day, and my pupils were dilated from the drops the optometrist gave me. But it seemed fitting that I was now seeing through the eyes of the owl!

The final step of the ceremony was to close it where I had opened it, in the kitchen. I held the eagle feather up, faced east, and thanked all the spirits for being with me in the ceremony. Then I scattered the ashes of the sage on the wind.

I performed this ceremony on Wednesday. Saturday morning, an email from the Green Party arrived in my inbox. It was a call for volunteers to fill three roles in the party leadership, including Publications Chair. Wow! A role I am completely qualified to perform, right now, with my existing skills and life experiences. I went to the Green Party website to have a look at their policies and documentation, and my heart sang as I reviewed their 10 Core Principles. They include sustainability, ecological wisdom, social justice, respect for diversity, non-violence, and participatory democracy! My prayer for the right work I can do to help protect the wild ones has been answered! And I don’t even have to go to law school for three years! I think this is strong medicine. Maybe it’s owl medicine.

Photo Credit: Image Copyright Christopher Dodds, used with kind permission. All Rights Reserved. See other examples of Chris’s beautiful work at Chris Dodds Photo. 

Mike told me about a book called No Plot? No Problem! It is written by San Francisco author Chris Baty, founder of the National Novel Writing Month. November is that month! Can you believe it, people all around the world are writing novels right now!! According to the website for NaNoWriMo, people who are writing their novels have already written 1,172,613,912 words in November 2010! The best part is, everyone who completes 50,000 words by the end of November is a winner!

It is very inspiring to talk to my friends on the phone about how our writing is going (or not going), and I am sure that there is a world-wide energy that is supporting us all to write. Thanks, Chris Baty! I hope I can ride that wave and get a good start on my book. But for today, I’m noodling around on my blog…

Chris asks “What makes a good novel, to you?” And I thought it would be fun to think about this, even though I am writing creative non-fiction, not a novel. So here are my answers. What are yours?

• interesting characters
• strong women characters
• insights into human nature that help me understand people and the world better
• a sense of people really interacting with each other—lots of dialogue
• funny dialogue or situations that make me laugh out loud
• a sense of the goodness of human nature (I believe this arises out of the goodness of the nature of the author)
• set in a time or place I’ve never been in so I learn about it—details that help me see it and believe it’s real
• some tension, but not too much

This got me thinking about favourite novels:

Favourite novels from childhood

• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
• Noah’s Castle by John Rowe Townsend
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
• Everything by Enid Blyton, especially the adventure series and the boarding school mysteries

Favourite novels from adolescence and adulthood

• The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Stand by Stephen King
• The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
• The Tent Peg & everything by Aritha van Herk
• The Accidental Tourist & everything by Anne Tyler
• Most everything by Agatha Christie
• Everything by Janet Evanovich
• Everything by Alexander McCall Smith

Looking at these titles, I see a theme of enjoying fantasy, humour, mystery, and the absurd. I guess life is serious and difficult enough; when I’m reading a novel I want pleasure, some intelligence but not too much, and I love a good mystery! What about you, dear reader? Who are your favourite authors? What are your favourite novels? I invite you to comment and share the wonders with the incredibly wide readership of this blog!

And if you feel like you’ve always wanted to write a novel, you don’t have to wait until next November to do it, but you could!

I called the SPCA many times, and put an ad on Craigslist, as well as a poster on the light post at Nanaimo and Wall Street. There were a few false leads, but Donald did not turn up. Still, the fact of his being gone didn’t really sink in, and I took it pretty lightly. On other occasions when he’s gone missing I have cried and thought about the early days when he first came into my home at Monkey Valley, a flea-ridden little bundle of fur that I had to keep in quarantine so that he wouldn’t infest the other cat I had at the time. I cried about his sad first days here, and wished I’d done things differently. I remember going into the bathroom where he was detained, several times a day, to give him food and affection. He climbed onto my lap and mewed and purred and was so happy to have some attention.

Little did the poor kitty know that he was living with mood-swing mama! I regret all the times I had angry outbursts around the house, not directed at him, but I think affecting him nonetheless. I wonder if these outbursts drove him out of the house!

Anyone who knows Donald knows what a curious adventurer he is. He spent most of the time in Vancouver out on the street prowling around, or else in other people’s houses! If they had a cat, he’d be sure to try to eat their cat’s food. One time he sampled a pie that my friend Azusa had left on the counter. He snuck into their place in the middle of the night, and dug into the pie like a starving gypsy. Another time he knocked their cat Himiko’s bag of cat food off the top of the fridge, causing a major kibble spill on the kitchen floor! The neighbours beside us reported that one evening they had a visitor from England, and Donald spent the night sleeping with him!

When we moved to Wall Street, Donald was again my emissary into the neighbourhood. He hopped through windows and slunk through cat doors, and was soon known by all the neighbours in the area—long before anyone knew my name they knew who Donald was!

The concern when Donald went missing was very moving to me. Emails were sent around the neighbourhood, and people I’d never met came up to me to ask if Donald had come home. One woman said Donald was a very kind cat. What an astonishing testimony! Especially since he often hissed at me when I picked him up! The sad thing was that Donald really didn’t seem to like being around me. He didn’t want to be at home with me. He always preferred to be outside. Maybe he was a cat with a mission, spreading sunshine to all he encountered!

As I have told some of you before, he was a totally different cat at Monkey Valley. Maybe because here I’m the only game in town, he usually hung around with me all day long, and he would come lay on the couch with me and purr in the evenings. He only did that a handful of times in Vancouver during the six years we were together!

So coming home to Monkey Valley this month, the loss of Donald finally hit me. In Vancouver we both had our own friends, and our own lives. But up here, we just had each other. The first night I was in the tub, and I could have sworn I heard Donald scamper up the stairs and give a little sneeze like he used to do. I wondered if Donald’s ghost was here, in the place he loved the most. (Later I realized it must have been a pack rat scaling the outside log wall of the cabin.)

I cried when I saw the ball of red string that was one of Donald’s favourite toys. He got it at the SPCA one time when I was stressed out doing my master’s degree and took him and the other cat there for a cooling off period. The next day when I went back, Crush had already been adopted, but that rapscallion Donald was still there, and I took him home, together with his new toy. All these memories, and reminders of when I was not the kind of person I wish to be! I suppose that Donald taught me a lot. What I miss the most is the purry little one whom I held in my arms.

Lots of visitors to Monkey Valley will recall Donald racing down the path to the medicine wheel, or scratching at their tents while they were trying to sleep. Many people took photos of him, drawn to capture the essence of his supreme cat self.  I hope you enjoy these pictures of Donald, and join me in wishing him well, wherever he may be. Goodbye Donald. May your spirit be at peace.