Happy 2023

Loving Our Wild Nature here in BC !

Images from around my home in Lund, some from home, and home is there in one of them… my new love of pottery, and bottom right from the book This Place, 150 Years Retold, illustrated stories by Indigenous artists, this frame captures the reality of life today... read on below to learn more.

2022 has been an amazing year with so many gifts and challenges, I’m not quite brave enough to share it all of them here, and these images summarize my love for where I live.

I’ve discovered peace and gratitude living on the coast, in the forest, pure nature and delight. When I moved here in May 2019 it was to kayak and hike drawn in by the Arbutus tress that are everywhere. Now all the trees talk to me.

Lucky to discover Tidal Art Centre before the pandemic, enjoying the community and creativity inspired. A new love of pottery, the wheel and all the opportunities to mess-up. Some basket weaving and writing too.

In 2022 I published my first published paper for the Conference of Global Transformation, change makers in action, I never considered myself a writer and have become bolder and braver over the years writing an article here and there. Their editorial staff were amazing, helping me craft my own experience walking with the Tla’amin Nation to the place children were taken from for four generations… my friend Jonathan in Winnipeg guiding me, it’s difficult and delicate navigating harsh truths respectfully.

All that lead to this webpage, this blog, sharing my photos and experiences here in nature at the end of the road on the BC sunshine coast. I love it an am grateful to all who have walked with me and guided me.

You can explore for yourself (links at the top of each page)

• Dinner with Friends a crazy idea as we emerged from COVID utilizing a generously donated closed restaurant, a pop-up for local chefs to cook and share fabulous food, bringing community together again.

• Mooos my beloved Baileys Chocolate Mousse, a boozy twist on the French classic “foam” creamy dessert. It sells well locally at the Farmers Gate store.

• Nature photographs of Forest, Ocean, Mountain, Sky, Texture, with so much more to add as I sort though 50 years of photos. And of course I keep shooting almost daily… beginning with the simple purpose to share nature with those who don’t have access to it, so please enjoy and share with friends as you please. So far it’s not about selling anything, and I’ll explore t-shirst and cards in 2023.

• Art, the Art tab, currently my blog that includes my own work, friends work, and experiences here on the coast. I’ve fallen short of weekly posts, closer to monthly, and will get there over time. So much to learn and always appreciate experienced guidance to present it easier and better for you the viewer to enjoy. This year I plan to add artist interview videos, is there anyone you’d like me to feature ?

• First Nations, perhaps most impactful and important, the kindness of our local First Nations, the Tla’amin People whose land we live on. They share so openly and generously about the real impact of colonization, the industrial age, residential schools and attempted genocide of the last 500 years of assimilation. To witness people forgive, focused on moving forward, together, seeing we’re all related and all have so much healing to do. My heart has grown through listening, witnessing, participating ~ I’d like to do more to help, share and educate. The revival of culture and teachings need sharing, as one possible access to peace on earth and within. We are invited to learn and heal and share. Read more if you're interested, and if you live in a colonial country I sure hope that you are interested, educating yourself and others, as well as embracing important change. Do you know whose land you live on ?

The images featured in the Happy New Year 2023 card above are walks in the forest around my treehouse home. The view is amazing, the peace and tranquility so healing, like I said, I’ve found peace and gratitude here watching eagles, ravens, humming birds in the stillness of nature, the forests and by the sea. One day witnessing whales breach from my deck while trimming my plants.

The preceding blog to this one Bio Magic speaks to the magic of nighttime swims in the ocean, my skin cancer condition keeps me out of the sunlight, yet I still hike and kayak and swim in the sunset light. Yet nothing beats the magic of being lost in the ocean, on a dark night, like a seal frolicking in the bioluminescence ~ I truly hope you’ll visit to share in the delight of lightning up the sea, on a dark night, brighter than sun.

Back to the images, the super-moon rising from our yoga retreat on Savaary Island last summer, eagles in the tree just down the slope from me, glorious Salish Sea sunsets nightly, big skies full off texture and colour, the sunsets last for hours, the dense lush forest, the new totem poles on t̓išosəm beach named Remember and Welcome the whale guiding spirits home, my pottery, the view where land meets sea, and view from the deck of the Boardwalk our pop-up hosts showing the deck of one of the lovely harbour AirBNBs, and lastly the illustrated novel This Place, 150 Years Retold.

Thirty years in Canada is a long way from my UK home, and this BC coastal life sure feels like home to me. A good place to be. Here in the peace of nature, I see the madness of our humanity consuming and destroying planet earth, as that last image and frame from the book says. We have to change our ways, to consume less, to share more, to embrace equality. All life matters.

We each fell out of womb onto planet earth, we all are here together sharing a lived experience, one planet, the only source of life in the whole vast universe, no plan B or planet B, just us, so lets get along. We are the same, related, 7,500 generations, that’s a lot of grandparents, we share a lot in common, including all of us alive today supposedly related to one grandmother (so says genetics). Brothers, sisters, cousins, kin. One humanity.

Human kind ~ how are we really doing collectively ?

How kind are you being in 2023 ?

It’s not gloom and doom if we all do a little something.

What will you do ?

We have to change our ways. All of us, new habits.

I’ll be in Vancouver for part of the spring, and back up the coast for summer.

I’ll keep posting.

Thank you for 2022 and 30 years in Canada. And to those of you from “BC” Before Canada, pre 1992, thank you, I miss you, I wouldn’t be here without you, I’ll be home this year for a visit, and invite you to join me here. Please.

Drop me an email… please do, it’s always good to hear your news too.

Here’s to love peace and harmony in 2023.

You can listen to 10 chapters of the book This Place, 150 Years Retold, on CBC, it’s a beautiful graphic novel, by 10 indigenous writers and artists. Our library has a copy, your’s may too, it’s a beautiful read.

The graphic novel This Place, 150 Years Retold, by 10 indigenous writers and artists.

Thank you Christopher Octavious Boyster for this beautiful Dove in Flight, your work is exceptional and inspiring. I wanted this dove ever since you first shared it in June on Instagram, a metaphor for peace and for flight. In gratitude, keep painting my friend.