Deep roots are not reached by the frost
I write for people of great teaching to my life…Ole and Hazel…father and daughter…family…who short days ago shared too few days together.
Short days ago…to what does this refer? A thousand years, ten thousand years or perhaps only yesterday? Short days ago, are all days passed…stories sharing portions of time, history starting with each passing measure…this second, another and then another.
Short days ago…three words from the pen of a botanically inspired medical doctor…the ink not yet dry…3 May 1915. A child, Hazel, born 23 February 1915, a father – Ole – lost 3 May 1917. Both persons have played an eldership role in my search for place and words…and as I wander, Ole and Hazel are together again, within my thoughts and being. I write for them and Emma…Ole’s *wībą and Hazel’s móðir…Að unna Old Norse Hirdman.
The old that is strong does not wither
2020 marks 50 years that Paul Ferguson has lived in British Columbia, yet all the while he has remained connected to the places of his youth. From British Columbia to Nova Scotia – the points in between and of distant lands, life in Germany and Sardinia, striding across the limestone of Malta or finding his feet on the ridges and trails of Gallipoli…the paths have been many, but their presence is endless…there is still much wandering to do.
Paul enjoys the path, the search, the sense of actual spaces…living environments, fractured and reborn…the places of the crimson tide and the storied events of our landscapes. In finding the spaces in between – the mortar – Paul translates wandering to the page…bringing connection to the bricks that will follow.
Not all those who wander are lost
