As a child I was filled with admiration and wonder for the natural entities that comprised my world. By "wonder," I mean at least two things. One would be a state of mind spawned by curiosity or open questioning; the other was an abrupt upsurge of interest I would occasionally feel in the face of some event never before seen or considered in this light: like a mild shock that something is as it is. Most likely, my temperament was as open as anyone's to this passion, but when I reflect on this now it is to a single pair of entities or events, in all their dense particularity, that my mind inevitably turns. One was the gentle, tireless river that coursed by my first home, the other something more akin to an idea: "erosion."

 As a boy I spent countless hours playing in and near the Kettle River, which winds through southern British Columbia. I expect that any moving thing might have had its ability to captivate me: the nimble flame of a wood fire, or a hawk soaring and dropping on air currents. Nevertheless, with the assurance of gravity this river acted as a centre for my activities and contemplations in early life. I can recall deriving such joy from its moods and characteristics: its softness and ease in the autumn, the way ice would begin to form on its edge in early winter, the way it danced and resounded during rainfall and the even force of its current as I swam in it. Aside from its inviting summer warmth and agreeable size, which made swimming its width possible (but not easy, you understand) for a young boy, the Kettle River had another quality to
recommend it: it was deep enough to permit a spectacular jump from the railway bridge that arched over it. I did not accomplish this feat until the last summer before we moved away, but the thrill of it so etched itself in my young mind that even many years later I could recall it with ease and momentarily lose my breath reliving the plunge.

 It was not-at least it did not seem-a dangerous river. Only once did I fall into it in the spring while playing along the bank, suddenly doused by the shocking cold; gasping and frantic to find a handhold, returning home sodden and awakened. Yes, I suppose I knew the river could be fatal, but only (I assured myself) in the winter, or during the spring run-off, or for someone who couldn't swim very well. I, on the other hand, could swim well, having learned in these very waters. Its current was neither swift nor lazy. The Kettle River that I knew was not what you would call domesticated, but neither was it an unruly force.

 A river is a fine thing to swim in, tugging you along such that considerable exertion is required to reach where you aim on the far shore. Regardless of a swimmer's strength or will, any crossing will inevitably sag in the middle, pulled down by the current's weight. A river is the opposite of a swimming pool, which is by comparison devoid of character. It presses itself upon you, against which you may resist or give way. It is a living thing. When I swam the Kettle it was into this easy alternation that I settled: the knowledge that neither total inactivity nor constant exertion was called for, but some agreeable measure-arrived at as much by my own inclination as anything-between these. Bounded on two sides by a bank, unbounded at either end, like a pathway, the Kettle River offered me the right mixture of safety and
adventure.

 What was there about this river that caused me to wonder? Often, it posed no questions; indeed, I was quite capable of taking it for granted. During these times we were rather like two friends at comfort in one another's presence. This relaxing silence did, nevertheless, give way fairly often to my questions, as a young boy. Where did all the water come from? where was it going? did it want to get there? If I swam in it one day and then again a few days later, many miles from my home, would it be the same water? Most puzzling, I was sometimes struck by the
fact that the river was indisputably there, even while it never ceased moving. As a young boy its ability to be simultaneously present and in motion would no sooner pique my interest than its meaning-if it "meant" anything-would elude me. It was an intriguing, delightful thing to
wonder about, but slippery. Although even so curious an ambiguity could not occupy my young mind forever, its potential to prompt my wondering would remain alive for all the time we lived adjacent to its tireless current.

 The other aspect of my world as a young boy which provoked awe and elicited my curiosity was "erosion." No doubt it was one of the first characteristics of nature we learned about in school; or perhaps one of my older brothers introduced me to this phenomenon. In either case it fascinated me. I perceived that this thing was of a somewhat different order from the river. It was an event I couldn't usually see happening, not being as obvious to me as the Kettle River was. To "see" erosion was as much a matter of reflecting as observing. One day something looks like "this," and on another day-perhaps a day when I'm long dead in some distant future-it will look like. something else: smaller, smoother, less irregular, for instance. In this way erosion was a more abstract characteristic of the world which required me to cast my mind forwards or backwards to imagine this rock, this mountain, this tree, in some other state. It was not always invisible to me, of course. I was well aware that my determined rubbing would make the bark on a pine tree smoother to the touch. I could easily break off some of the dirt bank near the river and watch a clod dissolve into the water and be certain that the bank's line had been altered, in a small way, forever. I knew about these things, it's true, but was for some reason more captivated by the incremental, molecular dissolution which was unavailable to even the most scrupulous observation, over so brief an occupation of time.  Was there any kinship between these two wonders? Often they could be witnessed to "overlap," as with a large cottonwood tree whose roots had become exposed by the high spring flow one year. Of a different order, it seemed that the lessening of the current's speed near the bank was due to the endless friction of moving water and shore, for at its deep centre the river's flow was quicker, less restrained. When considering this, it seemed that the river was the active force, because it was in
movement. But then, who is to say that the stillness of the bank contained no agency of its own?

 Similarly, there were the myriad stones that had been rolled and rubbed to a splendid, colourful sheen, which I never tired of selecting from the water's edge. I took great care with this. Handling them, it was easy to tell which had been in the river for the longest time: they were the soft, quiet stones, the ones which had attained a character all their own. The jet black ones were the very smoothest. Others had spent less time being transformed by the river and seemed to have retained the original shape they had acquired when first split from some distant boulder or cliff face. From much observation I knew that some rocks crumbled when dropped from a distance while others would crack into clean pieces-each (I imagined) according to its composition, density and grain. By some miracle a precious few would attain a nearly geometric perfection. One appeared deliberately hewn into a small cube; another, rendered so egg-like it seemed alive. From these hours of rapt interest I'd pocket a few favourites and store them in a wooden box or along my bedroom window. Once there they could be readily retrieved, their characteristics discerned and sorted, their now-warm surfaces rubbed-although, being out of the water the more elusive of their colours quickly vanished, as if the true life of these stones was only fulfilled in that congress of water and earth to which they owed their existence.

 Clearly, the river itself was a mighty (yet delicate) force of erosion in its own way... but when I would ponder this as a boy (and when not occupied with finding rocks), my mind would begin again to turn over the distant eventualities of its coursing: will it one day flow a hundred feet beneath its present bed? or, will the river's banks eventually widen so that even in the spring its vast width might be walked across? Deeper or wider-or both, in some proportion, depending on the rate at which the rock and soil give way. These were the conclusions to which my reveries drew me.

 While the Kettle River's course to the east and west of our town was largely unknown to me, erosion was something that was "portable," and on many occasions while traveling with my father by car I would gaze out of the windows to the hills and mountains outside and consider their infinitesimal diminution by the elements even as we passed. "How much smaller is that mountain becoming in this wind?" I would wonder. "If it rains really hard for a day, how much smoother will that boulder be?" In fact, it occurred to me as we sped along that the transparent surface of the car's windshield was becoming thinner, and that a measuring device of infinite precision might determine its exact rate of change. Did this apply to my face on a windy, dusty day? to my bare legs as they dangled in the passing current? Again, while the river represented an observable presence in my life, erosion was something else: active but largely unseen. Except for the most sudden or destructive of its expressions, its agency took place outside the scale of my attention, whether because it contained a patience unknown to me I could not say. So, although present in the great and minute things of my world and the object of much inquiry, it was for the most part an invisible force.

 Like any child, I reveled in the life signs of spring, watching for the first pussywillows and the uprising of bulbs my mother planted, laying on a warm spot of grass where the snow had melted near the house, or witnessing my father's waiting fields turn green almost overnight. I suppose in some sense the river echoed these life energies; the inevitable erosion of mountains and rocks, river banks and glass, was quite possibly an augury of another sort.

 Inevitably, of course, many of the delightfully commonplace questions and astonishments of youth become lost or left behind as one moves beyond childhood into adult life. Whether this is due to the unsettling disorder of our times or the dulling of habituation I cannot be sure. Perhaps it is both. In any case, it would seem that with the accumulating preoccupations of my adult life and the many activities in which I have become engaged out of interest or necessity, or routine,
has come a dimming of the colours and textures of youth, and with them an attenuation of my early propensity for wonder. The troubling issues raised by technology and the glut of information, by insatiable global needs, distant conflicts, by old and recent social ills to which we are heirs. I sometimes think that no one can negotiate each of these every day without becoming either wounded by or tragically inured to them. This is not a complaint, really, for who would dismiss the accomplishments and rewards which attend the responsibilities we accept? An example: I have become a father. But even in my case, blessed with happy, ordinary abilities by birth, and some by diligence, a persistent sense of inadequacy has dogged my struggles to keep pace with the disorienting rush which has become the modern (some would say the "postmodern") world.

 Owing to such struggles and a lessening sense of connection to the world about me, I began many years ago to cultivate a practice of meditation, and over time have been enriched through the attention, or mindfulness, it nourishes. Meditation is a simple discipline: a gentle and steady alertness to the rhythms of my breath, to the voices and textures of experience, is sufficient. This attentiveness is not merely inward in its scope, as is sometimes thought, for it also prompts a more generous consideration of those around me. Gradually, sometimes imperceptibly, I notice that it urges my engagement with others in a fuller manner, as if out of these periods of refined attention I also begin to participate in an enlarged world. In this way I've come to recognize that my periodic meditation has borne fruit over the years, modulating in some measure my way of living.

 The growing inaccessibility to wonder of which I have spoken did eventually begin to ease, and while it is fitting to credit this gradual reawakening to the influence of meditation, the effects of the latter tend to be so implicated by my changing sense of self that I am normally unable to gauge in a precise manner its true dimensions or import. This needn't imply that meditation-or for that matter the inevitable maturation we all tend to experience, given time-was to play no role. However, if I am to look for an origin to this reawakening, my mind is drawn to a particular constellation of experiences that occurred in the recent past, in whose midst various wonders began once more to charge my senses. This may surprise you: it was a span of time during which a dear friend diminished slowly, inexorably, irretrievably, into death.

 The suddenness of the news that day several years ago was of course belied by the subtle forces that had been at work in her for some time. "The doctor's sure of it, Marion has a tumour," her husband informed me. Hers was still a young life, and with his news there surfaced the possibility that it would be an early death. The subsequent course of her cancer would be imperceptible during many months, with periods of remission, normalcy and genuine hope; nearer the end, her body's decline was terribly rapid. And so it was that from one autumn day to another less than two years later, I would be witness to the life of my friend, her husband, other friends and myself, in the shadow of something none of us could see.

 Is there wonder in death? It seems to me there can be. And perhaps for some well-versed in the pathology there might be a fascination with the genesis and progress of the carcinoma itself. But this isn't what I seek to consider, here, because the wonder I discovered during these months of visitation and proffered support was not located in her death, precisely, but in her manner of responding to her life as death approached, and in what this came to mean to me.

 Naturally, I couldn't "see" the cancer; I was simply noticing changes in her. Especially in its early stages only occasional signs of this sickness were evident. Some were very slight, like the slowing of her brisk walking pace. As the cancer developed these signs became less subtle. There could be pain: gasps, sudden flinches, a day spent under the weight of some persistent ache. While knowing that suffering was searching out the extent of her resolve, wonder would with some frequency overtake me-out of a kind of appreciation, I think, for the courage she embodied. Aspects of this woman I'd known imperfectly began to shine forth during these months. Over this time the tenor of Marion's life modulated, such that her "voice" (a deeply personal thing: the characteristic inclination and tone of her words) softened to attain an inner authority; such that resources dimly intuited or occasionally drawn upon began to strengthen, gather, and to cast upon the ordinary and remarkable characteristics she possessed a new light. Sometimes while visiting I would be struck by her delight at a sunny day, or flowers in bloom-a joy of such transparency that through it the whole of life could appear momentarily illumined. Then there was her thoughtfulness in little things and concern for another's mood. I would feel respect-on some occasions it would evolve into gratitude-for the dignity with which she faced her suffering; a surge of empathy would arise in moments when fear or despair were evident. In short, Marion's manner of being herself during struggles she could neither fully assuage nor forestall attained a charge of intensity and fullness that was
contagious. I, too, began noticing more vividly the smell of oranges and the newly white-capped mountains in the distance. What wonders these visits would bring could not be anticipated and, certainly, they were not always what we would wish to call "delightful" or "wonderful." Yet
through them I was to become provoked, deeply stirred, into regarding the life around and within me anew.

 To be truthful, with this frequent nearness to the permeable margins of illness I sometimes felt resistance to being so moved-as if unwilling to attend to its unique vocation. But soon enough these periods would pass, and I would find myself becoming grateful again for the warm contagion of my friend's courage and surprising joy, which offered me an opportunity to observe not just her own situation but mine as well. Eventually, through means I could not fully detect, the spirited manner in which she met her decline urged me to acknowledge and honour the very conditions on which life depends.

 Not long before Marion died I remember responding to a mutual friend who asked about her condition. "I'm afraid she's failing now," I replied. Very soon after uttering these words their inadequacy began to reverberate in me: "Failing what? Marion's doing nothing of the kind. She's succeeding in dying well." During my final visit, with other care-givers present, her wasted body suffered from a sort of prolonged arrhythmic turmoil. It cannot have been an easy thing. Yet, even amid this corporeal storm an intrinsic stillness could be discerned, as if the searing disciplines of her illness were now giving Marion the strength of being to remain alert to those awakenings or reawakenings that she had so generously earned.

 Dying is seldom easy: in spite of a life with few conspicuous troubles, I have this on good authority. But I have also seen that it can be done well, that a human being can be ennobled, somehow, right in the middle of all the loss and helplessness of it, such that one's passing is as good as it can be and may leave something deep and enduring in those who remain. Of late, I have come to discover a more vivid transcription of life's fragility and delight registering within me, a recurrent acceptance or gratitude for the kindness, honest struggles and worth of others. Perhaps it is being sentimental to say this, but in the wake of it all I have come to believe that to so revere life in any moment is to bring briefly to completion that gracious circle which begins with our birth.

 Quite by chance, since Marion's death a pair of journeys have reacquainted me with the principal wonders of my youth. Visiting my boyhood home last summer, I stood once more on the bank of the Kettle River, near the railway bridge which still passes over it. Naturally the location is unmistakable and dense with memories, but for me the river was also somewhat changed. I am not referring to the fundamental continuity of its movement, mind. Nor has its course veered noticeably or the land around it altered much; but it was shallower than I remember it having been for the time of year, and although it had always moved in much the same easy way it seemed older, more subdued. Perhaps I imagined this.

 From what I could see, my early calculations regarding its deepening bed or widening bank have not come to pass. Not yet, at least-for it is still so short a time in the life of the elements. There were some children swimming below as well as a boy idly drifting by on a large tube, and the familiarity of the whole scene briefly sparked again a sense of pleasure in the river's company, a wave of appreciation for a friend whose warmth of character has remained.

 Then, not long ago I visited Canada's east coast for the first time and stood on the outmost reach of Nova Scotia, looking out over the Atlantic. Here is a body of water wholly foreign in nature to the easygoing river I knew as a boy-an awesome, potent, surging presence even on a day of only modest winds. The primordial rock which offers up a shore at this site has, no doubt, weathered tides and storms and waves beyond reckoning. It has endured, as the ocean has, yet the variety of this endurance is distinctly its own-having become subtly lined, rounded, softened, even while remaining "itself" under the ocean's unrelenting movement. Happening upon this place as a casual tourist, I was not prepared for the impression it would leave on me. For, standing there on the other side of the continent, it was as if those most distant consequences of mutability I had envisioned as a child were realized at long last, and looking over this vast rock face I was moved, quite suddenly, by a patience whose only witness is time.

Source:  Philo Hove
Department of Religious Studies
University of Calgary
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary AB   T2T 1N4
In press.
Nature, Environment and Me:
Reflections on Self in a Changing World
ed., Michael Alesiuk