this so-called
reclaimed land has
lain bone dry

Alize: This second image is a black and white photo of the Banff Springs Hotel, in Banff National Park, there in the background are these huge majestic mountains. And then moving forward in the image is the hotel, so the architectural structure. And as we move into the foreground of the image, right in the center of the photograph is a Royal Canadian Mounted Police on horseback. And he's sort of like looking out over the land. And to the left of him is a car with a few people kind of leaning against it, and one person sitting on top. And it says, this is October, 1929. And I guess what I find interesting, well, there's so many things that are interesting about this image, but it's a very telling image. I yeah, it's sort of hard to talk about because it seems again, so starkly clear to me but it reminds me of -- it reminds me of picturesque paintings of the New World, quote, unquote, that would have been on Vogue in the height of kind of European naturalism. And I can't think of any examples right now. But there's so many examples in the history of European painting so this photograph actually feels like it's reproducing this sensory experience of those paintings, which is to to demonstrate the the vast expanse of the landscape as metaphor for terra nullius, and unoccupied land right that there are no Indigenous people on this land. There are no animals on this land. This is land that is here for white European settlers to have dominion over and it is guarded by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who continue to this day to protect that idea, and those spaces for for settlers primarily. And not just white European settlers at this point, but all settlers in Canada so I find this images really profound and emblematic of the foundations of this national project. 

Please pause the track here until you are settled at a spot near the river. 

Marina: about Woscotonach + treaty with fish nations [Taking a moment by the river]
The river has moved across all, or the majority of the land we’ll be walking on today. Where we currently see it, it was in the past, it flowed through the park, and everything in between. The river has shifted overtime, and been displaced by infrastructure, pollution and the arrival of settlers, resulting in Indigenous communities not being able to practice traditional sustenance from fishing a river that was once abundant with salmon. The common narrative to settlers is that the salmon disappeared because of extreme pollution, but it's imperative to know that relationships and treaties with the animal nation are honored and practiced by indigenous folks, and when sacred treaties are broken and there is lack of respect, the salmon disappear. In Looking after Gdoo-naaganinaa: Precolonial Nishinaabeg Diplomatic and Treaty Relationships, Leanne Simpson says: “Nishinaabeg relationships with the fish nations meant that we had to be accountable for how we used this “resource.” Nishnaabeg people only fished at particular times of the year in certain locations. They only took as much as they needed and never wasted.” This beautiful agreement tied with respect, ritual and ceremony reminds me to look to my own ancestral teachings about relationships with non-human kin. There have been recent efforts to name the waterway and the parks Wonscontonach after the torching Salmon. 

When you’re ready, continue walking along the path and play the next part of the audio narrative. Once you reach the part of the path that is the highest, and you can see the railway path above your head, turn around and start walking back up (north) towards the rocks where we started the walk. 

Petrina: It's kind of disorienting for me to read about colonial histories of commodifying New World Resources. And the colony of Canada like not being discussed in most like mainstream accounts of research is thinking about like, how those histories are just presented as so separate. I mean, for the most part, the the books that I've been reading are all from a very, like, ooou British Empire so glorious, so powerful in its golden era of dominating the entire world. But yeah, that that narrative is so far removed from, like our education in Canadian history. The crown is kind of this like omnipresent force that's never really discussed, like, what kind of tangible effects it has on everyday life for both Indigenous and settler communities.

Marina: I feel like the way the narrative has been presented to me is that is that it's just a symbolic connection. It doesn't have any real effect. 

Petrina: Yeah, absolutely. Even I remember like, you know, learning about who's the Queen's who was like the Crown's representative in Canada - is it the Governor General? 

Marina: Yeah. 

Petrina: You know, it's like, well, what does that person do? And I, in my, like, in my experience, you know, the way we teach what that job is, or like, what that person's role is, is that it's "representative" of, like, it always uses the word representative as this like distancing. Or like, yeah, like you said, just symbolic, symbolic of a relationship. But yeah, not a stupid question very relevant, I think. And, like for my research, I think so much about the ways that colonialism informed small details and, and domestic details of people's lives of my family's lives. Because I think we also understand colonialism to be you know, these like grand political narratives. And we look at them from the academic perspective of objectivity, and of like, as from like, an anthropological perspective almost. But very rarely do we consider how it impacts like the lived experiences of real people. I know that like, I know that this must be the case for so many immigrants, especially immigrants who are fleeing, like violence or turmoil or any other kind of oppression. You often just like submit your immigration application to a bunch of different countries and whichever one accepts you first like whichever envelope you get in the mail first is like the country and the new life that you commit to and that's always really I think about that a lot how like random is in a way of like where we end up and and how we make those decisions. But even thinking about my own family's history my you know, my my ancestors were originally from southern China. And when the CCP came into rule, they lost their farm their land that they were living on, so they fled to Hong Kong and Hong Kong culture became kind of like really intertwined with like a glorification of the British Empire and in a real like a white supremacist perspective. And you know, you can still see a lot of those tense relationships today. And so my parents Yeah. Even though they aren't white grew up and even you know, raised my brother and I with a real perspective, informed by white supremacy and by valuing things that the Western world values like, individualism, like, capitalism. But even those are like really broad strokes in a way

{wandering piano droplets with slow chords adrift underneath, a shimmering like sound floats above, coming in and out}

Marina: 

This next section is intended as you’re walking back up towards where we started the walk. Once you get to the rocks, please settle to listen to track 4. 
‍
Our discussion around the management of parks, led to a conversation with Christina Battle about how plants that grow on the outskirts, where she grew up in Millwoods, Edmonton are often unmanaged. As we walk along the path, notice the plants that are overgrown through cracks in the asphalt and concrete, pushing through the fence...notice a bed of snails scattered around the hill on the right side, reminding and hinting to us that the river has flowed across this land, and water rises up to meet these built up roads. We also begin a discussion about the meaning of reclamation, as it's often the focal point of any current or historical texts about this river; specifically efforts to clean, revitalize and repair the damage by settlement, pollution and industrialization.

Christina: 
I think that that tends to happen on the outskirts, right, where it's like, you can see like tons of plants just growing on their own, and like no one's chopping them down or mowing it, because there isn't that level of care that I think in other neighborhoods, the way that they define care have like pristine lawns and neighborhoods and all of those things that doesn't exist. For me like that is what I think of when I think of like living in the city is being able to have access to that. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right, those tend to be the types of plants that spread on their own, like dandelions are a great example. I would and I love that we also pronounce cattails differently. I keep wondering, too, and thinking if that's also like, I feel like that's also maybe like a specifically Alberta pronunciation. But because they grow from rhizomes underneath the ground, like they spread out of control, which I love about them. And that's why they tend to exist so strongly in these sort of outskirts, right, because they're allowed to. Here we have like a lot of grasses, tall grasses that do the same. And, you know, as you if you start from like the edges of the city or the periphery, you see tons of grasses, wild grasses, and they're really tall, and no one kind of cares. And then as you travel closer to the center, like they completely disappear because they're managed.

Marina: You mentioned that you feel more comfortable living on the edge. Why do you say that?

Christina: Um, yeah, I, it's something that I've just sort of really realized in the last few years, I came to kind of realize that when I lived in London, Ontario, because I lived on the East end, there right next to the tracks, the train tracks, which cross again, that city, and there are two sort of major tracks that cross the city, and the city is split in half. And like, when I first moved there, because I was going to school, everyone was like, Oh, you should live I can't even remember the name of the neighborhood now. And I went to that neighborhood and I was like, I just absolutely do not feel comfortable. And you know, part of it is like, part of it is class based, I think part of it is definitely like racial, because those neighborhoods tend to be just like super white, and upper class / middle class. And so then I was sort of like okay, so I just started driving further to the edge of the city and that's where like it was just much more diverse, economically and socially and culturally. I just feel more comfortable and yeah, like why is that... you know, part of it like why is it that I sort of know that is maybe also because of where I grew up, which was the edge of the city it was like a new community that actually like there have been studies written about it because millwoods was apparently built specifically with diversity in mind. So it was very diverse community. It was on the edge, it was like a suburb on the edge of the city. It was a bit of an experiment I learned now, in design, in urban design. That community also just gets like a really terrible rep I think because you know, like the way that mm yeah, I'm clearly I'm picking my language carefully because I'm like super sensitive about it, but people who live here have never thought very highly of Millwoods. It's primarily because it's like black and brown. And so, like when crime happens there or happen there, it's often associated with like, the community, like that's the way that the community is read. And that extends into today as well. So it continues to have like a really negative view, I think. But yeah, like growing up there, like it was at the edge of the city. And like, even when I was a teenager, like driving home late at night, it was like I was driving along like, railroad tracks and open fields. And it's the same even though now I live on the other side of the city. It's the same feeling where, which I just love like driving around late at night, in the middle of nowhere, that feeling of like, just like open fields, as far as you can see. And you know that you're still in the city like it's not, I'm not romanticizing it in this like natural, rural sense. Because it's very industrial like, and there are a lot of problems associated with it. Like when I was sort of joking at first when we were chatting about how like, Oh, I cough a lot more now that I'm back here like that is completely tied to like pollution and industry. And I forgot how big of a like big of a part of my life that was growing up here and like lung issues and respiratory problems. And when I moved away like strangely, when I moved to Toronto, I'd never suffered from any of that. So for 20 years, I haven't really had to deal with it. And now that I'm back, I'm dealing with it again. So you know, there are repercussions of living on the edge of the city because that tends to be where most of the polluting industry exists. No coincidence that that also tends to be where most of the diversity exists and lives.The trouble I have thinking about reclamation, especially as an industry, because here in Alberta, it's a major industry now, right? Like it is despite the fact that our current government is still pretty hell bent on like, pushing forward this oil and gas like dying horse, or it's such a terrible saying, but a lot of oil and gas workers have shifted into reclamation, because that's where the work is right. And ironically, it's quite similar work in terms of like labor and practice. But there's a strange thing with reclamation, where I feel like the conversation is always really future forming like oh, in we're like saving the day for the future. And there is this complete neglect to talk about, like why the land needs to be reclaimed in the first place. So I really worry about that, like that sort of moving forward without thinking about, like the reasons why. And it sort of sounds like it's interesting that like you're specifically focusing on a heritage site, which sounds like it's actually kind of doing the same thing. Like kind of, you know, doing great work, but then also hiding behind language a little bit in a way to not draw attention to the reason why it's needed.

{an ascending electric piano is joined by swelling strings that layer over each other}

Marina:

As we take risks back at these rocks, we return to the subject of the hotsprings as a marker of the first Park and tourist site in Canada. The hot springs recall embodied experience of water and bathing as leisurely experience, but also as a resource for mental health. And when access is missing, particularly for the diasporic person, the imagination of water as a resource can transcend boundaries, governmental city boundaries, the boundaries drawn up by damage waterways, boundaries of asphalt and rock built upon bodies of water. This can also include an economical boundary and displacement from one's ancestral bodies of water. For this next part, feel free to get comfortable and close your eyes or whatever makes you feel at ease. And take a deep breath to settle into your body.As we take rest back at these rocks, we return to the subject of the hot springs, as a marker of the first park and tourist site in Canada. The hot springs recall embodied experience of water and bathing as leisurely experience, but also as a resource for mental health...and when access is missing, particularly for the diasporic person, the imagination of water as a resource can transcend boundaries: governmental, city boundaries, the boundaries drawn by damaged waterways, boundaries of asphalt and rock built upon bodies of water. This can also can include an economical boundary, and displacement from one’s ancestral bodies of water. 

For this next part feel free to sit at the rocks and close your eyes, or whatever makes you comfortable and take a deep breath to settle into your body. 

Alize: Yeah, and I guess when I think about like my relationship with baths, swims, water like I mean I have a lot of feelings about it, but like I grew up in the water, like swimming in the sea every as a child, because I went back and forth between Turtle Island and Anatolia present day Turkey and Turkey has three seas on either side, Mediterranean Aegean -  four Marmara and the Black Sea. So I grew up in the sea. And I think it's it's something that I returned to, I would say through my imagination, that is a regulating force for my nervous system. And though I can't get to the sea here, I can get to the lake. And I have lived in Vancouver, so I got to the ocean there. So I feel like the sensorial experience of being with water is a huge, or is a major support to my nervous system. Moving water... cause one of the prompts in my, in the project, is it right for, to, or from a place that you return to. And so that can be a space that exists in your imagination, something that you return to intentionally or that arrives, you know, when you get activated and you're suddenly back where you were when you were seven and having an abusive experience, for example. But so I'm sort of interested in how -- how we can like call upon our imaginations to recall embodied sensation that can be supportive or helpful in the present, whether we're able to be in physical proximity to the regulating power of water, that even through our imagination, we can recall sensation in the body. And that's really interesting to me that that's possible. Sometimes. And I guess I've had this experience where getting bodywork done, where I had have had someone ask me, I want you to imagine a resource that you can draw on and because I'm interested in, I'm interested in trauma and healing, and that there's often this language of drawing on a resource if you're feeling overwhelmed or because we're so depleted through capitalism and systemic racism and any number of intersectional ways that we are oppressed and diminished in or existence, that, to imagine something that can resource us that is, is has positive affect positive feeling is is, is language that I've come across before, like through more healing modality community. And so one of my primary resources is water, is rivers moving, is the sea. So I often record try to actively recall the feeling of laying by the sea, hearing the sound of the moving water and the rhythm, feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin. And the groundedness of being held by sand. And I find even as I'm describing it to you, it's conjured for me. And there's a sense of rest and rest restoration that happens in my body. And I'm, I'm sitting here in Tkaronto in mid March, like it's, it's cold out. So, you know, I yeah, I'm interested in the power of the imagination, you know, and, and I think also as for people, or you know, I shouldn't speak for other people, but as someone who is at a distance from their ancestral homelands, like, I think we use our imaginations a lot to travel toremember to keep alive to, you know, like, keep things alive in us that are maybe, like harder to access.

Marina: Slowly open your eyes and take a deep, slow breath. When you're ready, we'll now take the time to walk to Ted Morton Mills heritage set, or Wisconsin AK Park.

{violins and cellos drone with piano droplets in the background, slow intermittent chime sounds fill the air towards the end}
‍

Marina: 
We’re now entering into Todmorden Mills heritage site /Woscotonach park and wildflower preserve...Please make your way to the bridge overlooking the river, abundant with cattails.In this project I’m grappling with the complexities of this ‘park’ space, as a preserve...what is a public, yet preserved space that is managed by the city and other insular bodies, like the wildflower preserve committee? Who does the public include? How is this heritage written, and who is it for? And what does restoration mean, when hiding behind the language of ecological revitalization? 

{a lone synthesizer is joined by other droning sounds, they sound like melodic wind, or rain. the synthesizer plays an intermittent ascending melody-blending in with all of the layers of gauze like sound before fading out}

{Marina’s voice describing an oxbow is gradually drowned out by the sounds of the river}
An oxbow wetland is a meander of a stream, river or creek, that has become separated from the flow of water. Oxbow wetlands store excess water that might otherwise lead to flooding, filter water to improve water quality and provide habitat to a variety of wildlife. Over time, some oxbows fill in with sediment due to erosion of soil in surrounding areas.As a seepage area, the oxbow through this park received much of the polluted area As a seepage area, received much of the polluted water. When there’s flooding, the ‘oxbow’ receives excess water from the Don Valley until flooding subsides. 

Christina: 
Something we were just talking about about. Like when we were talking about timescales of sort of, I guess, like cleaning up pollution or reclaiming or revitalizing. I was just thinking about how cattails like they're doing all of that work all the time and we just don't see it. And maybe they're the ones doing that work in a way that is beyond the limits of the like human decisions that we're making. Because so much like this is I think about this with grasses too and they're they're quite similar that because their roots are rhizomatic like they they're going all over the place. We just don't see it. So maybe they are like shifting with that river, and sort of responding to it in ways that we just also can't see, or, and taking up pollutants and cleaning the air in ways that like, we can't see but benefit from. And I was also thinking about how, like when you first brought them up too how, like, in my experience, I primarily see them in places where I think, I mean, they're clearly naturally occurring because they're popping up on their own, but they're in sites and locations that I don't think they're wanted to be in urban sites. I mean, of course, I've seen them in nature. I know really picking my language carefully, because like, what is it? What do I mean by nature or like, but yeah, like, I tend to see them in the city. And it's there in places where I think they're there just because no one cares to get rid of them, in a way. So they're like doing all of this actually, like really important work. I suspect that if the city was paying more attention, probably they would want to try to get rid of them. But they're actually doing a lot of work because they're in ditches on the side of the roads and the highways in like, really heavily polluted neighborhoods. You know, probably no one's monitoring the work that they are doing, but I have no doubt that they are.

Marina: Please make your way through the parking lot as we continue to delve into a conversation around cattails.

Christina: My sense of the area is that it's dry. But now after thinking this through along with you, like I'm realizing that actually there's clearly water underneath, right, like otherwise they wouldn't be there. Like they're often on the side of roads. And so they feel like they're depressed from the altitude that the road is at. So like, clearly the, the roads themselves have been built up on top of the land. So maybe that map that I shared, like, my neighborhood is in the top, like the left of the river. So there are red lines there, which indicates water, right. So definitely, there is water underneath that the cattails are tapping into. And then I think because they also grow so tall that and their roots are so embedded below the earth, like what we see is just this remnant of or this indicator of water being there. And I find that really interesting because you can't see the water otherwise, like no, you wouldn't -- it wouldn't occur to you that it exists. But I love thinking about them as like popping up as this like marker like water is here.
Yeah, so it's an it's an aerial map of the city of Edmonton from 2001. So the city has changed a lot. It expands like much beyond what this map is looking at right now. But it shows the North Saskatchewan river meandering or moving across the center of the city, which splits the city into and then it also shows all of the creeks and tributaries that extend off of the river, the majority of which now are underground, so and they're underground, but it's not that they don't exist anymore, right? So those creeks are still there, those bodies of water are there, although, you know, they naturally sort of swell and dry up along with the weather and the climate. But they're more or less invisible from view, typically when you're on the land. But then the map just sort of gives us a sense of where they actually exist and how they flow outside of our view. The city also a few years ago, apparently released to the public flood maps that had been previously not public, for unknown reasons. But yeah, you can look it's a part of their city wide flood mitigation strategy from 2016 and that map, the maps that they have there also show more, not just the natural creeks and things that are now underground. But also the way that the plumbing exists across the city. So you can actually see how prone where you live is to flooding or not. And it also makes use of the same red lines that the other map does to, to map but to map the sort of missing creeks or the creeks that have been forgotten. And I was also like truly, a little bit shocked to see how much red exists around my where I live. And the majority of the city is prone to flooding because of this connection between the creeks and the waterways that are covered up and which the city is built upon. But then also because of the way that the city built, it's draining systems which apparently are not strong enough to control flooding. This idea or just this knowledge of how extensive the movement of water or the covering up of water has been in cities and places in this country. Like I actually don't think I was cognizant of that before like only a few years ago. And and then now thinking about it more this year, too, and especially through your introduction of this site. And it's kind of mind boggling actually. Like, just to think of the decision making process of like, covering up a waterway in order to build infrastructure, I don't know, there's like a really twisted boldness in decision making from like a design perspective or, yeah.

Marina: And also the fact that so if this, if this place has gone through, it goes through floods every year cyclically. And part of that is because of the infrastructure that's being built and that has been built and the fact that they built roads on top of the waterway and the waterway's like been cut and moved and straightened. And so floods are kind of like in a way the the waterway's reaction to being kind of polluted and built over. So I see that these underwater plants and if one in the past in the far far past, the this area was completely covered up in water, then these plants would have been witness to they would have been witness to that in the past and witness to each flood and each change in water level.

These next two tracks are a walk through the wildflower preserve, and ending at the pond. Our exploration continues with the lotus/water lily and discuss how it's been hunted by “new world explorers” in the height of british imperialism. 

Drifting with signs of the river’s movement through this preserve, we reflect on personal experiences and witness cattails, the water lily, turions, and pondweed floating, submerged and deep. With each turn and dive, we peel away a layer and find ourselves at the bottom, held by sand, shifting our perspective, looking up at the water surface and sky. We weave our stories and experiences as a counter to the sound pods placed along the preserve’s path, that tell the site’s story through an authoritative british male voice. 

Petrina: 
The accounts written by colonial surveyors were that the water lily leafs were so dense that their boats had trouble passing through the river. And for some reason, none of these surveyors could swim so there was always like an intense fear of drowning. And then later on when they were like trying to harvest the plant it the surveyors, the planet, explorers, were taking such physical risks because they were trying to go beneath the surface of the water to like, take a cutting of a full plant, or dig up some of its roots, or harvest a seed pod, which were described as being very spiky, and like the size of a grapefruit. So yeah, I really like to imagine the hostility of this plant of like a defense mechanism. It's really great. You know, I came into researching about plants and like plants and flowers because I understood my my mother's career as a florist was so informed by aesthetics and cultural references, of a very Eurocentric perspective of flower arranging and forestry and gardening. And that is something that I really thought a lot about, because there wasn't any other option for her to learn from an institution that was not reinforcing these systems. And so that led me to want to like kind of consider how plants and flowers how our perspective of plants and flowers have been informed by colonial legacies and white supremacy. So even that is like such a small, such a small like facet of life is like how we understand flowers are like how we design our gardens. These are like very small kind of domestic details of our people's lives, that are really informed by white supremacy and colonialism. So it's like he can take the smallest kind of detail of your life and draw like pull a thread and find its roots in these like, yeah, in British colonialism and thinking about systems big and small.

So I've been reading a number of books about this really, like intense cultural obsession with a giant water lily that was found in what was known as British Guyana during the early years of Queen Victoria's reign. And so this was about like in the 1830s, there was a surveyor named schomburg, who was commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society of London to survey what was like a new colony for the crown. And just kind of by chance, among all of the other like thousands of specimens that he was collecting and sending back to Britain, he came across a giant water lily in the Amazon that had like huge floating leaves over eight feet in diameter, and huge, beautiful flowers that were like one foot wide. And so he kind of catalogs this, this finding, and the crown claimed it as a discovery and it was named the Victoria Regia. After Queen Victoria, after this waterlily was discovered, there was like a very intense decade of many, many hunters and explorers and gardeners competing to try to cultivate like the first successful specimen of this waterlily so they tried to take parts of it and ship them back to Britain. They tried to preserve a specimen as like a dried flower to send back. They tried to send seedpods back to Britain and tried to germinate seeds. And I think it was like over 10 years later that this one gardener named Joseph Paxton, who was the Duke of Devonshire's head gardener, finally got a waterlily to bloom, he had built this really huge glass structure with a tank to heat the water that like a tank full of heated water as well as like a mechanism to keep the water moving. And he also was understood to be the first to use electric lights to to simulate sun. And that's what kind of gave his water lilies the edge over all of the other water lilies that were not doing as well in other hot houses across the country. And so when he finally got this water lily to bloom, it was like, you know, seen as this, like, celebratory, joyous occasion. And it was like national headline news. It's definitely because of 19th century colonial conquests, that we have the systems of classification, in fields like botany or even like, you know, any of the like kind of taxonomy. Any any of those like classification systems have its roots in colonialism, and the knowledge that the Empire chose to value and the knowledge that the Empire chose to disregard, I'm learning are very concise decisions. And it's these like systems that have designed the academic fields that would inform like the design and approach to a wildflower preserve today.

{an organ like swelling electric guitar is joined by piano droplets like light rain}

Marina: 
So the turion is is a is a bud that it, it's basically the way that I understand it is that the plant the aquatic plants grow this bud at the end of the season so that and that stays dormant under under water or under ground over the winter and then buds in the spring so it's how they survive the winter and we'll see so it says that they protect fragile plant shoots from freezing and decaying. So the turions would protect the plant from dying in the winter. I've been you know, like in some of the other projects that I've done I have been really interested in the idea of dormancy and like how to be quiet and slow and resting and surviving the winter so I found these little organisms pretty interesting and I and I like that they're called resting buds because it kind of implies it implies rest but also new life but takes months to but it's kind of quietly doing all these things and having all these benefits but you don't see it until months later or you know they're kind of like small organisms that you wouldn't know notice. So So yeah, so that's what I'm interested in I'm interested in in like the idea that things are happening underwater below ground hidden that we're not aware of or seeing.

So, I'm gonna describe a sketch that I made that has the plant the turions so it has it has a sandy so it looks like a bird's eye view of a sandy bottom that has Yeah, so as though we're looking down on a bed of warm sand and the turians are swaying to the left of the bed. The lines of sand are drawn like circles and typography. layered above this there's horizontal, like a section cut through water floating above the turians and typography and the typography lines. I wanted to parallel both of lying in the sand and being warm with water above you because I was really interested in the idea of the benthos, which is being at the bottom of a body of water and warm while there's a sheet of ice that covers the the water above. I like to imagine overwintering in this way. Laying layering warmth, slowness, and sway budding and rest with ice.

Nabil: 
What I really like to do one day is to do ice diving. You diving in the winter in Canada, you have to dress special vest, its a dry vest and what you do is you break the ice because on the top you have a hard level of ice and then under the ice, you have water. So you break the ice which is about maybe 10-15 centimeters and then you make a hole and then you go and you dive underneath the ice. And you can see because if you look at the physics of water, the water at the zero degree, it floats to the top and the water at four degrees, it goes to the bottom and this is how the fish can survive the winter because zero degree will go up on the surface and then under the surface you have still water that is not icy. The fish will live its life and it's like everything around you on top of you is like crystal and then you're diving underneath the crystal

Marina: How do you know so much about this? 

Nabil: Because I'm a diver. 

Alize: But then honestly like the first place that I go with the waterlily is at is just my physical experience with water lilies in, in lakes on Turtle Island. And I had a really beautiful experience with the water lily last summer when I was in Algonquin Park, speaking of national parks, camping with my partner and we borrowed a canoe and there were water lilies in bloom. I had never smelled a water lily before. I have through my familial history, which is a curious and interesting thing. I have been canoeing a long time. My my mother married an American man when I was a child, and he is very wildernessy. 

Marina: Okay 

Alize: So he took us camping and all that Canadian stuff that my mother, like, there's no way she would have ever done that stuff. Like, absolutely not. And anyway, so I've canoed a lot, I guess, in my life then and been around water lilies, but I had never smelled one until this last summer and I was really like, drawn to the water lilies and taken by them and I smelled my first lily and it was absolutely intoxicating. I can't describe it, but the scent was like very, very affecting. So we were canoeing and you know, there are water lilies in the shallows but but as I've been learning or getting curious about water lilies have been looking into their structure and propagation all this stuff. And so I've learned that there they they have a rhizomatic structure. And that means that they their root structure, they can send out new shoots from different nodes of the route structure and so one lily that you encounter is connected through this network to all these other blooms and how, how they're in relationship both through their root system, but also through how they gather nutrients and share nutrients and how they are in relationship with light and share light, so, if if part of the lily patch is in the shade, then like one lily will grow long and outward to reach the sun. And then that is travels back to everyone else. And so I was canoeing and I kept trying to lean over the side of the, to smell the flowers, which is a terrible idea. And my, and my dog was in the canoe, like it was just, and then we, we were moving really slow and I kept my hand under one of the flowers and I brought it to my face, and that's how I smelled it. And, and I still like feel a kind of heartbreak at this moment where we're moving, and then the lily's stem broke, and the flower came with me as we move forward. And I hadn't meant to displace it. And I felt this combination of like a thrill that I was, I had it in my hand and I could smell it, and the sadness that I knew that I had essentially ended its life. And then I guess the other thing that I thought about or what or what I noticed too was that below the the flower, the stem was so long, it was so so and that led me to thinking about and kind of developing for myself meditation, like a grounding meditation practice that where I use my imagination tomeditate upon the waterlily and I'm going to explain this very well but something about this experience, like got me to be in relationship with the waterlily in a totally different way than I had before. And I'd previously had someone, Dragomir who is a Romani west coast artist and, and witch I would say, shared this grounding practice with me when I was on the west coast where they kind of talked us through a grounding exercise or or trance grounding exercise using seek help. They are kind of the forests of like Northwest Pacific water forests, and they have really long stems and they root on to the earth. And they have these huge stems and at the top, there are these bubbles that hold air and they keep the greenery kind of at the top of the water to capture the light. And then that light is sent down this really long stem, then routes to the earth. So they walked us through this visualization that had us travel like from the top of the plant down, and then to feel rooted, and then to travel back up. And the really profound piece for me around this grounding meditation is the movement from the surface of the water and the light. And this idea that the lily is in love with the light that they open with the sun and they go to sleep with the sun. And they drink in the light and somehow they transmute this light into sweetness. But I also like when I am with this image and thinking about like traveling that like imagining the length of your body, like following the length of a body weaving in the water downward and like what is that sensation to be grounded as the lily is in the bed of the the lake or the pond. And having that like movement of the water is part of its habitat that it needs to survive like moving water is crucial for them. So I think there's something there in imagining like my body, the lily, the lily's body is my body. I'm traveling the length of the stem in the water. I'm going deeper into the darkness and rooting into the earth. I can bring that up with me again back to the light of the surface and and that the lotus, you know in the end the water lily is really like open to the expanse of the sky.