Keeping to my local theme, the Canadian Rocky Mountain limestone plays an important role in the earth's CO2 balance and rain in our Rockies contributes to the ecology of the oceans. This, too, was noted in the Gaia hypothesis, and you can read about the chemical process in The great chemical reaction: life and death of Gaia. With global warming, this area is becoming wetter, yet the recent, strong, El Niño effect has reversed this, temporarily, and has been instrumental in the early start of Alberta's wildfire season and its devastating huge fires. Once again, we return to the Alberta Tar sands with its end product of bring even more CO2 into the atmosphere. It would almost seem as if Mother Nature is wagging her finger at us, but all of this are purely automatic ecological processes.
Evolution, too, is an automatic and natural process that grants no favour to any species, not even Man. We are currently in the midst of the world's sixth extinction event in its history. It is called the Holocene Extinction but it is also called the Anthropocene Extinction because it is man-made.
Yet nature has evolved to counteract anything that threatens its sovereignty: The Monsanto Corporation, in playing up to human greed and disregard for its offspring attempts to increase food production by building genetically modified organisms that are both food seeds and herbicides and pesticides. It uses unethical business methods, highly questionable scientific testing procedures and political/economic sway in order to ensure that the soil will eventually produce nothing more than giant dustbowls and that our children's children will starve, be less likely to be able to reproduce, and be far more subject to cancers, all for the sake of profit to us now. Read the following:
Claims that GMO seed reduce the amount of herbicides and pesticides used has been proven to be false. Evolution has produced resistant superweeds and superbugs:
Perhaps the evolutionary process is starting to include Homo Sapiens in the Holocene Extinction process. But don't worry, life will persist. Have an active weekend.
"Let them eat cake" (attributed to Marie Antoinette when told that the people had no bread to eat).
The wonderful thing about totalitarianism is that it most often presents a very clear target when things become intolerable. When democracy is absent or it fails and when the choice of political rule is either the rock or the hard place, revolution is nature's way of evening things up. You might call it an example of extreme evolutionary adaptation. One adapts to the situation by removing the situation; when the herd has eaten all of the grass, the herd moves elsewhere. With a single dictator it is sometimes enough just to drag him from his bed in the night.
Of course, when things get to that point it is also an indication that everyone had been doing a pretty bad job of adapting to things for a very long time: The chain of events that led to Saddam Hussein being dragged from the hole where he was hiding started in the First World War. In fact, the very existence of his rule was just one phase in Iraq trying to ensure that it had a deep-water port from which to ship its oil to the world. It does not sound like an unreasonable request, does it? Which do you prefer? friendly competition resulting in lower prices and less inflation, or monopolies resulting in high prices, inflation, war and death? A little early adaptation could have averted much. The democracy of the early Greek city states was more than just electing people to do everything, it was actual rule by the people and the rich and the poor lived not that far away from each other and there were plenty of people occupying social positions at every point between the two. Some ancient slaves had a much better life than many of today's working poor. In ancient Celtic societies every level of society had effective representation from Druid judges who were not that much better off than those who they represented.
But nothing exists in isolation: lots of cheap oil can contribute to man-made global warming because you have to burn an awful lot of fuel to ship things from distant monopolistic producers to local markets. Car-pooling might feel virtuous but it is not solving the real problem is it? I have been watching glaciers shrink, visibly, for fifty years. I can even remember small glaciers that do not exist any more and the winter snows I remember at the age of sixteen I have not seen the like for many years. On Tuesday morning, The Fort McMurray fire to the north-east of me had joined another wild fire and was 229,000 hectares in size. That is almost the size of London, Madrid and Washington DC combined. But that was two fires that had joined. There are 25 wildfires currently burning across Alberta. Calgary seems to have had about 5 mm of rain today, 5-10 mm was forecast. We might get another 1mm over the next two weeks. But even today's rain is just fairly local, it is dry to the north of us.
With bad habits brought about by our mutual love affair with techism the enemy is ourselves; we cannot drag a dictator from his hole or start a revolution to overthrow those who are to blame for our problems. Always, we feel that each of us is not really the person to blame, others are doing much worse than we are. We sometimes take the bus; eat less; use lower wattage light bulbs; recycle.
Happily, nature is on top of all that, too. I will talk of nature's solutions tomorrow.
With cognitive computing IBM Watson is offering all manner of Application Programming Interfaces (API's) whereby you can take advantage of its extreme level of computing power. One of these is called "Personality". Of course, I immediately thought of Jungian personality types; Briggs-Myers; Humanmetrics and so on. Mind you, all of these already use computer applications far less powerful than IBM Watson and it would be speculative, indeed, to try and analyse anyone's personality just from a sample of something they had written. Even human estimations on bodies of work, descriptions of people by others and observation of the person can only go so far. Sure, it is easy enough (if you know what you are doing) to separate the introvert from the extravert but as you go deeper, it becomes progressively more difficult. The average person would not even be able to separate the introvert from the extravert. I am mistaken for an extravert all the time. You see, Jung's classifications are far from intuitive and his definitions are often very different from dictionary definitions of the same word. A sociopath, for example is an extreme version of one of his "rational" types. This would make no sense at all to anyone not well read in Jung.
Pursuing the personality links further I came across this classification: Agreeableness; Conscientiousness; Extraversion; Emotional Range; Openness. It had all the hallmarks of a business-oriented personality classification, but I thought I would give it the benefit of the doubt and look at "The science behind the service" and I found "For Jung, extraverts were more focused on the outer world and introverts on their own inner mentality". Of course, no reference was given for this idiotic statement. Perhaps it came from a book entitled "Jung: By Dummies, for Dummies" or some tabloid at the supermarket checkout, who knows? Let me set this straight: Extraverts look at the outer, visible workings of themselves, others and the world; Introverts look at the inner, hidden, workings of themselves, others and the world. Extraverts are not too keen on spirituality and aesthetics; Introverts do not get terribly excited by accounting and selling Ferrari's. If you want the very best systems analyst never pick an extravert, they are most likely only going to see the top levels of anything.This would be magnified a hundredfold if you are looking at social systems. If the extravert was so focused in the external world, we might expect them all to be rather poorly dressed.
Reading down in the classification I came across "[Extraversion:] Friendliness / Outgoing / Warmth: Genuinely like other people and openly demonstrate positive feelings toward others." All sociopaths are extraverts so let's take Ted Bundy. He sure was able to openly demonstrate positive feelings toward others. The problem was that for some of those who believed him, it was the last thing they ever did. Not only did he not "genuinely like other people", he could not even perceive people as individuals, just as things in his own environment to do with as he wished.
But it gets far more complex than that. An individual has both Introverted and Extraverted traits even though they will be dominantly one or the other. I am an introverted intuitive, but my feeling function is extraverted. I can, and do, speak very passionately about things and this why most people see me as an extravert.
If you read yesterday's post, you will see that with IBM Watson being very fashionable, the business world is likely to become even more screwed up than it already is.
Marshall McLuhan said "The medium is the message". Instead of focusing on the content within the digital age, we find we become more focused on the means of transmitting that content. When these means become fashionable, and desirable, we no longer yearn for the content but for the machines that brings it to us. then we fashion ourselves in the image of these machines.
Joseph Campbell noted that in the movies, the credits roll after the hero kills the bad guys, wins the prize and gets the girl.The mythological hero is positioned mid-way in our lives. After his victory, he returns to his people to teach them ways of avoiding the things that led to the hero's conflict. He becomes the sage and brings wisdom. But the audience becomes the hero in their minds and go nowhere. They fight and kill and fight and kill again and the only goal, always, is the prize. The economies cycle boom and bust and never progress beyond that; the GMO seeds kill insects and weeds and do not replenish the earth and the plants that grow from them produce seeds that can never be used and seeds have to be purchased again to repeat the sterile cycle until the earth gives up or the insects and the weeds evolve. We click the "like" button for the content but do not add to it. We become the machine. In The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan quotes the physicist Heisenberg who is discussing "science as a part of the interplay between man and Nature":
"In this connection it has often been said that the far-reaching changes in our environment and in our way of life wrought by this technical age have also changed dangerously our ways of thinking, and that here lie the roots of the crises which have shaken our times and which, for instance, are also expressed in modern art. True, this objection is much older than modern technology and science, the use of implements going back to mans earliest beginnings. Thus, two and a half thousand years ago, the Chinese sage Chuang-Tzu spoke of the danger of the machine when he said:
"As Tzu-Gung was travelling through the regions north of the river Han, he saw an old man working in his vegetable garden. He had dug an irrigation ditch. The man would descend into the well, fetch up a vessel of water in his arms and pour it out into the ditch. While his efforts were tremendous the results appeared to be very meagre.
"Tzu-Gung said. 'There is a way whereby you can irrigate a hundred ditches in one day, and whereby you can do much with little effort. Would you not like to hear of it?' Then the gardener stood up, looked at him and said, 'And what would that be?'
"Tzu-Gung replied, 'You take a wooden lever, weighted at the back and light in front. In this way you can bring up water so quickly that it just gushes out. This is called a draw-well.'
"Then anger rose up in the old man's face, and he said, 'I have heard my teacher say that whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine, grows a heart like a machine, and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in the strivings of his soul. Uncertainty in the strivings of the soul is something which does not agree with honest sense. It is not that I do not know of such things; I am ashamed to use them.'"
After a while any art within the remaining content is also lost and the content is designed only to propagate the machine that brought the content:
An early prototype of IBM cognitive computing system: Watson photo: Clockready
I built my own expert system before I had even heard of them; I had my own web site before the White House had theirs; at one time, my domain writer2001.com was listed in the top 100 domains of the WWW. People still think it was something created in 2001, but I picked the name as something futuristic to reflect Stanley Kubrick's film: 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, I find that the computer HAL's dialogue in the movie starting with "Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?" eerily prophetic.
In the mid-nineties I was coming up with all sorts of ideas about how the WWW might be used. Some of my ideas were quickly followed by the thought: "Oh no, I can't do that. That would be totally evil!" Over the next few years I saw all of those ideas being utilized and, thankfully, methods being created to prevent them. There was one idea that I did use that could have had phenomenally evil applications. It was in the area of "perceptual engineering", but fortunately it was, and still is, beyond the technical abilities of the WWW. I used it to create very effective flood evacuation maps, but these were produced as printed maps and could not be reverse engineered (although one large Canadian corporation spent an entire year trying, unsuccessfully, to do just that). Even though unsuccessful, the action had disastrous consequences and I ceased doing any business, at all, in Canada, and my methods and the theories behind them do not even exist in any digital file. Unlike the other ideas, no one has even got anywhere near anything approaching them. When I die, the ideas will die too.
Sometime around the end of the millennium, I came up with an idea for a database structure which could link disparate types of knowledge. My late wife and I (she was the nuts and bolts tech person, while I was the theorist) began to work on a database structure I called Arethusa. I named it after the Fountain of Arethusa in ancient Syracuse. It had three nested tiers that I evolved from the mythological classification system used in Greek numismatics, they were Object; Attribute; Associated object. The associated object would also be an object, in its own right, complete with its attributes and further associated objects. Here is a very simple example: There is a car (object) with a box of oranges on the back seat. Cars are not issued with boxes of oranges, but they are issued with wheels (attribute). However, anyone can place a box of oranges on the back seat of their car (associated object). These three simple categories can be used for anything in the universe. We found out that databases could not process such complex levels of data. We had originally come up with a way of linking the entire world's cultural content and an employee of the World Bank even drew us up a sample grant application to put that into practice at a surprisingly low cost mostly using localized labour in several countries they felt were at most at risk of losing their traditional cultures at that time. This included all manner of cultural content: stories, dance; legends and so on. It was not a UNESCO cultural property clone (which I consider does far more harm than good as it inhibits cross-cultural syncretism, the very building blocks of civilization).
Hearing about the latests advancements in IBM's Watson. I began to wonder if we might just have reached the amount of computing power that Arethusa needed. I began to look at it its current and projected applications. Then, with a shudder, I remembered something that fellow Albertan Marshall McLuhan had said. We will talk about that tomorrow.
It was March 26th when I placed an order for Marie-Louise von Franz, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus
It never showed up. The replacement copy order was confirmed on April 23 with the statement that it would take 5-8 business days to reach me after a few days to prepare the order. The 5-8 business days have passed and now I am wondering about the definition of "a few days". Surely this means less than a week? But I am also wondering if it, too, will ever reach me.
It is the last book I need for my research on a series about T. E. Shaw (formerly T. E. Lawrence, or "Lawrence of Arabia") from his service in the Royal Air Force in India to his death. I cannot think of any 20th century person more expensive to research than T. E. It requires the purchase of at least two first edition books that are not available for interlibrary loans and are generally not found in either public or university libraries. Even the book I ordered, which is only tangentially related exists in only two libraries in Canada. For another $650 I could order another set of books that might enhance my results even more, but you have to draw the line somewhere, and $650 is a lot to spend on a "maybe".
The delay, if there is anything positive to say about it, at least gives me time to reflect more on T.E.'s personality as that is the niche I am carving for myself in the more than 100 biographical studies that have been published. Being, also, an introverted intuitive is a distinct advantage, but T. E. was an unusual person regardless of his basic personality type. Reading what others have said about him requires some study of their personality, too, and T. E. also responded differently to different sorts of people and this can also depend on how he was approached by them.
So I continue to ponder and to wait. I just hope that I am not waiting for Godot.
"My wife, returning from a party in the autumn of 1920, spoke of having met Lawrence. A day or two later he came to the house, a small shy youth, fair and blue-eyed — I was surprised, as were most people at his unheroic appearance. He returned from time to time, sat to me for a drawing..."
Sir William Rothenstein, in: T. E. Lawrence by his Friends, Ed. A. W. Lawrence, Jonathan Cape, London, First edition, 1937, p.287
Here in Calgary there is no evidence of the devastation happening 656 kilometers (408 miles) to the NNE: we have sunny skies and the air quality is good. Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi has said that Calgary is also prepared to send resources for the Fort McMurray wildfire. People wanting to take advantage of the warm weather here should first check what fire bans are in place. The wildfire season has started early and there is no telling what might be in store for us this summer.
Before presenting the last chapter of the preview of War in an age of innocence, I am posting the first commercial message to appear on this blog. For more than three years and 680 posts you have not been bombarded with ads or my appeals for donations. There are few financial advantages in being an independent researcher: no grant money; no tenure; no promotions. Yet computers get old and books get more expensive. I even send an annual and large (for me) contribution to the Society of Antiquaries of London. It is financially supported by its Fellows and receives no public funding.
So if you have enjoyed reading these posts or have discovered some helpful information among them, then consider buying my novel. It is not even expensive. If you happen to have a Kindle Unlimited membership, you can even read it for free. I don't mind. You don't even need a Kindle reader as Amazon with provide you with a free app for reading books on your desktop computer or mobile device. If you want to feel especially virtuous, then share the news of the book through any social media and give it likes, stars, and thumbs-ups wherever you can. Send a link to your friends. For something really special, write a review on it for Amazon or Goodreads. It does not have to go viral to be able to provide me with enough money to replace my old and creaking Frankencomputers, but it would be nice if it did! You will feel great for doing any of these and will have an exciting adventure to read with more new characters and places to explore within its 43 chapters!
To make things even easier, here are the direct links and prices. If your country does not show up here, just click on the U.S. link for further information or redirection.
Urho nodded to Kiri and Kala, but said nothing about their adventure.
He sat by the fire, seemed deep in thought for a few moments and then
finally started to speak.
“I have a story to tell”, he said, “but this is not one of the
old stories. It is something I just heard from the traders of the
south.
“Every once in a while they visit a village in the far south. The
people there have a different language to ours and these traders have
learned enough words to make simple trades with them. Because of the
difficulty of their language the traders rarely visit them and know
very little about them. Every once in a while these foreign people
obtain unusual things from far away, further than we have traveled.
They say they come from lands that surround another sea, a place
where the snow never falls and it is summer the year round.
“As they had not visited these people for a long while they made
the long journey to see what new things they might have. As they
approached their village from the sea, they saw something that they
could not explain. The village lay desolate and burned. There was no
one there. They landed and walked around the ruined village. We have
all seen how lightning can sometimes strike and burn down a house,
and sometimes the fire will spread if the houses are close to each
other. This was not what had happened there. There were no burn marks
between the remains of the houses. Each house seemed to have been set
on fire deliberately.
“One of the traders was familiar with the Oneness and he entered
their stone circle to see what he could feel. When he came back he
said that he felt feelings of horror and disbelief, He said that the
circle was filled with this feeling. He could not offer any other
information than that. They all became very scared and decided that
they should go back to their boat and sail back home. They could not
explain what they had seen, but felt that they should tell other
villages of their experience with the hopes that perhaps someone
could offer an explanation.”
Urho stopped speaking and looked at everyone. Vara’s brow was
furrowed and she started to speak:
“As you all know, we sometimes abandon a village for a better site
elsewhere. It might be because the fish moved from the area, or the
game, or it might be because of changes in the weather that made our
fields unproductive. Sometimes it seems that the soil just gets tired
of producing our food and we need to leave it to recover. Whenever
this happens we all just leave the houses as they are. There is no
need to destroy them and they might provide a night’s shelter for
travelers on a long journey.
“Once though, when I was a young girl, a strange thing happened to
a village down the coast from us. The village made use of the huge
numbers of shellfish and it was their main food supply. There were a
few strange tides one year and the shellfish grew fewer in number.
Not only that, but also many people who ate them became very ill. I
remember a few even died. The village decided that they should find
another home, they thought that the sea around their village had
become tired just like an old field. Someone suggested that if they
left the village just as it was, other people might come, eat the
shellfish there and become ill as well. So they decided to burn all
of the roofs to act as a signal that this was not a good place to
stay. Perhaps this is what happened to the village you speak of. I
cannot think of any other possible explanation.”
Urho nodded, “That sounds like what might have happened in this
case”, he said. I will go back to the house by the dock and tell
them. Several of us went through the village asking for any
explanations and we agreed to share whatever we heard with these
traders. They are very upset with what happened and are asking
everyone they know to explain it to them. There is just one thing,
though”
He reached into his leather bag and pulled out a stone arrowhead.
“The traders found a number of these lying about the place.” he
passed the arrowhead around and they all looked at it. A few others
had joined them and they, too, took a look.
“You see how different is from our arrowheads”, Urho said, “there
are two sharp points that are set backwards. This shape makes no
sense. If it became embedded in an animal it would be very difficult
to pull it out again. Also, why would they use such things in a
village? There is nothing to hunt there.”
The arrowhead had been passed to Vara. She held it in her hand,
frowned, shuddered and quickly passed it back to Urho. He noticed her
reaction.
“Did you think of something Vara?” he said.
“No, it’s nothing, just a crazy thought that is not worth
repeating”
Urho seemed satisfied with this explanation and Vara smiled at
everyone, but Kiri knew his aunt very well and could read in her face
that something was troubling her deeply. He had seen that same
expression back in his village when his aunt had told him of her
worries that one day no one would be able to find the quietness of
the circle for others, and again, in the long voyage when he had seen
the Great Serpent fleeing in a vision and he had told her about it.
He decided that he would question her about this during his next
lesson. He thought that he had many questions for her this time and
he could hardly wait to tell her about how he had found Kala by
creating a circle in his mind and coming in to touch with the Oneness
that connected all things.
“I’ll get back to the traders then”, Urho said. “they want to
leave soon and get back home. I am glad to see you back safe and
sound Kiri. You can tell us of your adventure tonight.”
He left the house and the others that had stopped to listen started
to go about what they had been doing before. Soon, only Kiri, Kala
and Vara remained seated around the fire.
Kiri could not wait for his lesson to question his aunt, besides, he
had many other things to discuss with her.
“You saw something when you held that arrowhead didn’t you Aunt
Vara” He set his jaw in the most determined way he could muster. He
wanted his aunt to understand that he would not be put off so easy as
Urho. She glanced at Kala, who was also looking at her intently,
possibly following Kiri’s lead.
“I’m not sure this is the place to discuss such things,” Vara
said.
“If you are worried about letting Kala hear about this, I should
tell you that what you tell me, you can tell her. I am sure that we
are a pair”
Kala blushed, smiled and lowered her eyes in shyness.
“Well, well!” Vara said, and looked at them both. She saw the
determinism in Kiri’s eyes and the joy in Kala’s. Vara smiled.
“You might well be right Kiri. You are different now from when you
left. I can sense something. I will accept what you tell me. Do you
feel the same Kala?”
“Yes I do, Aunt Vara.”
Vara smiled when she heard Kala call her Aunt Vara.
“Well well!” she said again.
“What I have to tell you must go no further. For once Kala, you
must keep a secret. Promise me that you will never tell anyone what I
am about to reveal to you.”
“I will.”
“Good. All things can reveal their purpose if you look at them
carefully enough and free your mind from what you think you know
about everything. You know how our arrows are shaped like a willow
leaf? The bows are powerful, and this shape allows the arrow to reach
the heart of the animal with ease and bring it down. When we recover
the arrow, although it has penetrated deeply, it comes out with ease.
The arrow that Urho showed us would not come out easily. It would rip
and tear the flesh around it and catch on bones. We would often have
to cut into the flesh to free such an arrow. The deer that you hunt
has no hands as we do. They cannot pull out an arrow that has hit
them. If the arrow misses a vital spot or just nicks them at the
wrong angle, it might fall to the ground, but we know that the deer
can travel very far before becoming weak from such a wound. We would
let fly another arrow and be more careful that it should hit its
mark. That arrow was used against a prey that had hands to pull it
out. It was used against people.”
Kiri and Kala both looked at Vara with an expression of disbelief.
Kiri spoke:
“That doesn’t make any sense Aunt Vara. How hungry would you have
to be to hunt people? Everywhere we know there are animals and fish,
and we grow grain and vegetables, collect shellfish from the beach
and eat berries from the edge of the forest. If food is in short
supply we can always trade things with others from far away just as
the Danai came to our village with their wood when they suffered from
a poor crop last year.”
Vara sighed. “No Kiri, the arrows were not used to hunt people like
game. They were used to kill for no other purpose than to kill”
“I have seen people get very angry before” Kiri said, “and
sometimes even hit another, but anyone seeing this soon comes along
to stop it and solve the difficulty. It is usually because someone
didn’t understand something. Anger never lasts very long. It is not
our way. We are all part of the Oneness, we are all connected. We
help each other in times of difficulty. How could one group of people
all be angry enough with another group of people to want them all to
die. Why would such arrows be made?”
Kala started to shake and tears welled in her eyes.
“This is like a bad dream, but we are not going to wake up and
realize that and laugh about it. If there are people out there who
would kill other people then our bad dreams have followed us into the
world. It scares me. I don’t understand. This can’t be real. No
dream is that bad. It can’t be true, surely.”
Kiri put his arms around her and Vara tried to comfort her.
“This happened a long way from us. We have nothing to fear here and
now. I know it is an absurd thing and it makes no sense to us, but it
must make some sense to these people. We have to find out what is
happening and see if we can put a stop to it. Perhaps they all ate
something that made them ill in their minds. There are plants that
can make people believe that what is not real is real. Perhaps that
is all there is to it.”
Kala began to calm down a little, but she was still trembling. Vara
looked worried.
“Perhaps we should not speak of this thing any more.”
“No”, Kala said, I can see that Kiri wants to discuss it more. I
was being silly. It was just as if I had a bad dream while I was
awake. I’ll be alright. Sometimes I just allow myself to feel what
others feel. I imagined all of those poor people being killed with
arrows and not understanding why. It just became too much for me.”
“No Kala, there are things that I must tell Kiri during his lesson
this afternoon. It will be too upsetting for you. If you and Kiri
want to talk about these things later, that will be for you both to
decide upon once I have given Kiri this lesson. I didn’t want to
discuss these things yet, but it seems that its time has come before
I expected it. Now go and find something pleasant to do you two.
Kiri, come back here in a while, once Kala is back to her happy self
again. If we have enough time we will talk again”.
Kiri led Kala out of the house, his arm around her shoulders, and
Vara was left to her own thoughts.
Kiri awoke to the early morning songs of the birds in the forest. He
was cold and damp with the dew that lay around him like tiny beads of
rock crystal. It must be very early, he thought, but the sun was not
visible to him so he could not tell just how early it was. He
struggled to light a fire to warm himself but finally managed to get
a good blaze going. He sat and warmed himself, ate a little and tried
not to let his discomfort destroy his resolve. The fire dried him
fairly quickly and he felt the urge to continue his quest. He used
his water skin to dowse the fire, having to refill it from the stream
several times. He refilled the skin for his journey and set off down
the trail again.
He came to a clearing where the stream meandered through a marshy
area and looked up to see the blue sky above him. He had not realized
how closed in he was feeling until he saw that expanse of blue above
him. He felt his spirit surge with hope again and he decided that he
should try, once again, to get a sense of the direction of his goal.
He stood very still and closed his eyes, imagining a circle around
him. He expanded the space of this circle until it collapsed again.
He turned to face the direction from where this space collapsed and
opened his eyes. It worried him that the direction that he was facing
was different from the direction he was traveling along the trail,
but it was not too far off and at least it was not behind him. His
worries were relived after he left the marshy area, for the trail
made a sudden twist to the direction that he felt and it appeared to
head straight for quite some distance.
The ground started to rise again and the trail got steeper very
quickly. He could see that the trees thinned ahead and could make out
gray rock outcroppings. He found himself near the summit of a hill
with a view over the forest to the valley beyond. He saw his small
stream appearing now and again between the trees and his heart sank
when he saw that it entered a wide river at the bottom of the valley.
He knew that he would have to cross this river, but it looked far to
wide to have a bridge. He was a good swimmer but he did not know how
strong the current would be. Perhaps there would be a forge where the
trail met the river. There must be some way across. All trails must
go somewhere.
He continued down the other side of the hill back into the forest.
The trail appeared to head straight for the river. He hurried along
the trail, his worries about crossing the river gave speed to his
pace and it was not long before he spotted another clearing and the
glint of sunlight on water through the trees. As he entered the
clearing he saw a small round hut with a plume of smoke coming from
the centre of the roof. A small vegetable garden lay near the
entrance of the hut and he saw a rickety wooden dock with a small
boat moored at it. He called out a greeting and an old man appeared
at the entrance of the hut.
“Hello Kiri” he said, “I’m pleased to meet you. Kala has told
me a lot about you. She is still asleep. Perhaps you would like to
wake her?”
Kiri was speechless. He stood there with his mouth open in
astonishment and disbelief. His quest was over. He had found Kala. He
realized that he had been thinking so much about finding her that he
had not given any thought to what he would say if he were successful.
The old man raised his eyebrows and said, “Kala never told me that
you were a mute, though.”
Kiri came to his senses and realized that he must look very stupid
just standing there with his mouth open.
“I’m sorry. I’m just a bit shocked. I have been looking for her
and thinking of nothing else. I didn’t expect that I would find her
for a while. It’s all so sudden. Yes, please, let me wake her”.
The old man smiled. “Come on in then. My name is Tirho, I’m
Kala’s grandfather.”
Kiri followed Tirho into the hut and as his eyes adjusted to the dim
light from the small fire at in the middle, he saw Kala lying fast
asleep on a bearskin at the edge of the hut. He knelt by her and
placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Kala, it’s me.”
She opened her eyes slowly and it took her just a moment for the
sleep to give way to recognition and joy. She sat up quickly and
threw her arms around Kiri.
“I knew you would find me!” She grasped his shoulders and
withdrew to her arm's length looking intently at his face. “Are you
still angry with me?”
“Of course not”, he said. “I’m just relieved to find you and
I’m so sorry that I was angry with you. Aunt Vara told me that they
had wanted you to show me the circle all along”.
“ I wondered about that” she replied, “ They all knew how bad I
am at keeping secrets, and yet they never warned me not to tell you.
Why was that?”
“Aunt Vara told me that just entering the forest would be a test
enough for me. All of you have grown up with the forest around you,
but where I come from the forest is a fearful place full of death. I
think I have passed their test. They just wanted me to go into the
forest with you. Now I have faced it alone. The hope of finding you
gave me the strength I needed.”
“I’m so relieved” she said, “I felt that I had taken a quest
from you, and the only thing that I could do to repair this would be
to give you an even greater quest. I did not know if it would work,
finding the stone circle is one thing – it is a place of great
power, but finding little me would take much more skill. I didn’t
know if it would work, but there was nothing else that I could think
of to make amends. How did you do it? The path from the circle is
well hidden, even if you guessed that I would have gone there first.
If I had stayed at the circle it would have been too easy. Did you
have to try all the paths that led from the circle before you found
the right one?”
Kiri said that he never saw any of the other paths and he explained
how he had sensed her direction by creating a circle in his own mind
and then having it reveal the direction to follow.
Kala clapped her hands in joy. “Then my plan worked better than I
had imagined! I’m so pleased”
Through all of this conversation Tirho had been seated on the other
side of the fire watching them with a big smile on his face.
“We should all have something to eat,” he said, “and then I
will take you two back to the village in the boat. Your aunt must be
worried about you Kiri”
“You don’t have to do that Grandfather” Kala said, “We can go
back through the forest”.
“I wouldn’t think of it” he replied, “ besides, even though I
like living out here alone growing my vegetables and fishing in the
river, I sometimes find the need for a little more human company than
the occasional visit from my granddaughter. Your return might be
cause for a little celebration. I would like to join in that.”
“Then let’s do that” Kiri said, “You can meet my aunt and
stay for a day or so if you wish. Also, I think I have had enough of
the forest for awhile.
They all laughed and Tirho brought out some smoked salmon and dark
bread and a big bowl of berries gathered from the edge of the forest.
“Eat as much as you like Kiri, I’m sure you must be hungry after
your ordeal”.
Kiri realized just how hungry he was. He had eaten very little and
his usually big appetite had been very much lessened by the worry of
finding Kala. Now that was all over and he felt very hungry indeed.
He fell on the food like a starving wolf.
The sun shone on the water as they floated downstream toward the
village. The current was strong enough that Tirho did not need to row
much, but Kiri wondered about how it would be for him having to row
back against the current. Even though Tirho was quite old, he looked
like he was used to handling his boat, and neither Tirho nor Kala had
even mentioned the return trip, so Kiri put it out of his mind.
They saw two otters playing in the water, chasing each other on the
surface for a while, then diving, then resurfacing again. They
reminded Kiri of his home and how he had spent many hours watching
the antics of the playful creatures. He wondered about his mother and
father and the other people in the village and he looked forward to
seeing them again that following spring. Kala was sitting at the bow
with a big smile on her face and Kiri smiled back. He felt at peace.
His quest was over, he had learned something important about using
the power of the Oneness, and he was back in his element, on open
water with the vast sky above him and the sea just a short way ahead.
Kiri was surprised at the short time it took to get into sight of the
village. They rounded a bend in the river and there it was just ahead
of them. Distances in the forest were deceptive and the traveling was
slow. Kiri smelled the sea ahead of them and heard the call of the
white sea birds as they wheeled overhead. The village got closer and
the smell of wood smoke combined with the smell of the sea. It was a
comforting smell. It smelled like home.
They moored at the dock alongside a couple of sea-going vessels and
made their way to the house to greet Vara. She was sitting by the
fire preparing a stew in a pot that sat in the embers at the edge of
the fire. She looked as if she had been worrying. Her face was stern
and her jaw set tight. She looked up as the entered and immediately
broke into a big smile. She suddenly looked ten years younger.
“I’m so glad you both made it back safely” she said, “I know
I might have appeared to be willing for you to go on your quest Kiri,
but I worried every moment from when you left the house. Have you and
Kala become friends again? Is everything alright?”
“Yes, Aunt Vara. We are friends again” he smiled at Kala.
“Everything is perfect. I have much to tell you, Oh, this is Kala’s
grandfather Tirho. He brought us back in his boat. Kala was at his
house in the forest just up the river from here”.
“It’s nice to meet you Tirho. Thank you so much for bringing them
back. Will you stay with us for a while?”
“I would like that” Tirho said. “Is Urho about? I have not seen
him for a while”.
“I would have thought you would have passed him,” Vara said. He
went down to the dock to talk to some traders that stopped by from
down the coast. They were in a hurry and did not want to stay, so
Urho went down to their boat.”
“We saw some boats moored the dock, but no one was about” Tirho
said.
“That’s strange, perhaps Urho has stopped at someone’s house on
the way back. I’m sure he won’t be long.”
Just as soon as she finished saying this Urho appeared at the door.
Kiri smiled at him expecting him to be happy to see them, but Urho’s
face was grim.
