Akayo'kaki A'pawaawahkaa: Gyrfalcon

04 January 2009

Gyrfalcon

III ) llllll Misamiko’komiaato’s

Today I wait to make my way to the coulees until just a few hours before sunset, hoping to sight the long-eared owl again and maybe even follow it to its roost. But the wind is blowing all new drifts on the west side of Lethbridge, and before I even get to the access road leading down to the river-bottom, I’m helping to dig-out a van that’s high-centered in the snow. That route, I surmise, is barely passable. In a few hours, there’s no telling whether I’d be able to get back out. The owling excursion was obviously shot, but I wasn’t about to give up my coulee walk altogether.

I decide to head toward another one of my close-by stomping grounds, a never-fail winter eagle site about four miles upstream on the Old Man River, where I was bow hunting earlier this winter. There’s a couple access roads that go right down to the flood-plains on the Blood Reserve side of the river, but I’m pretty sure the graders won’t have gone through yet… low priority. The other way is to drive across west Lethbridge, passing just outside the city limits, to Sunset Acres, a little neighbourhood of four cul-de-sacs on the coulee rim overlooking the Reserve. From there, I can hike down.

In the farm fields surrounding Sunset Acres, I sight thirty-nine Canada geese, sleeping and grazing. About half of these get spooked when I stop my truck to count, and they take-off flying upriver.

The wind is kicking-up pretty strong as I hike down the side of the coulee. I keep expecting it to let up, the further toward the river I walk, and eventually it does, but not by much.

When I reach the ice of the Old Man, and begin walking downstream, an adult bald eagle takes wing from high in the cliffs above. It’s not in a hurry, but soars leisurely upriver a little ways above the coulee rim. I sit down in the snow and eat a sandwich as I watch the eagle depart. When it gets about two kilometres away, I see a large grey bird dart up from below, on a collision course. It almost reaches the eagle, then turns and dives back down to the prairies and out of sight. Although initially shaken off-course, the eagle continues along its upstream route until it’s just a speck on the horizon.

Walking a bit further downriver, until I’m right under the cliff that the eagle had been perched on, I figure it’s a good place to leave my beef liver on the ice. There’s coyote tracks nearby, and there may be other eagles. This section of the river offers a long, fairly open view from above. Four years ago, I found eagles right at this same spot, feeding on a dog carcass that was stuck in the ice. Since then, I’ve always found more than one bird here from December on.

I place my meat on the river in as appetizing a pose as I can muster, set up my video camera in a patch of bull-berries on shore, and continue my walk. What little forest there is on this side of the river is young. And while it has its days of ample animal activity, today’s not one of them. Walking through, from one side of the trees to the other, I don’t see a single bird, or anything else that catches my notice. There are some deer tracks and beds down here, as there always are. Beyond that, nothing too exciting.

Only when I get to the cliffs on the other side of the poplars, above a patch of mixed willows, does anything turn up. There’s a northern flicker doing something on the cliff-side. Before I have a chance to really see what he’s up to, the flicker moves off, up a wide draw and out of sight. About a hundred meters further downriver, I sit down in a drift to eat a second sandwich, and there see another flicker fly over from across the river and land on the side of a steep cutbank. Again, I can’t get a good look at what it’s doing there before it spooks at my presence and moves away. I’ll have to try and observe more closely next time.

While I eat my sandwich, the wind picks up even stronger. I’m not looking forward to the long hike back, first against the gusts and then uphill. Twice, as I tread my way upriver through the snow, I hear raucous sounds from the geese on the farm fields above. Then, just as I near my liver offering, I see the adult bald eagle take off again from the same cliff as before. I left my video camera behind about an hour ago, and I’m hoping the eagle had time to find the meat and have its dinner. A few minutes later though, as I round the bend, I can see the liver still out on the ice in plain sight. Before gathering up my equipment, I sit down under a poplar with thick undergrowth and wait another twenty minutes, just in case. But no one comes around.

The higher I climb on the way out, the stronger the wind becomes. I try not to think about it. I find a set of the rodent tracks with big strides that I’ve been wondering about, and follow them right up the side of the coulee. These are definitely cliff-dwellers, whoever they are. Eventually, the tracks come to an abrupt end in an open crevice between a snow bank and a steep slope of earth. Somewhere under there is where this guy is living.

The rodent tracks took me almost to the top of the coulee rim. From here, I can still see my beef liver on the ice far below, and nobody around to eat it. At least an hour and forty minutes must have passed since I initially left it out there. The magpies and coyotes further downriver almost always found the food within the first half hour. They must not want to expose themselves to this weather either. The wind gusts are so strong on top of the coulee, it reminds me of when I used to skydive in the Army.

The Sun is just touching the horizon when I reach my truck. Across the river, I can see that the north end of the Reserve is in white-out conditions. There’s a thick ground-cloud of blowing snow. I’d like to be able to take a picture from this side of the river, capturing the intensity of the wind on the Reserve, but driving from cul-de-sac to cul-de-sac I can’t seem to find the perfect shot. What I do see, however, just when I’m going to pull away from the neighbourhood, is a gyrfalcon. It swoops right across my path and then lifts into the air over someone’s house, and back down out of my line of vision. Little birds that I can’t identify in the split second I have to work with come zooming my way from that direction, and dive for cover in some thick fir trees. I make a couple more laps of the neighbourhood, but do not see the falcon again. On the drive home though, I realize that it was probably the same grey bird I saw going after the eagle, and more than likely the cause of the goose raucous I heard from below. The Canada geese that were on the fields here are long gone.

Obsessing On Purpose

Like most living beings - human or otherwise - I have cultivated a number of behavioural routines and aesthetic predilections that bring structure, or perhaps a sense of security, to my everyday life. In some instances, these quirks and habits border on the embarrassingly obsessive-compulsive. For instance, at nookoowa, I routinely make sure that anything situated on tables or counters be set in an alignment parallel to the edges. Sometimes, nipiitaam or nitana will offset things purposely, just to watch me run around straightening them. On the other hand though, I prefer our tables and countertops to be absolutely empty except when in use, and all items that might otherwise be placed upon them to be neatly stowed away in closets, trunks, and cupboards. I also try to make sure that any like-type objects that happen to be stored on a shelf - such as books, video games, compact discs, statuettes, picture frames, what have you - are neatly aligned and arranged in some pleasing order. My bed must always be made, unless someone’s in it, and nothing beyond sheets, blankets, or pillows belongs on it. It bothers me when clothing is tossed on the floor, or draped anywhere other than on hangers in our closets. Furniture, in the form of couches, cushioned chairs, dining sets, etc. strike me as clutter, limiting the spaces that one would otherwise have available to conduct creative activities. I prefer to sit on the floor, with just a pillow or folded blanket for support. I don’t like any lighting except that which comes from naato’si, nor prolonged periods of electronic noise. The different foods on my plate cannot touch, unless we’re eating Mexican, in which case it must all be mixed together into a bean, cheese, and rice paste. And I don’t think sinks are places to keep dirty dishes, or sponges, or globs of fallen toothpaste… although they are for cleaning such things immediately. The list could go on, all these partialities that are so rarely realized to my satisfaction. The truth of the matter is, in the long run, most of my aesthetic habits bring me more irritation than comfort. Yet I continue to uphold them all the same.

One of my greatest obsessive-compulsive behaviours, a massive sink-hole of energy, and that which applies more than any other to the present project, is an overwhelming desire to document periods of transition in my life. I’ve been journaling since I was about twelve years old, using this practice as a surrogate companion of sorts, with whom to discuss the occasionally strange (and often mundane) changes I’m constantly attempting to make in my life, in whatever direction I happen to be exploring at the time. Over nearly three decades, I’ve experimented with a wide variety of media, from classic stationary and blank books, to audio notes, photography, film, sketching. I’ve written in both first and third person, I’ve tried to approach the practice as story telling, as ethnography, as documentary, as art. But my trouble is this… for me, the final product of my efforts is never good enough. I’m constantly shifting tactics and media. I’ve probably made some stationers fairly rich. In fact, any new idea at all can compel me to destroy prior work and start anew, because my sense is that a fresh journaling project is like an opportunity for the redefinition of self. It’s a personal renewal. A cleansing, a chance to make a vow and completely transform the narratives that guide one’s experiences. An old journal, on the other hand, one that no longer accurately reflects my sensibilities or interests in the present, is to me a blemish, an imperfection, a blatant reminder of the self I’ve already outgrown. Such past projects are like carelessly wrought sculptures, beyond repair. And so I must begin, again and again.

Now I know, some may say that for the artist it is the process that matters, not the product. And there are examples from around the world to demonstrate this claim. There are the Tibetan sculptures made from butter, which melt in the sun. The sacred sand-paintings of the Navajo, scooped-up and discarded at the close of their healing ceremonies. Origami cranes, floating down the rivers of Japan. There are all manner of ikitstakssiistsi to look toward as monuments to the significance of process over product. True. I don’t deny it. But these examples involve at least two aspects that my journals do not. First, they are almost always seen to some stage of human completion, each creative act having a very defined conclusion, the point at which they are left in sacrifice to the sacred beings, the ancestors, the future generations. Which brings up the second distinction they have from my journals – these creative acts are also highly spiritual, inaugurating, feeding, or renewing sacred relationships. And while my journaling practices have always nurtured, I’ve never really approached them as offerings to the forces that sustain my life. Rather, and perhaps sadly, I feel deep down that they have been little more than tools for fostering detachment, as if the immediate activities involved in my pursuits for growth and transformation are somehow not enough in themselves. And I’m aware that it is in large part my history of exposure to an immature and ego-centric global ethos that has conditioned me to such hollow practice.

There is another (and related) reason why I tend to discard imperfect or outdated journals, over-concern myself with the organization of items on my shelving systems, fret obsessively over household clutter, etc. It is because I have been enculturated in an aesthetics that defies nature by placing all like items together, and all unalike items apart. It’s a system partial to concrete categories, surface in its emphasis, allowing little room for metamorphoses, transfigurations, or interconnectivities. In fact, it is a way that fears these complexities and the potential loss of present form. A journal, by its very nature of recording a series of thoughts and life experiences, all of which are unalike except by means of their association to a single person in the midst of constant change, somehow simultaneously calls-to and troubles this aesthetics. As typically carried out, a journal is in essence just another means of imposing false order on the flow of life, both by objectifying experience and by organizing its representation into segments of a linear-time framework that is completely removed from the shifting cyclicality of the natural world. My fluent relationship with both kinds of awareness has, in a sense, rendered me bipolar. I strive for a certain level of systematicity, all the while knowing full well that such order reflects an impoverished approach to negotiating the human condition.

Perhaps what I’ve needed all along is a healthy recognition of both the limitations and potential functionalities of record-keeping practices, particularly in the traditions of aokstakio’p and aisinaakio’p… this, followed by an alterative adoption of those beneficial techniques and media from the established global culture, inwardly, in a manner that augments rather than re-shapes niitsitapia’pii. I am lucky, in this sense, to be already engaged in a learning process through iiyaohkimiipaitapiiyssin, which I’m sure will offer many insights along the way. But all the same, I know that to achieve my vision, to revitalize forms of niitsitapi record-keeping through my journaling practice, I will have to work much more closely with those constant resources I can trust - niitsi’powahsin, akaitapiitsinikssiistsi, ki nipaapao’kaanistsi. I will also need to develop a habit of respecting the advice of my own deeper intuition, and begin responding regularly to the voices of the sspommitapiiksi, ksaahkomitapiiksi, and soyiitapiiksi of kitawahsinnoon. My hope is that in blogging the present journal, Akayo’kaki A’pawaawahkaa, I can explore and perhaps realize this interest. And if nothing else, if the urge to renew strikes again, all I have to do is hit DELETE.

Akayo'kaki A'pawaawahkaa

04 January 2009

Gyrfalcon

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Obsessing On Purpose

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