On the Shore of Gifting Eddy

Caroline Ross  It’s good to see you, my friend. A two-day paddle has brought me to your camp again. Tell me again, how did you come to settle here?

Jordan Tierney  Well, I was surprised to come out of the Great Pause alive in the spring of 2048. I then managed to survive that first winter (barely). Spent it almost in brumation like a turtle. Made it through the next four seasons. Then eight more. Then 12. I stopped counting. I certainly don’t remember at this point what year it might be according to the B4 system. I carve a mark here on this pendant every winter solstice I witness.

I walked these shorelines for years before the GP, surrendering to what the land had to teach me, growing an intimate relationship with the place. With each rotation of seasons I learn more about the processes and inhabitants of this evolving land.  As humans, we are the planet’s most destructive invasive species, but I survived partly due to wineberries and garlic mustard, also considered invasive. I do my best to interact as a symbiotic life form.

Aligning with large cyclic rhythms here filled me with peace. Vulnerability and simplicity made me humble and glad to be rewoven into the intricacies and vastness of the Universe. I am grateful. 

 What is the story behind the metal dome? Seeing it cleanly lit and shorn of its usual grass fringe, it seems like a helmet, or transmitter, somehow lowered to the earth for the ease of its dreaming.

It was something I put together from things I found in the river in the city pre-GP. I lent it to a local museum hoping to expose a wider audience to what was happening to Earth and to initiate some conversations about how we might heal our relationship with our home planet. The shifting climate was affecting everyone by that point. The government had become a large corporation, busily draining the last drop of profit out of the soil and the sea for itself. Genocidal wars and more subtle versions of oppression spread like the wildfires that were everywhere. Most people, at least unconsciously, knew what was happening and felt overwhelmed. It was easier to be in denial. The vibe was distracted, troubled, angry, disconnected. It was hard to live trapped in the system and the energy it manifested. 

The dome was my safe harbour in a sea of destruction. I discovered that others felt calm and safe when I invited them to sit with me. I call it The Waystation. There are four altars inside – to the four directions, the stages of life, the seasons, the weather, the elements…

There’s something about the womb-like curve, how it embraces you, and the stillness of being inside a circle. It has a centring effect, no matter what troubles or burdens the wanderer is heavy with. Most people sit for half an hour or so, although I’ve had people stay for several days. They tend to look younger and lighter as they go off on the next phase of their journeys.

  I know that gathering and making take up a lot of your time, how do you spend your days?

Over the years, we have talked about how your roots have given you strength, that even in the chaos and upheaval after the Change, truly knowing your home was part of how you coped with great losses and challenges. What made you venture beyond your home place this time?

About three spring equinoxes ago I started finding bottles with messages washed up on the shore of Gifting Eddy. The messages were mysterious and beautiful so I kept them on a shelf in my shelter. By the time a handful had washed up, I saw patterns and could tell they were all created by the same hand. They each included a map in addition to something sensed or believed from where it was made. I couldn’t stop wondering who was making them. The map centred around what I guessed was the body of water I’d found them in. So I decided to go on a pilgrimage upstream. Truth be told, I was a little lonely.

This cape always surprises me with its contrasts, so physically light, yet so heavy with messages. All the bottles were once full of drinks, once so easily obtained, now we must boil each drop of what we gather. When I see you wrapped in this clattering cape, I feel like you are carrying our past into our future on your back. Someone needs to bring the stories with them so we don’t fall into amnesia. How do you do this?

Each bottle contains symbolic sticks. Each stick is wrapped in colourful strings. The string codes are a language for me. Mnemonic devices. They encode memories. Or maybe a story I was told, so I can share them with others I meet. I can remember who told it and where we were along the stream. Sometimes the teller was Gosling, Sycamore, or Thunderstorm. Sometimes it is a message for a lost person someone is hoping to reconnect with.

Many of the bottles pre-date the Great Pause. During the time everyone seemed to be in denial, I would walk through town wearing this, hoping to strike up conversations with strangers. I had stories from the edgelands surrounding the city where humans hadn’t trampled, bulldozed, built, mined, or manicured. I soaked up the lush thriving energy beside the highway or under the railroad tracks. Oak, Mushroom, Buck, Creek, Vulture shared their lives with me and I shared their ways with whoever would listen. When I uncorked a bottled story of the forgotten, lush, throbbing lifeforce out there, it worked like magic or a blessing on aching souls.

At the time there was an argument among scientists about which living organisms were sentient. For centuries, profiteers had proclaimed only humans had this attribute. But anyone in touch with our Earthly kinfolk from slime mould to whales knows that everything is alive, in motion and interconnected. Sentience is the capability of sensing, feeling and responding to the sensations of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting or smelling.

After creating and living in a culture of never going outdoors, sitting at desks hooked up to machines, completely dependent on corporations for providing sustenance, the humans with the most economic power had almost become non-sentient beings. They had no need for their elegantly complex and nuanced five senses in order to live. Their bodies were craving the feeling of living but they had been systematically disconnected from that capability. Their grief and dysfunction festered and exploded, bringing on the collapse and Great Pause.

  The boxes you carry with you have made it into the hands of people even as far away as where I now stay, far west of here. They are kept safe and treasured by the people I live with. Why do you make them?

They are a few of the spiritual devices I make for others to find. I began making these before the GP too. 

We are still in a transition time. Folks are confused and afraid. These devices are presences which resonate mystery, possibility, creativity and connection to the life energy of the universe. They’re made from inorganic B4 parts and Earth parts, so they bring different ways of being into symbiosis. They embrace what was and what could be simultaneously. Which is where we all are, both globally and psychologically. Transition is where the most opportunity and power is. 

At my camp I have a collection of musical instruments, so if a group passes through, we can share a meal and make joyful noise together. The instruments are made from found wood, Deer pelvis, B4 components like bottles, auto parts, textiles…

 And now, waiting to start up playing these instruments with you and the others who have gathered this afternoon, the sun is going down, and I am looking at our reflections in the pool: hover-bubbles, cart-mules and bottle-shawled players. It’s time to make the noise for what we cannot put into words, to pass around the algae-cakes and bramble wine, to wake the river and tunnels up, with songs for Fox and Worm, Sycamore and Buzzard, and for each other.