Lost and found

By Conrad Beaubien

It was not that many weeks ago when I woke up on fire one morning, not literally in flames but at least with the hot urge to act on a notion that had been simmering in my brain for a decade. In a life of creative travel it didn’t seem out of place at this moment in time that I would be inspired to walk a donkey. Sure, I made the effort to get pants and boots before greeting the world, but I knew that the flash of enthusiasm wasn’t about just any donkey, it was about the one that use to hang out down the road from me. His name is Thunder.

I became familiar with seeing Thunder and his donkey brethren Joe together in a paddock, and so it became a habit of mine to periodically stop by just to lean against the fence and simply say hello. I know I’m not alone in talking to animals, domesticated or otherwise. Take my neighbour for example, who carries on conversations with the birds at his feeder. Back then at the paddock it was always with great satisfaction that my gestures were acknowledged and the animals would come over to reciprocate with a warming nudge. Come to think, it was around that time that I added talking to donkeys on my curriculum vitae in the spot where you list personal interests. I have shared with a few over the years, my quest to trek with a donkey; now the vision is actualized. My telling anyone about my want to walk a donkey sounding a little sur le mur — off the wall—is okay by me because the walks are something I recognize as having been a long time simmering and awaiting this moment to catch the light: it’s presently on me to get onto to it, sur le mur or not.

Honouring these notions with the trust that a real life version of those very thoughts is likely to manifest can only happen when we act on impulse—pencil or brush or hammer or mixing spoon in hand whatever—engage the idea, the inspiration. Be it a song, or building a house or stitching textile or pounding clay, I believe we are offered these unseen gestures for the purposes of seeing them realized—literally come to light.

Now when you take donkeys, I mean it’s not like I’ve spent years on a farm or as far as I know, having been a rancher in another life. My take on raw ideas is to get them started from scratch with whatever know how you happen to possess. For me the learn as-you-go route seems to stick better. Also in my experience the opposite can happen if I get to carrying on in my head comparing past occurrences, and I start to toss the hows and whats and whys into an analytic mix-up and for that reason, I try to pay attention to hearing mind speak and offering a thanks anyway, but I’ve got this. My take is that creative drive is within each and every one of us, it’s about problem solving in whatever form that takes. I’m also told that problem solving is good for nurturing grey matter, and that I can use more of.

in assuming that it’s a common thing to hold an object in our hand that triggers memory or that we reach onto a bookshelf to discover a title we may have started to read in the past but then put it down. Maybe it’s only in that present moment that we are ready to resonate and understand more fully the significance of those objects or pages. As the needs of our inner lives change day-by-day, I like to imagine that the answer to something waits in space and time for the question to be asked. My personal response is that as we evolve in our lifetimes, often something we stumble across or are drawn to in a flash will only hold true meaning at some point in the distant future. I know its cliché sounding, but then again allowing ourselves to investigate the unknown is to mine the benefits of life’s experiences.

It was only lately that I came across a piece that I wrote a number of years ago that lit-up as a cinch pin to my understanding more in depth of what is behind the drive of my current Walking with Thunder undertaking. The piece I wrote back then was titled Why I Walk. It was written under circumstances of deep personal loss. The setting was one night of freezing rain in January when the need to walk overtook me. I was down by the Murray Canal and within the darkness I followed the pathway to the east entrance of the then silent channel. Leaning against the rail I could see the silhouette of Indian Island drifting in the bay. It was then, when from under a thin skin of ice-covering a pair of otters surfaced to greet me. They swam under the ice to come closer to check out the lost stranger in the night; their playful gestures seemed to me to be a reaching out, an offer of comfort. As a footnote, before sending off my story to the Times the next day I checked in with Terry Sprague, my go-to person when it comes to understanding the natural world, to confirm it wasn’t a mirage that occurred. I felt good-to-go with recounting my sighting because according to Terry, otters are not uncommon in Quinte waters.

It was after sending that story that I had to take a sojourn from my column, my voice on this page fell silent as I retreated into mourning. Fast forward to recently when searching through my files for something, I stumbled across that original essay. As I sat re-reading it, it felt like a book mark, a holding place to a significant chapter in my life and that one day, this day, I would come to revisit it to serve as a reminder of what drives me to walk a donkey. My writing from the past was the seed of present day inspiration.

We are presently in a time of collective grieving. We are mourning the loss of conventional human contact. Careers, relationships, social media, the world news and now a pandemic are both dislocating and isolating us as individuals in society and especially from the touch of loved ones. It was the tie-in of past writing and experience, the emotional turmoil of that time that lit a spark in my subconscious, allowing me to relate more clearly to current collective emotions; it is the why of my present urge to walk.

Reconnecting with a pair of donkeys is now a bridge between human consciousness and a balm of nature that is ours for the taking if we are open to accepting. Going forward on these chapters along the trail, I invite you to slow walk in the silence of Thunder.

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