The smiling dog that helps people smile, in Edmonton.

Trog the soulful from Hampshire, who never fails to help me smile.

Many thanks for these dog ‘mug shots’. Gives us all a bit of a change of pace.

Here below are extracts from two separate emails sent from Edmonton congregation members. The first person lives on the north side of town. And the second person lives south of the river, right on Whyte Avenue in the hustle and bustle, with his recently adopted dog. Both extracts are here with permission.

North side news:-
“Summer in Edmonton has been wonderful this year. Of course, to really appreciate this beautiful weather you have to ignore all nagging thoughts that global warning is alive and well on the Canadian prairies. We have had numerous and continuous days of blissful warmth with a few very hot days thrown in for flavour. We have even had a bit of rain but even so I think our yard is actually getting quite dry. The temperature has dipped down a bit, a few times nothing serious, certainly no danger of frost but just enough to signal the trees that fall may be coming. As a result, you can see the odd leaf or even tree taking on its autumn hue.

We have a lake near to our house that is a major gathering place for the Canada Goose as it migrates. Every year, in the spring and fall, they congregate on the lake and take a pause in their journey. In the peak of the migration schedule there are hundreds and hundreds of Canada Geese on the lake. They seem to arrive in droves in the morning and leave in droves in the evening just as the sun is going down. They often fly directly over our house, masses of them, honking in unison. It is a particularly wonderful experience to go down to the lake and sit with them in the evening. One goose will start up and then another will join in and before long there are great numbers of them calling to each other. The energy builds and builds and builds until it seems that, like some huge engine that has been stoked, finally enough energy and momentum has been built and then they take off, like a squadron of airplanes on the runway, one after another, maybe fifty, maybe a hundred at once. It is a particularly remarkable experience if you are lucky enough to be right underneath them as they fly off. The whirr of all of those marvelous wings is a sight and sound to truly behold. I have not yet gone down to the lake this year, but go down I must. It is a gift that must be accepted and appreciated.”

Mean while on the south side:-
“Little miss Jazzy according to her previous parent (owner) has a severe aversion to clothes and has never taken to them. I tried even putting a bandana on her and she was having none of it, it can fun just getting the harness on, although she is getting better with that since she did use a harness when she was young. It is just really getting it over the foot that causes her some issues now.

She is creating many smiles in the building that I am in especially some of the chronically ill or handicapped tenants. Since I am by the hospital here I walk her by their and she visits with people who are out for fresh air and brings out a lot of smiles.

We are starting a dog play hour in the common room so that the tenants dogs can get together offleash and socialize which will be nice when winter comes (if it comes this year!).”

So that’s it. Geese honking on mass and “Jazzy the Snorter”, as she is dubbed, bringing a little pleasure into the lives of less able people. I particularly like the idea of off-leash time in the common rooom. One can only imagine how that might go! Well, one would hope well.

*******

To-day I met a young woman from Edmonton who had made a stop on her way to San Francisco to visit Shasta Abbey and attend the festival ceremony for Great Master Dogen. A ceremony to offer gratitude for Zen Master Dogen’s great legacy that has been handed down to us.

As in Edmonton so also here. The feel of summer moving into fall and winter approaching.

Be well. Be content within that which is Unchanging.

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I don’t know which way the Canada Geese are flying at the moment, south I presume. I’ll be flying north on the 16th September, north to Edmonton. Already I’m looking forward to that with happy anticipation; of seeing some of the congregation on Sunday morning, of lunch and meeting ‘Jazzy the Snorter’. I’ve already heard much about her, seen photographs too, she is a black pug who was recently rescued by a congregation member.

Yes, soon I’ll be migrating north from California, 16th September, and then eastwards across the vast continent of Canada. I’ll be touching down in Toronto briefly then onwards to London, Heathrow, landing September 20th at 6.50 a.m.

This blog was inspired by an email from a congregation member from Edmonton who wrote about the lake near her home where Canada Geese land and take off from. I’ll ask her permission to publish what she wrote. In the mean time do read about these wonderful, if unconventional, birds.

It has been really good to spend time with my North American monastic family at Shasta Abbey. And to spend time with many of the lay congregation who live around here or who are visiting. And daily there are those of you who plug in and fire up your computers and hike over to these pages to see what’s a goin’ on.

Constant as your presence is I remind myself and you, that all relationships end. Sometimes sooner, sometimes latter. Just a thought as I prepare to pack my suitcases, once again, and ready myself to take my leave.

Shasta Abbey is close to Yreka, which in turn is close to the California/Oregon border. I had occasion to go through there a few days ago on my way to the Scott Valley to pay a visit. Driving up the Scott Valley you really get the sense of an area full of history. It was here that gold was found and a rush to mine it happened, making Yreka a boom town. The land I visited had been hydraulically mined. I think that means water is diverted and the gold washed out with water under force. You could see some of how that worked by the small canyons cut by the water. You could also see that the local bears had been eating lots of berries too!

Stagecoach in front of Franco-American Hotel on West Miner Street- year unknown.

“Yreka was born when gold was discovered on the flats near a ravine called Black Gulch in March of 1851 by Abraham Thompson, a member of a mule train party enroute to Scott Valley from southern Oregon. Six weeks after the discovery 2,000 miners had arrived in “Thompson’s Dry Diggings” to test their luck. By May, the gold rush “boomtown” was composed of tents, shanties and a few rough cabins. Several name changes occurred until the little city was called Yreka, apparently a Shasta Indian word meaning “north mountain.” Incorporation proceedings were completed on April 21, 1857. “

Just as I stepped out of the car in Yreka there was a sound to send many heart a-flutter. A train horn blasting out very close by. The Blue Goose was getting ready to pull out with a cargo of tourists aboard. The site is worth a visit even if you are not keen on trains (shame on you!) as the animated train chugging across the screen is pleasing in itself.

When I’d phone and ask my mother how she was, how her health was, she’d say, “Oh, not as bad as Mr, So and So across the road”! Then she would go into great detail about his difficulties. “But how are YOU”? I’d ask. And gradually her story would come out and we would laugh together about her habit of defaulting to talking about the neighbours heart condition and not her own. “He is SO much worse off than me”!

When the water isn’t running so well in your bathroom think of Tim in the Balkans. Getting water at all in Kosovo, is a struggle.

Dear Rev Mugo

I have been following your almost daily blog lately and today listened to the recording you made on making transitions in life, this struck a few chords since making transitions in an ever changing life often seems like a full time occupation to me! The latest being of course the transition to fatherhood. For a long time I also used to have an ‘am I being a good Buddhist’ thing when I read the words about traveling to ‘other dusty countries’, especially as I have always had and urge to travel and adventure. It took me a long time to realise that the seat on which I sit and the wall at which I stare are always the same seat and same wall no matter where I am in the world. And in fact the only real journey we ever really make is an inward one. This was illustrated recently by some insightful emails from my 19 year old nephew, Jake, who is currently traveling around Asia before going to university. On his first day of travel and arrival in Bangkok he sent me an email in which he told of the shock of the day of his arrival in that strange and different city, of being lost and wanting to take the next flight home, of writing the whole venture off as a mistake. Now 6 months later he has returned to Bangkok and told he could not believe he was the same person who had arrived there, lost and scared, 6-months previously. Although he had been to many places and seen many things it seems his real journey had been within.

My own blog site about our mountain house has not been up dated in a long while, circumstances seemed to taken over once ‘E’ was pregnant and I don’t seem to have been able to get back to it. Also we have a bit of a problem with the house, or rather related to the house. We recently received a claim in the courts from a pre-socialism land owner that our house is without permission and that we don’t own the land. The so-called owner has filed papers at the court to have our house demolished! As serious as it sounds this is not unusual in this part of the world and is fairly routine here. It is the result of socialism, war and missing documents and a general lack of clarity in these things and persons, usually poor, with very spurious claims (as in this case – ‘we’ all the required papers for the house and land) do this kind of thing in the hope of getting ‘paid off’.

Anyway the whole affair has put a bit of a dampener on the house project. We still live there every possible weekend but somehow I couldn’t bring my self to do any significant work on the house or write an interesting blog. Hopefully this will all be settled in court soon, our solicitor here tells us it will be over in 5 minutes. But this is Kosovo, anything can happen, we shall wait and see.

Otherwise things here in Kosovo are fine, I’m still working with the water companies trying to make step by step some improvements, although often it is two steps forward then one back!

Finally I trust this message has found you well. All the best for your journey back to England and thank you for your continuing blog. It really is a good and valuable connection to the practice when one is literally in another dusty country! I’ll keep you up-dated on the baby’s development.

With all best wishes, in gassho
Tim