This morning the wind and rain continue here in the islands of the south coast of British Columbia. It has been a wet fall and winter – perhaps the wettest since the time of the Flood stories – and this is the coldest May we’ve had for a long time, which brings its own hazards. It’s all down to an extended La Nina event that pipes cool water into the north Pacific and keeps the air masses cold and turbulent, resulting in reliable patterns of convection, instability and therefore precipitation and windy weather weather. I live in a very rainy …
Yesterday was spent working with my friend and colleague Ciaran Camman yesterday on a design for a workshop on evaluation in complexity. We had the utter joy of being able to be together, having a high bandwidth human experience, which enabled us to really dive into some interesting existential questions after which we were famished and so we retreated to Kulinarya Filipino Eatery for dinner, feasting on Crispy Binagoongan and Batil Patong. The food was great and as usual our conversation wandered all over the place and at some point – possibly when we were standing outside a small rehearsal …
Years ago I wrote a little book called the Tao of Holding Space which was an interpretation of the Tao te Ching as applied to Open Space Technology and the facilitation of other participatory practices. Annick Corriveau is an Open Space Facilitator and she interviewed me a couple of months ago about my nearly 30 year history with Open Space Technology and the origins of this little book. She has a series of interviews with OST practitioners that are well worth checking out. You can download the book for free from the Internet Archive in English or in Chinese or …
One of the birds that lives on our island and can be heard almost year round is the red-breasted nuthatch. These little birds call out with a soft “meep-meep-meep’ and spend most of their time upside down on trees trucks and seed cones. Around here they are common all year round. Except this year. I haven’t heard a nuthatch for months. On the back of a record wet autumn and winter with some record cold spells and a persistent Lan Niña effect keeping the ocean cool, I wonder what is going on. Red-breasted nuthatches are ubiquitous in our forest and …
My favourite places to walk are along coastal paths, preferably along cliff tops or wild shorelines. On my home island we have very few places where one can take an extended stroll along such a place as most of the shoreline is privatized and even though in Casnada all shore up to the high water mark is public right of way, much of the Nex?wlélex?wm/Bowen Island coast line is steep and rocky and access to the intertidal zone is restricted. But there is a glorious walk along the shoreline at Cape Roger Curtis and it is my favourite place on …