Good Medicine

"Stalking Wolf never defined what good medicine was outside of the obvious meaning of being something beneficial and remarkable.... Good medicine was a sign that nature was showing you favor by allowing you to be part of some remarkable event or experience.... Good medicine was also any mystery, no matter how small, whose solution opened to larger, more wondrous mysteries.... Good medicine came when we were totally engrossed in experiencing nature. Bad medicine came when we were still marching around in our city personalities, or when we were out our proper sphere of actions." ~Tom Brown, Jr., The Tracker

I love the winters here in Minnesota. In fact, I would say that it's one of the reasons I live here. Yes, you read that correctly. I love the snow and I love the cold. You'll never find me being one who flees south to warmer climes for even part of winter. If I could I would live further north than I do, for even colder and snowier winters. What can I say, it must be my Nordic blood. And this year, it seems like we're having a "good winter" so far, and by that I mean one with adequate amounts of snow and plenty of cold temperatures so far. This is in contrast to the several relatively mild winters we have had the last several years. I am enjoying while I can, as I am inclined to believe we'll see increasingly more of what we've seen these last several years, and less of what we are seeing again this winter (at least for now, there's still February) after several years.

All that said, this time of year (from mid-January until the spring thaw), my thoughts often turn to something that I cannot do here this time of year: wilderness canoeing, particularly in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness here in the northernmost reaches of this beautiful state I call home. The quotation above lifted from Tom Brown's The Tracker, brought me in mind again once more of days and weeks spent on northern lakes in northern forests. The line that particularly struck me was the one about "still marching around in our city personalities."

It may seem strange that a wilderness lover such as I has lived in the city--the big city--most of his life. But there are many things, in terms of my cultural interests (museums, art galleries, live theater, myriad varieties of ethnic cuisines...to name only a few....) and other considerations I'll not mention in the interest of brevity and because that's not really the point of this post, that mean that I generally fit well in an urban existence. In some ways perhaps, it's a bit of a "split personality" I suppose.... It has happened on several occasions that when I have taken city friends with me to the wilderness, that even after only a day or two of a several day trip, they have remarked upon a noticeable change in my personality, demeanor...even the way I start to move and carry myself. I have become much quieter. It's true. Within a day or two at most upon going into the wilderness, I have left my "city personality" so to speak, behind....

And it is good. Good medicine, in fact. And it is because the equanimity that is being reclaimed within as I go back...cannot help but manifest outwardly....

The "self" that I am, that I become, in the wilderness, feels good, right, wholesome...me...the me I want to be....

That's all I have time for this evening. More on this "good medicine" in posts to come (hopefully :).
Peace