Cemetery in the woods

Sunday morning, breakfast behind us. Small person and husband have a day of doing nothing planned but I want to do something. It's mild for February, around freezing point, a little bit of ice in the shade. What to do, what to do? I decided to just get in the car and see where it went. It went to Tim Hortons drive through...well this is Canada, and I haven't had a coffee in around a hour so coffee it is.  Then I drove onto the Mcmichael Art Gallery which is magically 3 miles from my house.  Somedays living in a small town north of the burbs can be boring or overly franchised.  But then I remember that the greatest collection of Canadian Art (IMO) is 12 minutes away...and off I go.

 

Sometime I go inside but mostly I walk around outside. Today I took a different path and then watched 2 chipmunks playing, up trees, down trees, through hollow logs. It was very cute and they were surprisingly loud and squeaky. I walked around the sculpture garden. Huge bronze statues. I liked them in their setting, as they were so out of scale and hard looking against the trees.  I walked through an art installation which I think was about the river of dreams. Sign was in French so I had to guess a few word.  12 massive weather vain like structures along a frozen stream. Each one had a message in a bottle hanging from it... I read them all.  Again, I likes the fact that this was so large and incongruous but it didn't touch my heart.

Then I wandered on to what the map called "the artists cemetery". At first I thought I'd detour to avoid that but why? Go have a look. As always the thing that I would have avoided if I'd let myself dwell on it too much was the best experience. I had no idea that six of the Group of Seven artists were buried, with their wives, in a circle in the trees. Before I came to Canada I had not even heard of the Group of Seven. Now I am learning as I go, and their art is a spiritual connection I have made with my new home. The cemetery and graves is a circle of granite rocks with their names carved out. The rocks symbolizing the Canadian landscape that they captured in their art in the 1920's and 1930's.  I'm still processing the experience...how people, live, are great, have a profound impact that remains when they are gone, and then there is a circle of rocks. The trees keep growing, the chipmunks play on.  I stood in the silence, my bare hand on a tall tree, trying to feel something. I have trouble feeling feelings, nobody's perfect. But what I did see after standing still was more detail.  It was as if more of the nature came into focus.  I liked that.  I took a lots of photos of foliage for a study of the colours of winter that I am starting on later today...simple pleasures

Namaste
Fiona