the Wanderer

Rob's grandfather stormed in and grabbed the little boat out of my hands, "Jesus, mumble, boy, you're gonna cut your hands off.. "

It was the most words I had ever heard Mr. H string together. I'll admit to having been intimidated. I was probably seven years old. I had gone into his workshop to make myself a wooden boat, and had nailed two pieces of wood together - a flat one with a block on top. When he came in I was busily chopping a prow into the front of the flat piece with a hatchet.

I held firm despite my fear, and made it clear that I was going to make my own boat, thank you very much. I think he helped a bit, but I was being so stubborn and difficult he eventually left, with a grumble, to let me cut my hand off if I really wanted to.

I later took the boat to Long Pond with my brother and Mother, and floated it around with a little string tied to it.

Later that summer, at the Dingle one day, a little park on the edge of Halifax, we were at the beach, and I ran to the car to get my boat. Not sure when I named it "the Wanderer," and I think it was my brother's idea, but I know it had been christened by this point.

Aug (what I called my brother back then) floated some proper toy boat, and I floated the Wanderer around. On a string, at first. And then - not.

Mom warned me - "you're gonna lose your boat, Paddy." But I said it would be fine. The Dingle is on "the Arm", a small harbour on the other side of the Halifax peninsula. It opens into the North Atlantic. The tide went out. I could see my boat going, and I ran to get it, but ultimately all I could do was watch it float away. I'm sure Mom thought I'd get over it (and never dreamed I'd be writing a blog about it thirty-three years later).

Two years later, when I was eight or nine, I was walking on the other side of the Arm with my brother and Dad, at dusk one night, at the seashore property of one of Dad's customers (Mrs. Read?), and there, tangled in the seaweed and flotsam, was my boat. It was a little battered, but otherwise fine. The Wanderer.

I took it home, and it turned up now and again over the years, here and there. Each reappearance was meaningful to me, like no matter how far I strayed, I would always return 'home.'

I dreamed about it last night - that I found it again.

I started a comic/graphic novel years ago, in my teens, about a character called the Wanderer - sort of a less personal version of what this blog has become.

I'm preparing for a trip soon - to somewhere I've never been. Not a long one, but it always freaks me out a bit how I seem to come alive once travel is on the docket, like a dog that just loves the car - I don't really care where I'm going or for how long - as soon as someone says "road trip" - I say, "I'm ready." And everything in my life starts to align, like metal filings around an electro-magnet, which has just been turned on.

That character, I always draw him the same, has a particular jacket. I found it two weeks ago at a second hand store in Port A, for $4.50. Finding it kinda freaked me out a bit.

It's funny though, to have a back door. Hiking Sulphur Mountain, near Banff, in 2008 with an Ozzy pal, I said I always kept my passport on me, in case I decided to bail out. He stopped, in the snow, and looked back at me and said "dark."  Is it? I never felt that way. Every darkness has a seed of light, and light the seed of darkness - sometimes I can't tell them apart anymore.

All you've found is another back door
...
Take the heart of the travelling band
You'll never understand that
All they know ... is the yellow line

Dreaming about the Wanderer last night kinda freaked me out a bit - what part of myself am I finding or about to find?

For ancient and indigenous shamans, the chief cause of many of our complaints – fatigue, low energy, excessive vulnerability to illness and allergies – is soul loss. The understanding is that in any human life, we may lose part of our vital energy and identity through pain or grief, shame or abuse or wrenching life choices. The cure is to try to find that missing piece and bring it back and put it where it belongs. 
     For me, soul recovery is central to healing. In order to be whole and able to operate with the best and brightest parts of our beings, we may need to recover parts of ourselves that have gone missing. While we can look to a shamanic practitioner – if we can find a reliable and responsible one – to assist us through the operation known as soul retrieval, it may be safer and more empowering to learn the techniques that will enable us to be self-healers and shamans for our own family of selves.
    Our dreams offer us roads to soul recovery.
  ...
    Soul recovery, in the fullest sense, is not only about reclaiming our younger selves. It is about meeting and integrating all our personality aspects, including as much of the energy and insight of the larger or higher Self as we can manage to contain at this stage in our life journey.

I've mentioned before that I've always felt like, when it was time to travel, part of my soul would go wait by the road, for me to catch up with it. And until then - I was not whole. I've made him wait for years, at times. Or not.. ;) The character that I drew, with the jacket - is my image of that layer of my soul.

That force, the "Wanderer" energy, I both love and fear, because while I can call on it - it can also call on me, simply by walking out to the road. The "home" that I knew the Wanderer would always come back to, and this is what reassured me about its reappearances through my youth, and even into my twenties, although I couldn't have articulated it this way - is me.

Yeah I left with nothing
But the thought you'd be there too
Looking for you

Yeah I left with nothing
Nothing but the thought of you

I went wandering