Day 1: Flying Moon Farm

Night of Grief and Mystery

Day 1: My upcoming storytelling tour to Scotland seems to have begun even before I’ve left Canada. What I mean is that I felt the journey began last week when I attended “The Night of Grief and Mystery” in Renfrew, Ontario. The “Night” is the creative expression of Stephen Jenkinson and Gregory Hoskins and his band. Stephen is a theologian, poet, and storyteller. The “Night” focuses on Stephen’s writings on death, dying, ageing and elderhood such as you’ll find in his books “Die Wise” and “Come of Age”. Gregory is a Toronto-based singer-songwriter who has collaborated with Stephen and written songs that poignantly reflect and interpret the themes of Stephen’s writing. The “Night of Grief and Mystery” has been called a “concert for turbulent times.” As a storyteller who is likewise becoming an elder and has had to befriend death, the concert left me feeling very alive and inspired. Death seems to be the perfect beginning to going out to share my stories. It seems to be aligned with my work as a storyteller and as an end-of-life planning facilitator.

Several days after the concert, I was honoured to welcome about 40 folks to the Flying Moon Farm near Carleton Place, a small town lying west of Canada’s capital city of Ottawa. The farm is owned by Christina Turner and home to the Courage Herd, a unique herd of horses, a donkey, and several sheep who were rescued by Tina and who work with her in providing valuable, therapeutic lessons in boundary-setting, leadership, overcoming fear and helping with self-confidence. Tina is a leadership consultant of international reputation and experience but it is her sensitivity to the animals and to the land and the natural elements that impresses me the most. Before the storytelling, we venture into the woods where she introduces me to Grandmother Oak and her family. Around this magnificent tree crowd young cedars and Tina chooses one of them, speaking softly and reverently before asking for a few clippings of its tender shoots, which she wants to use to make cedar water. In exchange, she asks me to offer a story. I thank the cedar and Grandmother Oak and share my story which I call “Basket of Stories” about the importance of listening and immersing yourself in the “river of voices” — all voices, human and non-human alike.

Flying Moon Farm, home of the Courage Herd

Tina has helped me feel re-connected to something much bigger than myself. It’s something that I felt earlier in the summer while house-sitting for friends at their home in the country. Again, it was the surrounding forest, trees looming over me, protecting me, that made me feel a part of something divine and elemental. I recall feeling this connection when I was a child playing in the fields behind my house. Everything I value now was, I believe, learned in those fields. And here on the Flying Moon Farm, it comes back to me. Even as my “midnight” approaches, I feel alive.

Whisper and Michael

In the afternoon, children, their parents, young couples, and older folk bring their lawn chairs and blankets and gather around me on the lawn beside the barn and paddock. The horses watch from the railing. No sooner do I begin telling stories when Whisper the Donkey trots carefully into the audience to see what the fuss is all about. Amazingly, as I’m telling a Jack story, Whisper appears from behind me just as i come to the part about Jack and the Donkey. I couldn’t have arranged that in a million years. Everyone is laughing. The sheep, Dolly, Dharma, and Oliver, come over to get into the action too. I continue as if it’s all part of the story — because I know it is. This is exactly what the story spirits have deemed to happen and I’m completely open to it.

After the storytelling, we break for a pot-luck dinner. People have brought lots of food and drink to share. We meet the newest neighbours on the road. The next-door neighbours have only been here two months, having immigrated — in their 60s — from Switzerland to be nearer their children. I meet some of Tina’s relatives, her daughter, and many of their friends. Children run about enjoying the lovely warm evening, the animals, and the fresh air.

Telling tales around the fire

A couple of the younger boys prepare a fire and we gradually move to sit around the fire pit. It’s dusk. The sun is setting against the backdrop of reds, oranges, ochres, and purple. The sky is slowly transforming to day-blue to indigo. Sparks from the fire shoot upwards to the heavens. Men, women, and children circle around me.

This time, I share much older stories, stories of creation, Coyote stories, stories of how the stars came to be. Just as I finish a story about the Big Dipper constellation, someone exclaims, “There it is.” I turn and there’s the Big Dipper just rising above my right shoulder. This leads me to ask who knows of other constellations and their stories. Someone mentions Orion the Hunter. Then someone remarks on how living in the city, they don’t get the opportunity to see so many stars. We sit, heads tilted back to take it all in. That’s when I notice the creamy flowing of the Milky Way across the night sky. If this were the last storytelling session I ever offered, I would die happy.