Wandewing Awound Wetaskiwin
When thinking of a title for this post, the “w’s” just seemed to flow out of the town’s name, Wetaskiwin. With those “w’s”, obviously the Elmer Fudd character from childhood Bugs Bunny cartoons whose “r’s” and “l’s” came out as “w’s” came to mind. I was hunting geocaches this morning, not “wascawwy wabbits”,but as you’ll see in the photos below, I did encounter one “wascawwy squiwwoo”.
And sure enough, as I started out from the parking lot, Elmer’s catchphrase was true: it was “vewy, vewy quiet”.
I soon found out that there’s a disc golf course in the park, which meant that large stretches of open ground made for easy walking when off the established trails.
The cache finds were constant as I made my way clockwise around the loop trail around the park. Most finds were pretty quick, thankfully, but there was one hard-fought “Did Not Find” as well.
Merging Hopes and Desires With the Natural Processes of the Universe#
In my explorations of out of the way places over the years, I’ve noticed bundles of bright-coloured cloth wrapped around trees. I knew this is a native tradition of making prayer and after some research I found that locally in Alberta it’s fairly safe to say that these “Prayer Trees” or “Ribbon Trees” are a Métis tradition.
Humans follow similar practices all over the world, including the Celts in Ireland and other peoples in Europe, for example. Expanding on the basic idea, in Japan, people follow the same practices, but in the case “prayers” are written on wooden plaques and left at shrines and temples. Click the “Ema in Japan” tab above to learn a bit more.
Here, in Canada, the prayer ties are left in a sacred spot, often tied to a tree, to weather and eventually disintegrate. It is believed that as the cloth breaks down and the wind and rain carry the material, the energy from the prayer is released and sent to the Creator. This reflects a deep spiritual connection to the earth and the belief that all elements of nature are intertwined
Visitors to Japanese Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples can write prayers or wishes on wooden plaques called ema.
Once inscribed with a wish, ema are hung at the shrine until they are ritually burned at special events, symbolic of the liberation of the wish from the writer. So, just like the cloth tied to the “Prayer Trees”, the wishes are released into nature with the idea they become woven into, and perhaps influence, the processes of nature.
There was one memorable tragedy during today’s outing: while searching for a cache off trail, the pant leg of my nice, relatively new pants got caught on some barbed wire hidden in the grass. The result was a long gash of a tear in the lower part of the pant leg. Many loud, four-letter Anglo-Saxon words followed.
The loop hike around the edge of the park wasn’t demanding at all, and multiple detours off the main trail to make cache finds added to the feeling of exploring the whole park. When I’d finished finding all the caches, I felt I was done caching for the day, so I simply pointed the car back north and returned to Edmonton.
Gallery#
My Wandering Track Today#
Related
Return to Battle Lake
Hiking Baldy Pass Trail to Lusk Pass Trail
