Large Fierce Mammal

It’s said that one who kills himself
Just takes the coward’s way.
I’ll grant this Truth for those who leave
When Duty says to stay.

But if you lack dependents
That must look to you for strength,
When all that’s good has fled your life
Why look to it for length?

~ Dark Sentiments Season 3 – Day 26: Suicide ~

Suicide is one of those subjects that Western culture simultaneously attempts to understand and avert its eyes from. In fact, there’s so much about death from any cause at all that society struggles not to come to grips with, you’d almost think it was something unusual.

Another side of the coin is revealed when someone is handed the news of their death sentence by way of a cancer diagnosis. They can expect to have to travel the path of this new reality essentially alone, no matter how loved and surrounded by supportive people they may be … and then there are the ones who have accepted their end with grace, and found a way to help those around them do the same, only to discover that Life is not so easily cast off. When that happens, the reactions of the erstwhile doomed, and their staunch supporters, can be somewhat counterintuitive. That last bit though, it’s a thing in itself that we’ll save for another night. For now, we’ll look at two examples from two very personal perspectives. One who decided to end his life, and another who wasn’t given a choice.

“Surviving survival: what happens when you expect to die … and don’t” includes a radio documentary called Splash produced by Rich Halten, and the story of breast cancer survivor Diane Marley. The show originally aired 18 October 2016 on CBC Radio’s The Doc Project.

Have a listen here.

Inspired by a narrow channel of water that separates a local island from the mainland, and that is subject to remarkable reversals in current that may catch the traveller unawares, The Back Passage is a tragedy of sorts. As one more point of note, the actual Back Passage does lead to a Distinguishing Point, even if the poem doesn’t.

Up the Back Passage

By LFM

Once in my youth, I loosed my craft,
All proud of stem and stiff of keel,
To seek what joys and rare delights
The backmost passage might reveal.

My paddle’s thrusts made strong and true
My passage down the narrow way,
And no resistance felt I there
As slack tide spoke no word of nay.

Stronger, deeper, stroke by stroke,
I strove to run the passage through,
My muscles gleamed, my blood was up,
The climax of my voyage due!

But then the passage tightened round,
And left me striving helplessly,
Though stiff of stem, the ebbing tide
Now pushed me out most flaccidly.

‘Twas then I learned the tide’s consent —
It might be subject to repeal,
Rejecting all one’s manly strengths
In favour of a buggered deal.

Hotrod Bristle was inspired by the song Hotrod Lincoln, recently brought to mind by something revealed to me by the Esteemed Jay Heathman, which makes it partially his fault. The remaining share of the inspiration lies with the Woman I’m wed to, and the picture above that’s making the rounds right now, about which she said that if she had a broom, that’s the kind she’d want. So far as I know, the image was plundered by thousands from Pinterest without credit. My compliments to its creator, and I will be most pleased to give credit where credit is due if that person ever comes to be identified.

Before you go any further, you may want to prepare your mind by toe tapping your way through this … (more…)

“Dagger Woods is a small rural community located amid softwood forest and marshland slightly less than 10 kilometers east of the university town of Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Anyone driving Highway 104 to or from the eastern part of the province will be familiar with the turnoff.

“Tales of a malevolent being haunting the woods began to spread shortly after the area was first settled in the late 1700’s. Locally referred to as the Hidey-Hinder, and also known as the Dagger Woods Howler, legend connects the thing to a crime of passion in which a husband killed his wife with a pearl handled dagger before fleeing into the depths of Dagger Woods, never to be seen or heard from again. Some believe the Howler is him, doomed to relive his dark deed in perpetuity. Still others believe his evil woke something in those woods that took him, and now either cannot or will not rest.

“Whichever it is, those alive today who have encountered the thing describe the experience the same way – at first a horrendous, inhuman scream is heard in the distance, followed at intervals by more of the same, each time closer and more deafening. No one can describe it because nerve either runs out before the Howler is near enough at hand to see, or the witness disappears without a trace.” ~ Dark Sentiments Season 2 – Day 3: Dagger Woods

Yesterday we spoke of spirits. You will recall that I left you with thoughts of one in particular, the propensities of which I promised to employ in your further education. Well now, Goode Reader, draw closer to the fire for here we are again, and if I’m nothing else, I am a Man of my Word.

It has been my good fortune of late to have attracted the attention of a Gentleman by the name of Dan O’Brien, entirely by way of my piece on Dagger Woods, a portion of which is quoted above. Dan, if I may be so bold as to call him that in such a public venue, has a singular interest in Dagger Woods lore, and for the moment I will leave the exact nature of that interest undefined beyond that it has led the two of us down a path of mutual enlightenment.

So it came to pass that he recently released to me the gleanings of some assistance he has enjoyed courtesy of the History Department and Library at St. Francis Xavier University, located in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. It was from the tale of young Saundra Girard that some clues to the Howler’s hunting habits, and their reliance on the baser human emotions, may be found.

Saundra had a liking for her Mother’s blueberry muffins, and with that in mind, she set off one day to harvest the makings that would slake her craving.

For the fattest August berries
Waited deep within the wood.
Where once a fire had scorched it down,
A grove of Pines now stood.

Few would go where Saundra went because of the stories that held the woods to be haunted by something that could only be heard, but never seen. Of something that hunted wanderers and used fear as its weapon. Of people who went into those woods and never came back.

Saundra was a country girl, at home in the forests, and endowed with no small amount of savvy from her Father. She knew that to lose your head in the wilderness was a ticket to disaster, but when she found her berry picking being subject to ever more insistent interruption by a persistent stalker, she remembered the stories too.

“You’ll hear it, sneaking and creeping up on you, just behind your left ear, but try as you might, you can’t see it. Turn as fast as you like, and the Hidey Hinder is that much faster. It’s worse than trying to catch a mosquito while blindfolded. The Hidey Hinder keeps in your shadow, hiding just behind you, and the only way you can save yourself is to catch a single glimpse of him. That’s the hard part. he always moves just that much too fast to be caught.

“Some say it’s just a fooler, a minor level trickster who is looking for a giggle on you. Others say that it will chase you until you panic and run, and that the bones of those who died of exposure and lie lost in the woods are usually scarred by the long-fanged hunger marks of the Hidey Hinder.” ~ The Hidey Hinder of Dagger Woods

At first she thought it was her older brother Jeremy trying to scare her, or some forest dwelling animal, but these theories were soon abandoned.

“She turned, half-expecting to see a deer, a rabbit, or a worse a bear. Bears were hungry this time of year, looking for berries to fatten themselves up for hibernation. The cubs would be mostly grown, not needing their momma’s protection, so the odds were any bears would be more than happy to leave her alone.

“She saw nothing.

“And then she heard it again, softly to her left, a dead leaf crushed beneath an unseen pressure — a heavy footstep sounding very close indeed.

“She held still, not wanting to disturb whatever it was that had made the noise. She edged her glance backwards, slowly pivoting her head in tiny careful increments — nothing.

“And then she heard it, even closer, just behind her left ear, a soft damp giggle.” ~ The Hidey Hinder of Dagger Woods

Still leaning more toward the traditionally corporeal forms of mischief, she called out to her brother, warning him that he should know she could hear him. But then …

“She felt its hot breath upon her neck. She shivered, as if she were cold. She remembered a time when she and Jeremy had found a dead dog beside the roadway. the dog had been covered in maggots that had made a soft sound like crackling cellophane. The stink was terrible.

“This thing’s breath was worse.” ~ The Hidey Hinder of Dagger Woods

But Saundra was her Father’s Daughter!

“Now she was remembering her father’s voice. She remembered a story he’d told about the Hidey Hinder, how it would creep up and follow hikers through the woods, scaring them into hurting themselves, or panicking and becoming lost. Her father had said that the only way to scare a Hidey Hinder off your trail was to catch a look at it; it couldn’t stand the sight of its own reflection in another’s eyes.” ~ The Hidey Hinder of Dagger Woods

And in that moment, her enemy played its hand.

“Saundra felt something move closer to her. She heard a soft, rancid giggle, like someone snickering through a mouthful of bad butter.” ~ The Hidey Hinder of Dagger Woods

At that, she launched herself into a series of gyrations calculated to bring the thing to heel, but that ultimately left her dizzy on the ground, none the wiser.

“She forced herself to be still. She waited for the world to stop spinning before her eyes. She forced her breath to slow down, and then that thing behind her stuck its slimy tongue against her ear.” ~ The Hidey Hinder of Dagger Woods

That did it. Saundra ran with every fragment of vigour her youthful frame could dredge up, realizing as she went that the thing wasn’t trying to catch her so much as driving her to catch herself in a tangle of panic fueled misadventure. Running for all she was worth, she ultimately reached a stream that lay across her path …

“She ran for it and fell to her knees, scraping one against a stone. She looked down into the water and saw the reflection of the Hidey Hinder, and that was all it took. There was a puff of foul-smelling smoke and that was the end of the Hidey Hinder. She was safe.” ~ The Hidey Hinder of Dagger Woods

Saundra wasted no time finding hearth and home.

“‘So what’d it look like?’ they asked, after she’d told them what had happened. ‘What did the Hidey Hinder look like?’

“She wouldn’t say, or perhaps she couldn’t.

“It was a long time before she found the nerve to ever go back into the woods, and when she did, she always carried a pocket mirror, just in case that old Hidey Hinder came sneaking up behind her.” ~ The Hidey Hinder of Dagger Woods

August Blueberries are a powerful draw.

The Wendigo – I will call it that but there are many iterations of its name – is a malevolent forest spirit that comes in winter. It needs human flesh to feed but can only slake its hunger by possessing a human that it then uses to hunt, kill, and devour its prey. The Wendigo comes to us through the spiritual teachings of the Algonquian people, and it’s said that when stalking its victims it has the ability to remain forever behind and out of sight. As the prey finally senses its presence, even the quickest turn of the head will never catch sight of it until too late.

Most powerful in times of hunger and famine, the Wendigo waits and hunts in the bleakest and most remote parts of the North American wilderness, ready for the solitary traveler with the right combination of fatigue, hunger, hopelessness, greed, weakness, and desperation. Most of all it loves weakness and greed, and such is its ravenous hunger that when it strikes, all known to its host, and any it meets along the way are at risk until none are left to tell the tale. ~ Dark Sentiments Season 1 – Day 17

Systems of human belief that formed absent any Abrahamic religious influence tend to share the common trait of including people as being one among Nature’s creatures instead of above all by divine edict. They seek to understand the forces and phases of Nature within the context of motives and behaviours shared by Humans and other living things alike, and in so doing, grasp how simultaneously simple and profound everything is in its connectedness.

Whatever its basis, all systems of belief seem to share some sort of concept of an immortal life force that dwells in living things. While the Abrahamic group assigns this “soul” exclusively to human kind, others find spirits dwelling in places and things; some grand and powerful, and others that are tiny, even seemingly insignificant.

Spirits seem, for the most part, to concern themselves with their own affairs, in concert with Nature and their own expression of the Way of the Wild. Only things that have become unsound so they can no longer be that way themselves will attract their enmity. A tangible comparison can be found if you watch a Deer walk through a field of wild flowers on a Summer’s day. You will see it going about its business heedless of the scores of Bees that are momentarily disturbed by its passing. Likewise, the Bees will buzz away fussily, to either find another flower or re-alight on the one just vacated as soon as the interloper is gone. By comparison, something that due to age, infirmity, illness, or wrongheadedness, like an irrationally fearful human, can easily attract the defensive side of a Bee’s nature with painful results.

And then there are the spirits that seem born out of the Human condition. Notwithstanding such an unstable foundation from which to spring, not all of them mean harm, although their interpretation of right and wrong may be wildly divergent with that of the average “man in the street”. The Tomte, of which I have previously written, is a shining example well known in Scandinavian lore, and that I have found my own clan of much closer to home.

Some, though, are not unlike the Bees whose enmity is directed toward energies that aren’t in keeping with Nature’s Ways. I began tonight’s Dark Sentiment with a passage from our archives regarding one such particularly vile spirit, and when next we convene, we will take a look at another with remarkably similar methods.

The Magick of Words

By LFM

When I was but a stripling lad,
Enthralled by tales of sword and sage,
I dreamed of magicks foul and fair,
And words of pow’r beyond my age.

It saddened me that magick seemed
A thing of fiction’s fantasy,
To hold no sway upon the world,
And least of all for such as me.

Yet still I yearned for stories dark,
And whether they stood real or nay,
I rode their thrills with feelings pure
As any felt upon a day.

And then, one day, a glimmer came,
Of power played upon my soul
By stories made of nought but words
That drew me to an author’s goal.

I felt each joy, each plight and pain,
As fully as ’twere mine to bear,
Lived new lives upon a page
That someone else had written there.

And then, as from a lighting flash,
I’d literary loins to gird,
Remember-ed from Sunday school —
Where All began, there was the Word!

I burned my nights from end to end,,
Read grammar’s grimoires dark and deep
And spelling learnt to cast my spells,
To make men laugh or haunt their sleep.

Two words transposed, a comma’s place,
These may make men laugh or baul,
Love or hate or kill or die,
Welcome to  the writer’s thrall.

“The way Nature sees it, stress is the motivator for an organism to do something to relieve it. If you’re hungry, find something to eat and eat it. Thirsty? Find water. Too cold? Seek warmth. Too hot? Seek shade or some other method of mitigation. Tired? Find a way to get some rest. Sexually aroused? If you need me to clarify the solution to that, you don’t belong here. The point is that these are real problems shared by all Nature’s creatures, and illustrate one of the reasons why your Dog doesn’t care how much money you make. Stress becomes negative when we embrace living with it in self-imposed perpetuity, permitting our action to be limited or even paralyzed completely by a belief that certain plans of attack will fly in the face of the way things are ‘supposed to be’, or the way others expect you to conduct your affairs. In truth, it’s not always as simple to define as that, but in far too many cases, it is. The magic lies in knowing when you’re letting yourself fall into the trap.

“’Conflict’ is another word that’s been handed a bum rap, and government policy makers, corporate CEO’s, and school administrators wring their hands daily over finding the best way to eliminate it from the Earth. Good luck with that.

“In Nature – including the office I’m sitting in at the moment – the world is abuzz with Conflict, but for the most part with nary a raised voice, harsh word, drawn blade, nor bared fang. Conflict is inevitable when organisms in Nature compete for the same resources, but conflict and fighting are not the same thing. While fighting is an expression of conflict, not all conflict involves fighting, nor even negativity for that matter ….

“… The more I’ve studied the application of fighting arts and delivering lethality, the more I came to eschew the posturings of “toughness” and implied violence. I always laugh at the old saying that you should never fight with an old man because if he’s too old to fight, he’ll just kill you. It carries a solid element of truth at its core methinks. Study your methods and tools, train, and don’t fight unless your predetermined limit is reached. Then it’s all in – the way animals do. Fighting is counterproductive and wasteful – NOT at one with the Way of the Wild as a point in and of itself, but as a necessary element of survival that must be learned by everything that walks, swims, slithers, or flies, each in its own way.” ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – The Positive Side of Conflict

“I’ve said many times before that for creatures in Nature, getting through a day is very much an exercise in energy management. Investment measured against return. The Way of the Wild doesn’t hold it up as a good idea to expend valuable energy and expose the self to risk of injury or immediate death by attacking and killing out of such base sentiments as boredom or sheer malice, and defensive measures offered by the presumed “prey” are what hold potential attackers in check. Nothing in Nature meekly submits. It’s flight or fight, all the way!

In Human terms, the offer to a potential attacker of being maimed or killed as the cost of doing harm to one they would have their way with is an enforcement of morality. The moral code of a just and sound society patterned on the immutable laws of Nature. Respect Life, and never take it without sound reason …. ~ In Ferro Veritas – Chapter the Third

Just this week, the Raven Tribe YouTube channel posted an interview with my Esteemed Friend, Master At Arms James Keating. Whether or not you have ever practiced any fighting discipline, I invite you to set aside the time to absorb what Jim had to say. Most particularly, his statements that the ability to express violence in a sane and productive context is but part of what it means to be a complete Human; a concept that will seem counterintuitive to the 21st century ear. Listen though, and you will learn that only those who understand destruction, and yet also have the strength to withhold it, can truly know what it is to be merciful.

Hearken also, Goode reader, to the distinction  between “traditional” and the “tribal” martial styles, and how their distinctions factor in to a healthily balanced expression of Life. For as Jim describes our time to be one of “ascension”, in which the clamour is that the fight is the thing, in and of itself. A grave mistake as he so eloquently points out,  for what this time truly demands is, as Musashi defined, the all encompassing Spirit of the Thing Itself.

Now listen and learn. Take notes. (more…)

Tonight we’re going to gather around the fire and consider something that will tax the mental equipage of the average citizen, and we’re going to do this with the help of our guest speaker, the incomparable Lloyd, prolifically publishing under the nom de guerre of Lindybeige. You would do well to click on his name which will take you to his YouTube channel, and subscribe immediately.

What he’ll be talking about tonight is quite neatly summed up in his description of this short and spirited lecture:

“We ask soldiers to shoot people in combat, but how many men find this easy to do? What proportion can pull the trigger?”

I happen to have a small parcel of Friends who have actually been in situations that called for the ending of another human life, and I hold every hope that at least some of them will provide their own observations after viewing this, even if only very generally, and if necessary, privately. (more…)

World of Living. World of Dead.
A veil that lies between.
It bars the Dead from coming back,
Except on Hallowe’en.

I’m troubled that it’s strong and true
A year of days but one,
Then weakens with the setting of
The last October sun.

But all this lies beyond my ken,
Or powers to resolve,
And evil lurks the whole year through,
With constant threats to solve.

Excerpted from

~ Cold Iron and the Veil ~

I can’t speak for yours, but my ancestors believed that there are two worlds — those of the living, and of the dead — with a veil between. Such a metaphor lends itself to a certain bittersweet understanding so that, even as the harvest is joyously and thankfully brought in to be stored against a (hopefully) merciful Winter, the veil has grown threadbare by this time of the rolling year, and thus prone to to be torn in places as it ripples in the gusts that play along the borderlands.

This self-congratulatory “enlightened” age now takes such views as quaint and simple minded, fit only for childish mimicry and costumed shenanigans. And yet, while the nature of the veil, and the supernatural horrors it holds in check, are no longer acknowledged as matters demanding of precautions, most lives go on in denial that there are other veils, and those are very much real. Let’s look at one.

You get up at an appointed time, and if you hold down a job, you proceed through morning ablutions to arrive at the grist mill on time. Your work place is subject to regulation by any number of government agencies affecting everything from occupational health and safety to what words may be spoken to coworkers. Your expectation is that you will get up in the morning, go to work, and come home safe.

Your work may not make you happy, and you may harbour hope that this job may some day be left behind in favour of something that pays more. Because that’s how it’s supposed to work, right?

Most people you’ll meet fit into some iteration of this pigeon hole, spinning their way on their endless hamster wheel of life. In down times, some read, although far too many find blessed distraction through some combination of self-medication, “reality” television, and the latest panic attack drama on social media. They routinely find hope in the rhetoric of political candidates as an alternative to the Truth — that unless you’re adrift at sea in a life boat, real salvation comes from within.

One day, the news carries a horrible and tragic tale. A child killed by a bullet meant for another. For a few critical minutes, a down town street has been turned into a free fire zone in the middle of the business day. Ordinary people shopping and grabbing a latte are screaming and running for their lives, some are filming the excitement. All are oblivious to the thinness of another veil.

Police quickly move in and cordon off the area. Nearby office buildings go into lockdown for the safety of the domesticated and helpless inside. While a mother wails on the street outside,  those cowering in their helplessness have time to think about things like the dental surgery they’ll soon need due to repeatedly tearing open packages with teeth that are a poor substitute for even a modest blade.

The police cordon is opened and a soothing announcement made that the child’s tragic death came from crossfire in the shooting of a young male “known to police” that was “not random”. Outrage at a child’s death vents itself to flaccidity in the face of official promises to “tighten up gun control”, even as the veil closes to obscure the view of what has truly transpired — a business transaction between entrepreneurs on one side of the veil has been closed, absent any reason to care about negative environmental impacts on the other.

May I offer you some guga? THE original, accept no substitutes, “stinking bird” of reknown! (Source: http://home.bt.com/news/odd-news/glasgow-man-crowned-king-of-the-gannet-eaters-11363862949493

“From generation to generation, some recipes and cookbooks have become treasured family heirlooms.

“The Nova Scotia Archives has scores of them in its personal collections, and has created a digital exhibit featuring hand-written and early printed recipes, some dating as far back at the 1700s.” ~ Hand-written recipes featured in Nova Scotia Archives online exhibit

The Archives of Nova Scotia recently launched a project to seek out and consolidate all the recipes, many hand written, that were known to exist in general distribution throughout its extensive collections. The result of bringing them all together, and trying to recreate — one might even say reverse engineer — a few is an exhibit called “What’s Cooking? Food, Drink and the Pleasures of Eating in Old-Time Nova Scotia”. For those of you who aren’t in a position to visit the Archives in Halifax, and of course as an ongoing resource, Archives team have created an “… online treasury of cookery ….” built from, “… finding and digitizing approximately 1000 old handwritten or early printed recipes.” All that mouth watering wonderment can be yours right here … provided you can overcome the language barrier.

You see the problem, as described by Archives Director Lois Yorke, is a generational, linguistic, and culinary disconnect between the people who lived those recipes, and anyone trying to interpret and use them now —

“Fully 1,000 recipes have been posted on the archives’ website, many with ingredients and cooking directions that would mystify the modern cook. Some recipes call for pearlash (baking power), saleratus (baking soda), or a “gill” of milk, which is about half a cup.

“Cooking, at the time, was intuitive and many of the women who were cooking could not read, … So it was learned, it was passed down from mother to daughter. There were no written directions for many of them.

“You simply make something, you stir it up, you add ingredients that are strange today. You add them in strange amounts because it’s not given in modern measures and when you have everything in the pan or the bowl, you mix all and you bake in a large cake on tin plates.”

Of the recipes selected for recreation by the intrepid team of archivist cooks, much trial and error was called for. As one of two excellent cooks in this house, and in deference to Mrs. LFM in her capacity as “Mistress of All Thinges Bayked”, the assumption might be that it should be easier to reverse engineer something baked as opposed to, say, a meat and vegetable based dish on the grounds that baking is chemistry, and hence subject to specific expectations of conduct among the ingredients. That being said, Mrs. LFM cautions that such an achievement would lie far beyond the kenning of the average household baker, veering more into the ethereal Alton Brown area of expertise. Ms. Yorke would appear to agree when she reports, “Chocolate cake, I remember, was tried three times … and they finally said, ‘It won’t work. I’m not bringing it in. You are not having it!'”

By comparison, other areas of cookery would be very much subject to local, even household, tastes, adjustments due to availability and quality of ingredients, and desperate times calling for desperate measures. There may come a point or ten when all of these influences, and more as yet unspoken, may coalesce to form a signpost to a very strange place indeed. Ms. Yorke:

“Perhaps the strangest recipe is one from 1849 about how to cook and preserve a “stinking bird.” Yorke says no one at the archives has quite figured out what it’s all about.

“You sort of put them in water and I think you boil them for quite some time and then you put some butter over them …. It doesn’t sound at all appetizing, and again, you can never tell from these recipes.”

The description put us in mind of a Hebridean delicacy called “guga”, or pickled baby Gannett.

“For at least 400 years, men from the district of Ness have travelled to the remote island of Sùla Sgeir for two weeks every summer to cull 2,000 young gannets.

“The birds are killed, pickled in salt and sold for as much as £20 a pair.  Demand is so high that sales are generally rationed.

“Hebrideans say the taste of the bird is very difficult to describe, but are somewhere between a kipper and a steak. According to local website Homeschool on the Croft, “almost nobody outside of Ness can bear the sight of it, the smell of it, and certainly not the taste”.” ~ Glasgow man crowned king of the gannet-eaters

Believe it or not Goode Reader, this mouth watering culinary tease is offered tonight to put you in the mood for something that is yet to come.