Enter the Owl

I can’t meditate - so I walk. It’s basically the same thing - but in motion. My feet set a rhythm for my intentions - they carry my energy back to the Earth and she supports me in return. This may be the physical counterbalance to the ADHD of my thoughts. They run a sort of train station come 5 ring circus in my mind. Which isn’t as chaotic as it sounds - it’s a well oiled magical sort of place that filters information for patterns, filing the useful and useless (but somehow entertaining), releasing the rest, and repeat. I live in connections and patterns - in synchronicities and systems. Since my mind drives most of the time - I walk.

I walk to remember the beauty and power in this body - the instinctual way it communes with nature. As if they have known each other for a very long time. I walk to receive the remembering my body cannot think it’s way into. I walk to experience the way the past smells on the breeze - the way the sunrise reveals the potential of each day. I walk to hear the snow speak under my feet, and the leaves, and the grass, and the mud. To remember the cycles that the trees know so well. They understand that rest is essential to birth something new just as release is essential to allow the detritus to nourish the next cycle. Regardless of how much energy is put into growing something, there always comes a time to let it go so that something new may grow. And then, there was the barn owl - but more on that later.

After my dad retired he became a little lost - decades of routine and purpose left behind on a Friday and not picked up again on Monday. He still has not entirely found his footing in this freedom he spent decades working towards. I feel we lose a lot of men his age to this shift. Women tend to build their networks outside of their family and career that they may support said family and career. Men tend to build their networks within their career to support their family and home. And then along comes retirement - the kids have moved out (hopefully) and things are redefined. While there is no set 9-5 in his days anymore - there is walking. Every day, as long as it’s not too cold (so, about half the year in Saskatchewan). It grounds him into something familiar while giving his thoughts the space to live into that vast prairie sky. His 5 ring circus tends to play more in anxiety and worry, so this walking takes the spotlight off of them for a while.

Over Christmas I was home with my parents for 5 days. With no visits or parties to attend we settled into a quiet routine. A morning walk, where we discovered a tree that had been decorated with tiny ornaments. Apparently brought over a series of days by a lady as she was out on her walk. Coffee (though none of us drink this regularly) and in the afternoons, we would go snowshoeing. Last time I was home Dad was having troubles with the clips on his set, so we had ordered new ones. When I looked at his old set later, it seemed to me less complicated than the new ones, and that seems to be happening more often these days. Things that once connected so easily are falling into a grey area - interesting the games our mind will play with us.

Mine likes to play a little game called Gaslight Yourself. Now, I know I’m intuitive and I know how my intuition speaks to me - I’ve known this for years. I’ve compiled this data from ages of trial and error - years of knowing what I should do and then seeing how long I could stand in the flames for anyway. I always understand something better if I break it and work my way back from there. Given my mind’s propensity for patterns, you would think it would have enough in the database by now to just give over to Intuition and call it a day. And yet - I found myself in a familiar spot on January 11, 2021 and I was using my morning walk to talk things through - quite literally and audibly. It went something like this:

Intuition: Reg flag! Something is not right! Lying detected.

Mind: Yes, but are you sure? And what is it? Surely we can figure out what exactly the lie is, right?

Intuition: Just trust us. It’s no good. Not safe.

Mind: Buuuuut, since we know that, surely we can hang out for a bit and see if we can outsmart them, right? Because, what if…

Intuition: *face palm emoji* (this is my Intuition’s favourite emoji)

Tired of the back and forth (and clearly a little biased, if you ask me), Universe stepped in and tossed a barn owl right in front of me! Boom! This large white and black bird flies directly in front of me - settling into an owl shape on a tree on the opposite side of the path. Alright. Message received - and of course I had to google the meaning of this as soon as I got home. Hmmmm….barn owls are brown. “Okay Google! What kind of owl is white and black and lives in Saskatchewan”? The Snowy Owl! Of course!

Later that day, I’m on the phone with my parents - mom puts me on speaker so that they can both not hear me properly. Oh the joys of aging parents! As we are chatting I mention that I saw a Snowy Owl on my walk - a big white one with black patches.

Dad: Snowy Owls aren’t that big.

Mom: Yes they are, you’re thinking of a different owl.

Dad: No, barn owls are the big ones.

Mom: Yes, and so are Snowy Owls.

Dad: No, they’re those small brown ones.

Me: *finds and texts a picture of a Snowy Owl to them both*

Mom: See, this is a Snowy Owl.

Dad: Oh, right. That’s not what I was thinking of.

And at this point I realise two things:

1. Sometimes things just don’t connect with my dad. Sometimes it’s finding the word for the image, sometimes it’s math or the next step in a process. And we’ll just continue to pivot with this as it comes.

2. My arguments with my Intuition sound just like this! And I will just continue to pivot with that as it comes too.

Here’s what Google has to say about Snowy Owls:

https://crystalclearintuition.com/white-owl-meaning/