It was a misty day in Avalon. No, not in Glastonbury, England but its namesake in eastern Canada. Circumnavigating the peninsula, we were heading toward Mistaken Point, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The elements were in turmoil that day. Seeing an empty boat through the mist, I was transported to the land of Morgan La Fey and her enchanted tales in far off Avalon where pre-Christian priestesses wove their magic tapestry. It was June, and we were on a three-week road trip from Quebec to Newfoundland/Labrador and back. It brought me face to face with the very beginning of life, indigenous humans and other fellow creatures. It was a journey that immersed me into a timeless awareness of our evolutionary narrative in a circular form.
During Navaratri, those nine nights of the goddess, Indians celebrate the entire spectrum of Mother Consciousness from void to existence, emerging from rock to victorious awareness. From the shaping of the goddess with clay to her final immersion in water, it is a ritual that is a reminder of our human potential. This trip personified for me that entire spectrum. Greeted by numerous light houses, sentinels of our quest to understand ourselves, our environment and our inner lives, I became more excruciatingly aware of the chaos garden humans have planted. We dissociated ourselves from the integral Mother Principle, and landed ourselves in today’s environmental crisis. Having “come unstuck in time” I, a daughter of Tohu wa Bohu, the Void Mother, sing of a lotus lake of awareness.
Mistaken Point houses five hundred-million-year-old, Precambrian fossils. Driving was hard, visibility minimal as we followed the park rangers’ truck. We then walked a strange path with low vegetation- led by a scientist, a native of the land, at home in this sparse landscape. Soon we reached the geological site that was also infamous for causing many shipwrecks. The roaring ocean crashed nearby. I was made aware of how elements collide, congregate and reveal our mortal body’s naked reality. We removed our shoes to protect the fossils beneath us. Suddenly a troop of scientists including the one who discovered the site showed up, adding to the excitement.
Ancient humans from east and west met here on an icy arctic landscape and left tracks for other travelers to trace. Some of us suffer from an Odysseus complex, perpetually on the road home, yet waylaid by enchanted siren songs. We drove further on, to Cape Race lighthouse. It was deserted, foggy and ethereal; the foghorn’s wailing was a reminder of tougher times. This one seemed utterly unreal and real at the same time, signifying the wayfarer’s guide to our existence. Rooted and solid, for me a light house is a symbol of our awareness as “beings towards death”, at once being and nothing.
How enthralling this strange land, North of the border! We had arrived in Port Aux Basque, gone through the portal of twin hills, and entered the twilight zone. In Newfoundland all the seasons seem to coexist. Your eyes register soft green hills and deep dark lakes to the bluest of skies; then, suddenly you see floating ice, shimmering green and white in the brilliant sun. In this voyage, sacred and profane, I was led by the spirit of a Boethuk Indian who knew how to paint with red ochre, life energy. She must have permeated my being when I tied ritual objects on a tree in one of the grave sites we visited.
In Twillingate, a five-mile hike led to magnificent icebergs, but who would have expected to behold the very core of the earth, its yellow mantle. We did so at another UNESCO World Heritage site in Gros Morne National Park. When continents collide, they create an inside out landscape, perplexing us. Are we in, or are we out? Looking for the footprints of Norse people, we drove down a spectacular coastal Highway called the Viking trail. The road also led to ancient thrombolites, first form of life, and layers of sedimentary rocks turned upside down by plate tectonics, revealing millions of years of geological wonders. The Viking village made the story of American Gods spectacularly vivid.
We were now in a small raft wearing yellow body suits in the aptly named Witless Bay in St. Johns. Waves collapsed into particles of consciousness as two Minke and three Humpback whales gave us their darshan. We then did a sort of flower yoga around the majestic structure of the cosmos reflected in delicate flowers and plants at Memorial University's beautifully designed Botanical Garden. Surrounded by natural wonders, this was also an encounter with strangeness; one’s own body appeared as an unknowable stranger. We are the rock, pollen, and star dust evolved to witness ourselves evolve. But in the process, we dissociated ourselves from the entire pulsating world. It seems that human beings see with blinders on, only the tip of the iceberg.
On the road again rushing towards what turned out to be a sprawling cemetery. Next to it was a Bed and Breakfast called Cupid's Haven which used to be St. Augustine's Church! Old churches were all over the place in a picture perfect small town called Trinity. It was a rainy day good to take a break from hiking, and relaxing with puffin viewing and berg-watching. Rows and rows of icebergs of every shape and size lined up in the distant horizon revealing the meaning of an iceberg alley. Soon it is time to be on a ship again set to be welcomed into Labrador by more of these marvelous bergs. After landing we would go to the visitor’s center to pick a satellite phone. The province hands them out as safeguards since the road across Labrador is isolated and without cell service.
On an empty and wide gravel road, off the grid, as they say, I must have almost dozed off as my sons’ father drove. Suddenly I see a black spot in the middle of the road, sketched against the sky. A bear! First sighting of many to come; later a mother and cub pair came up to our car to say hello. So did a silver fox, glittering in its cozy fur. On the way to Mary's Harbor we stopped at Point Amour and Red Bay. Standing close to a 7500-year-old burial site of a young boy, play of words was crystal clear -L'Anse Amour/ Cove of Love is the Cove of Death -- L'Anse Mort. The lighthouse there is the 2nd highest in Canada, 3 feet shorter than the one in Gaspe. One can climb to the top to see the impressive light. Soon the fog would lift to reveal expansive views of Red Bay, the 4th UNESCO site we visited, a Basque whaling village from the 1500s, only 'discovered' in the last 40 years.
On the road home, we had a pretty straightforward crossing to Blanc Sablon, Quebec. It was a road taken by aboriginal inhabitants, now RT 389. Then we passed through this Eye of Quebec, on a most remote mountainous road. This ring like Manicouagan reservoir was created by a meteor millions of years ago. Its shape can only be seen from high up. It looks like the sign the Heptapods made in the film Arrival, a Uroboros, a serpent biting its own tail, symbolizing simultaneous consciousness. “And in every one of these cycles of human life there will be one hour where, for the first time one man, and then many, will perceive the mighty thought of the eternal recurrence of all things”, declared Nietzsche, the mad philosopher. Everything returns, as the river denotes, in Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha.
From stones to thrombolites to human consciousness is a journey that intricate design of our eye is grateful to witness. Good old Emerson knew this: “….I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me….” How amazing that life evolved on this blue planet! How paradoxical that our spectacular intelligence has also brought us to the brink of self-destruction. Perhaps the time has come when the depth intelligence inherent in the Mother Principle awakens us to our full potential, revealing a planetary consciousness of once and future togetherness.
This was a pilgrimage from Chronos to Kairos, from linear time to sudden immersion into the timeless creative womb of the Dark Mother. Carl Sagan was right; the vastness of the cosmos is within us, but the light of consciousness is only a small part of that enormity. We can only see through the mist vaguely, only a tip of the iceberg. Lighthouse of our being flickers like a firefly. Now on, now off; eternal rhythm of birth and death in the scenic view called life. Spirit of the Virgin in that abandoned church spoke in unison with goddesses of Avalon and the Indic Devi, of the cosmic hologram that is reflected in the mirror of human consciousness.
