Posted on: Wednesday August 10, 2011
By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology
When we got back from Churchill a couple of weeks ago, Debbie Thompson handed me a piece that she felt inspired to write. This was her first visit to the Hudson Bay coast, and as an artist her perspective is quite different from mine.
It’s always depressing leaving a place that fills a void in my soul. There is a solitude here that tugs on my spirit, yearning for acknowledgment
There is a sensual beauty in the eroded and smooth curves of these ancient rocks. There is a harsh beauty reflected in the black spruce. There is a sad beauty in derelict buildings of the past. Forgotten to decay, or to be torn down to reveal a scar. And there is a radiant beauty in the voices of the people here, ringing with a subtle, ancient lightness.
Debbie Thompson in her natural element.
Churchill quartzite and Hudson Bay.
The weather is harsh, the insects unflagging, the land unforgiving. But it is beautiful, quiet, and serene when I choose it to be so. There is a different pace up here. It must be the ebb and flow of these ocean tides and the koanic sweeps of bows and bends of timeless rocks. Why rush … nothing else does.
These grey stones, a riddle in form solely, should be a reflection of my soul. They do not change in a day, but over time are never the same. Yet are always present in some form.
That something so beautiful and graceful is birthed of relentless time and the harshest of trials … could not my very essence aspire to such a virtue?
Lakes near Bird Cove.
The shore east of Halfway Point.
(photos by me)
