A celebratory day to contemplate time

My daughter stood before the birch arbour with her love, both saying their wedding vows, as the Ottawa River flowed past behind them, the current carrying leaves and sticks downstream as swiftly as time.

Over the past few months, as we prepared for the wedding day, I would watch the river and contemplate time. When the water was low, it flowed incredibly fast, speeding by. When the dam closed and the water rose, the river slowed to a more leisurely pace. Life is like that too – sometimes allowing you the time to savour each moment, but at other times speeding by so quickly, you just can’t believe where the years have gone.

It seemed only yesterday we were bringing our Elizabeth home from the hospital. And now she’s a married woman. Where did the past 30 years go?

Like weddings and funerals and other poignant life moments, travel also invites you to contemplate time. We’ve encountered many of those reminders of time during our journeys.

Glaciers are staggering reminders that time moves slowly but inexorably onward. On the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, in New Zealand, and along the Icefields Parkway in Alberta, Canada, we saw evidence of how glaciers scour the landscape. Signposts at the Athabasca Glacier showed where the toe of the glacier had reached in which years – leading you to believe that glaciers advance and retreat; but really, they’re always moving forward, just like time.

Ancient trees with their ever-expanding rings remind us that wisdom and experience are acquired over time. Maybe it’s the wind moving their branches, but I romantically believe I feel their spirit when I wrap my arms as far around them as I can. Bill just rolls his eyes. Old trees are not all enormous in girth and height – many are small, twisted, gnarly, stunted by strong winds. Time shapes trees differently, just as it shapes people differently.

In western Canada and the U.S., we learned about ancient medicine wheels and buffalo jumps used by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump was used to hunt buffalo for 5,700 years. These ancient reminders may look like piles of rocks or cliffs on a prairie, but they take more imaginative effort to discover and understand. As ancient reminders of time, they are more subtle than a pyramid, temple, church or monument.

Of course, time is more in your face in Europe. The constructed history of stone cathedrals, crenelated castles and soaring towers, backed by their technology and learning, goes back so much further than in North America. But, just like anywhere, those time reminders can be lost if we forget to remember and preserve.

Sandy beaches count time in millennia; each grain of sand was once part of rugged cliffs, coral reefs or volcanic lava. We spent a month in the Algarve in southern Portugal, where our apartment overlooked a kilometres-long beach backed by spectacular yellowy-orange-ochre cliffs, pockmarked with caves and arches and swoops carved out by rainwater and waves over the millennia. Like glaciers, beaches mark time slowly and remind us to travel slowly, savouring precious moments, relaxing, enjoying the sunshine, sipping wine on a patio, rather than speeding by and checking off “Greek island beach” on a bucket list.

Cemeteries and archeological burial mounds remind us, of course, that our time on earth is limited. But bone chapels take that reminder to the next level. In Evora, just east of Lisbon, the Chapel of Bones in the Church of St. Francis was creatively decorated with bones from about 5,000 humans taken from nearby overcrowded cemeteries. In the late 1500s, three Franciscan monks built the chapel to remind people that our time on earth will come to an end, and material goods won’t mean anything then. Some people might see it as creepy, but I found it an intriguing invitation to contemplate time, and what we do with it.

Yes, time is a loaded concept. It can be incongruous, conflicting, inconsistent, paradoxical. The past can influence the future, so we can learn from the past. But the future can’t influence the past. We can’t stop our progression through time. We can’t even slow it down or speed it up, although it appears sometimes that time moves slowly or too quickly. When my children were babies and toddlers and young children, it felt like that would be my life forever. But then I blinked and 25 years passed. They’re adults now, off pursuing their lives, including getting married.

Traditions are simply doing things the same way over time. Travel brings us face to face with cultural traditions, such as forms of dance and music, clothing, ways of preparing food, religions and other spiritual practices, and ways to celebrate births, deaths, and marriages. My mother sewed my veil onto my headpiece just a few days before my wedding, and I found myself doing the same thing for Liz, with the very same veil. “Something old, something borrowed…” Is that the way traditions begin?

But, cultural traditions do change over time. My daughter just legally married another woman – something Canada has allowed only since 2005. I’m happy and relieved that Liz and Crystal live in a time and country where they don’t have to hide who they are or who they love. Travelling to other countries and learning about their cultures reveals differing attitudes towards LGBTQ issues, among myriad other cultural traditions.

Bill and I are at the stage of life where health problems are overtaking many friends and family members – the kind of health problems that don’t always improve with time. One friend, whose husband is declining, said “These are the good ol’ days,” meaning that things will only get worse. I often recall what she said; it helps me to remember to live in the moment, enjoy where I am now, be grateful for what I have, and remember to concentrate on the important things. Carpe diem.

Many people have pondered time and tried to capture its elusive qualities:

• “Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.” –  Marcus Aurelius
• “Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” –  Jim Rohn
• “Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” – John Lennon
• “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs
• “Time flies. It’s up to you to be the navigator.” – Robert Orben
• “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” – James Taylor
• “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” – J. R. R. Tolkien
• “Life is short and the older you get, the more you feel it. Indeed, the shorter it is. People lose their capacity to walk, run, travel, think, and experience life. I realise how important it is to use the time I have.” – Viggo Mortensen
• “The very words “bucket list” can stir up some pretty heavy-duty fears. It can be a reminder of our own mortality, and death is typically something we would rather not think about. But, the reminder that our time is limited is actually one of the best gifts we can be given. It is one that can guide us to achieve what is most important to us before it is too late.” – Annette White

I’ve found that time is like grasping dry sand – you can try to hold onto it, but it filters through your fingers and the tighter you grip, the faster it escapes. Regardless of that knowledge, I hugged Liz tightly, tears threatening to spill over, as well as my other children and my new daughter, Crystal.

The Ottawa River flows on, whispering its stories that have played out over time about Indigenous traders, voyageurs, loggers, colonists, and one special wedding.

We celebrated our daughter’s wedding in June 2022 in Ontario, Canada. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.