I spin this ring at the base of my finger. The thin, delicate, hand-carved lines etched deep in the surface of smooth silver ripple in the reflection of light. I am in love. I wear it on the middle digit of my right hand because that is where it feels it should belong and where it seems to have always belonged. Its placement, its position in my life did not originate as a question. It was handed to me as an answer.

Now my finger, ringless for many years, is wrapped in a band covered with the traditional designs of the people native to this area. This is how wolf came to sit at the crown of my palm. Even now the slow curves, the careful shading reveal the readying haunches, the long, toothy snout extended, a single eye sparkling half in ferocity, half in gentleness. It reminds me of loyalty, of the steeled intent that shifts worlds and transforms the borderless nation of a single soul. And although I know that a week ago, I stood in a jeweler's shop in Sooke, British Columbia spinning it against my flesh for the first time, it's now hard for me to remember my finger without it.

I'm not sure exactly where to start this story. How do you explain the idea of things that are new but feel as if they've always been, things which have rewritten in a short time the memory of the world before? Yet that's what this story is about.

I've been rightly accused of declaring epochs. I've also been known as someone who loves drama sometimes more than facts, who tends towards the poetic over the simple. In addition, I know myself as somebody who can't seem to stop writing when the tale has been told and the embers are cooling.

But this is a story about love. Love calls down epochs and demands calf-eyed mooning and the poetry of hearts. Love is a thing about which no amount of words is ever enough. Love comes without warning. No loud feet on the stoop. No sandalwood scent in the shift of wind. No distant glimmer on the backs of sparrows.

This story is tremendously large and gets larger with each day's passing. As I stand within it, I am overwhelmed. I don't understand what it is or where it's going. I can't make sense of it to myself because I'm riding it from the inside and am surrounded by it and it fills my vision. And yet, I do have to begin to tell the beginning, because I think it'll influence my life for a long time to come. And it's only by telling this story that all the others will be unlocked to share.

( The story… )