THERE’S A SPECIAL shade of blue that appears where the sun meets the horizon every morning. It sits in that mysterious space where darkness meets light, where night begins its brightening into day. My people call this time of day Beedahbun, first light, but there’s no word for that particular colour, an off-purple fading into blue grey. You need to sacrifice some sleep and comfort in order to be out under the sky when that colour emerges, and not many people are motivated to do it. That’s sad. For me, that colour is gateway to the spiritual realm.
I discovered that for the first time in 1985, when I was one of a group of aspiring storytellers gathered on Manitoulin Island. We had gone there for ten days to sit with elders, hear traditional stories and teachings and figure out how to incorporate those into our contemporary work in theatre, fiction and poetry.
The elders told us on the first night that it was the desire, the yearning we carried, that would make all things possible. The elders were so calm. They felt so grounded. When they walked, they seemed to move in a shroud of silence. I wanted that depth of connection to myself and to the world, so I was determined to listen carefully and follow their directions.
One of the first things they instructed us to do was to get ourselves outside early in the morning. We weren’t supposed to use an alarm clock or ask anyone else to ensure that we woke. Instead, we were to harness our desire and use that energy to get us up on time—to intuit when the time was right. Those instructions felt strange to me then. I was struggling hard to survive in my city life, and I wasn’t used to integrating traditional teachings. This would be my first real test. The elders wanted us to face east as first light came up over the trees. We were to sit there without speaking and watch, then later to tell them the story of what we saw there.
The first morning was chilly. It was late October, frosty, the taste of snow in the wind and a scrim of ice at the edge of the small lake. It was hard sitting on a cold rock waiting for first light to break. I’d had no coffee, and the clothes I’d brought were insufficient for the season. I was very cold. But I made myself stay there and wait for something to occur.
At first I saw nothing. Then I began to discern swirls and shapes in the sky. As the sun emerged, a wild palette of colours I had never imagined spread slowly across the skyline. Time slipped away, as did the discomfort I’d been feeling.
I was awestruck when I first spotted that impossible blue. I recognized it immediately, not as a memory but as an ache at my very centre. That incandescence awoke something inside of me, and when I felt it stir to life I wanted to cry.
When I described this to the elders later, they smiled. They explained that special colour represents both emptiness and fullness; it carries the possibility of everything. When the universe was created, it contained both those properties. So do our spirits when we are born. But as life happens, we gradually shut that boundless possibility down. Rules and judgement cause it to shrink. The storyteller in all of us can go into hiding, lying dormant within us. When I saw that special blue, my storytelling spirit was sparked to life again.
Over the next nine days, the elders showed me how to coax a flame from that ember of spirit. They told us about the rich protocol and traditions of storytelling. We talked about how vital stories and storytellers were to the lifeblood of our people at one time and how urgent it was for us to bring that vitality back in whatever creative form we chose to use. And every morning, I took myself outside, sat on that rock and watched the light break across the sky.
It’s twenty-four years later, and now I’m a seasoned storyteller myself. I’ve tried to integrate everything those elders taught me into a body of work that gets bigger each year. As often as I can, I get up in front of people and use the ancient tools. I connect to that impossible blue that lives within me, that area of both fullness and emptiness, and then I speak.