Home Place(s) Part 1

Despite that fact that I have moved more times in my adult lifetime than the majority of people, I am profoundly connected to place(s). There are several significant ones that remain iconic, emotional and rooted in my bone memory. Upon reflection, I find myself realizing lately that all of them have now passed from my life. These special, magical and formative places are no longer 'mine' to visit, touch, be in. All of them are either irrevocably changed or gone altogether. The sadness of that is not lost on me, as all of them have been significant in making me who I am; sheltering me in times when I needed respite, housing the rich communities that formed my early working life in the outdoor field, and providing access to wild nature that few people get at 'home'.

The "Farm"
My dad built these shutters. He built, chinked, installed, lathed and sawed pieces of this place into shape for over 30 years. He was not someone who sat still easily and his 'leisure' time up at the farm was most often about being busy, as well as feeding his connection to wild places (as much of his life's work centred around the greening and 'wilding' of urban places).
In my childhood this was the place where I learned how to get lost in the woods (200 acres worth) and eventually find myself again, wandering for hours away from the cramped one room log cabin that contained the rest of my family. I learned to chop wood here, shovelled the path to the outhouse in -20 weather, fetched water in an aluminum bucket from an open well down a hill, read by lamplight, played darts with my brothers, tapped maple tress, learned to cook popcorn and pancakes to perfection over a wood stove, snowshoed from the car up the kilometre of unploughed road and driveway dragging a week's worth of supplies, saw Monarch butterflies emerge from chrysalises, witnessed my first animal death by human hand (my parents went nuts one day with a crowbar in a crazed vendetta against the groundhog that was plaguing their hopeless vegetable garden), portaged and paddled a canoe, swam between islands, learned how to work with wood, kerosene and creosote. Every kid should be so lucky.
It was not what most people would call a 'cottage'. It was a kilometre from the lake, devoid of mod cons and nestled in a wildly overgrown century-abondoned homestead. I was young enough and tomboy enough to revel in the place and all it had to offer, more so than my brothers I think as at that time they were in the throes of adolescence, less interested in manual labour and more in sleeping in and social life.
As an adult I learned to love this place as a retreat in times where I needed silence, independence, and many times, a home place within a transient existence. I had gatherings there, more than I probably have had at any apartment or house I have ever lived in. It was that kind of place. Warm, inviting, wood stoked and smelling of mice, lamp oil and cedar-lined linen chests.

A couple of years ago we sold it. Both me and my brother had moved west, and my dad had been in the grips Alzheimer's and hospitalized for a number of years, and my mum was juggling the financial responsibilities of a house in the city, a house in England inherited from her father that was refusing to sell and the farm. I was the one who 'did the deed' for the most part. Contacted the real estate agent, got the papers signed, handed this key to the padlock on the door over. The agent called me to tell me the counter offer had been accepted as I was driving across the prairies. I still remember where I was, overlooking a badlands canyon from a roadside lookout, pale sage and red soil.

This past winter when my dad passed away I drove across the country again. On the way back to BC from his memorial I drove the road to see the farm again, perhaps somehow seeking him out and bringing him there with me one last time. It still confounds me to describe how it had changed, or how devastating it was to return and find it no longer the gentle, wild place of solace it had been. There were the physical things, like the crisscrosses of skidoo tracks like scars across the snowy field (my dad abhorred all motorized 'off-road' vehicles), the massively widened driveway, the yellow drive shed full of trucks and front end loaders, the less overt but still significant changes to the cabin's old body. Beyond the physical elements, seeing the place again tore a piece of me, left some part of my spirit rattling in the wind. More than any other place in my life, this had been home, and now it's tangible doors at least denied my entry.

When we sold it, I went to pick up a few last things and leave the key. I knew the buyers would skidoo, build things, clear and change the farm in many ways. Before I drove away I wrote out and pinned this quote on the door, with it pinning some hope for the preservation of all that was wild in this home place.

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die discover that I had not lived.” 

~ Henry David Thoreau