Is it seriously one of the hottest years in recorded human history? Are we really raising our children and buying our groceries at 10% inflation every year while forests combust and highways crumble away in floods? Pandemic fresh in our lungs, and the pretend denouement of UFO disclosure freshly sprinkled upon the knowing fringe, we yawn and learn and yearn as we burn.
One year into this new life by the sea, and one for the books, I find myself mired and wired each day, slowly creating works of art and exploring my new home turf. The province isn’t big, compared to all the others, and it’s far more full of wilderness than development, which is really what I love most about it. As much as I love hanging out with friends and singing in a room full of people, if you held a gun to my head and asked me to choose between humans and trees, well...
You know, I’m kind of a hybrid forest-city lady, but the forest never beats us up or kicks us when we’re down.
I spent a substantial portion of this past year feeling like a dead squirrel cooking on hot blacktop: devoid of life, but also inflamed. Churning within. Raring to go somewhere, anywhere, nowhere at all. Deeply craving the solid footing that is a permanent home. Cats are so often my chosen familiars, and even the most gallivanting cats are highly territorial. I’m here; I have everything I need; this place is mine now, you know?
My son wants to travel everywhere, and I don’t blame him. We are a family of nomads, but entrenched in our genetic memory is the primitive urge to take root.
The drip-drip and the chug-chug-chug and the hot toilet water and the shade. It’s a glorious ride to the sea and back, wondering why we ever leave. One foot in the ocean and the other in the grave.
We walk barefoot over wet moss and grass and stone and sand, our feet protesting us and thanking us in turn. This is it. I’m comfortable here, cut grass sticking to my feet, but not welcome. I’m a displaced brown bear splashing contentedly in somebody’s backyard koi pond. I’ll wander back into the woods, which grow less hospitable to my kind with every passing day. I’ll raise my child there, in the fresh air and lawless expanse, knowing that we can pop into any backyard kiddie pool we want before returning to our wild lives, ever wiser for it.
Bullishness rises in me from the ground up, and by the time those bubbles burst they’ve already navigated the entire labyrinthine recesses of my mind and exited my head through its crown. They leave me stereotypically lighter, envisioning the albums and the writing and the graphic novel and the backyard chickens and the screen printed t-shirts and the tattoo shop café, and the concerts and the laughter with loving friends, mine and his and his, and the home away from home that lives in our hearts.