6 years out here.

 6 years ago today I woke up on the West Coast after a three and a half day bus ride. I can still remember how I felt to walk out the door of my friend's house and into my brand new world. I spent a week hiking around the city and the provincial parks that surround it. Massive trees fascinate me, and I Revel in their company. I could feel presence again. I remembered what it was like to be in the moment, to feel every breath.

I had no direction, no real plan. All I knew is that I had arrived, I was home... And my destination would be in every single step to come. I tripped around the mainland for a week before venturing to the island. I spent time there with a good friend to reflect and adventure. I prepared myself to find temporary employment until I figured out my footings.

Temporary employment, a few temporary places, and time had passed.. I even ventured back east in the middle of winter to empty out my locker. I returned to find jobs I enjoyed, gardening by the ocean and on the mountainside. The more time I spent in the city immersed in it's happenings, the more I wanted out of it. I was drawn to the forest, the mountains, the water.. it's what I came for. My quest took be back to nature. Fate forced me into it..

Halloween night 2015- the rain burst through the ceiling in my rental house, straight into my bedroom. I took my rent money the next day and bought a pickup truck. It was my home for half a year, at the base of a mountain down by the river. I learned a lot about myself that winter. My limits, my ability to love unconditionally, my ability to change. The evolution from truck to tent to couch to van to farmhouse was a slow and eventful one.

I remember the day J and I drove all the way out here in sub zero temperatures to look at the house. Small, drafty, but that view... I couldn't get over it, I was instantly smitten. It has a yard, room for a garden. Just enough space to live, and a full kitchen. I had to make this place my home. And I did.. boy did I ever.

Our first year we started as soon as the ground thawed. We built one garden bed, and then another, and another... we were blessed with an abundance to share. Year two brought the animals. Rabbits, goats, and then chickens... year three was the year of the pigs. The year of spiraling outward from our tiny home base. Exploring other land use options in our area. Becoming further integrated into the community. Building real connections with our neighbours.

I woke up this morning, in our fourth year in the valley... 6 years after that first morning I woke up on the coast. Today I had that same sense of presence as I walked out the door to let out the ducks and chickens. I felt a strange wave of accomplishment wash over me as I pulled hay from the loft for the goats. Sometimes I still can't believe it... I brought my hobby farming- homesteading dreams to this great big place and somehow made it happen.


Today I go to bed thankful. My freezer and pantry are full of abundance. My dehydrator has been running for days. The kitchen is loaded with stacks of totes of harvest waiting it's turn to be processed and packed away. Who knew I'd make it this far. Tomorrow is a new day.

[Photographic] memory loss

 Photography is a strange beast in my life. How I ended up getting into it in the first place, was my very first experience of losing photographs. When I was 11 years old, I was lucky enough to attend the Tim Hortons children's camp in beautiful Kananaskis Alberta. It was truly an experience of a lifetime. Memories so grandiose, they shaped the path of the rest of my life. I took with me a 110 film camera. It was 1996.

I took the full roll of pictures, saving one for the flight back home. Or so I thought. After waiting the two weeks for my photos to return from processing, I was all but devastated to realize that there was some sort of a shutter problem. Only the first two pictures on the roll had taken, and the rest were blank. I promised myself I would one day have a proper camera, and return to the mountains. Boy did I ever...

I've experienced some other unfortunate mishaps throughout my photography 'career'. Accidentally exposing an entire roll of film from a ceremony, and when digital first came about I'd unintentionally deleted an entire photo shoot for a Big Time Magazine that involved a bunch of people from a bunch of places getting together. There is nothing I could do but redo it. I will never forget that.



A couple years ago my folks drove all the way out here from back east with all my totes of Photographs & Memories. One big tote in particular had my entire collection of negatives from over the years. The black and white that I developed by hand in the darkroom, the medium format film, years and years and hundreds.. no thousands of still images in their raw form. As well as *all* of my original prints. When they first arrived, I opened them up to take a quick look through, and closed the tote again forever. Until the other day.

It was a dear friend's birthday shortly ago. One of my earliest friends, one that shares the same love and appreciation for photography as I. A friend that stood next to me in that darkroom, that was in so many of those photographs from the years passed. Her birthday inspired me to finally open the box. I unburied it from the stack of totes still awaiting their sorting day, and dragged it out into the light. I opened the lid, and was immediately horrified.

It looked as though someone had opened the lid, poured a bucket of water into the tote, and closed it to let it mold over for the next couple few years. Several different colours of mold at that. Mostly emanating from the darkroom bag that held the negatives. How in the... I have no idea. They'd been in there for easily a decade or more and were fine. Condensation? Some sort of leak? Many of the photographs still in envelopes were stuck together, negatives too. Soggy in their sleeves. I stared dumbfounded for a moment, and then immediately started rifling the moldy envelopes into the trash.

Some of the photos that were on top of the stack of little albums made it out mostly unscathed. And of course the album on top was the oldest one, with said dear friend in the picture. Mission accomplished, at least.. I did my best to take all the moldy bits out of the tote and set it aside. I will at some point, maybe even in the next few weeks, make an attempt to salvage some of the wreckage. Truth be told, having to one day soon deal with these totes has been stressing me out a little. And shockingly, I'm not as devastated as I thought I would be. 

I often wonder why we so value the mementos. Tidbits of the past- we're the only species that seems to hold on to them so. I have thought several times since I moved here that I should have kept my library, craft supplies, paints and useful things that I gave away, and instead given away all of the memorabilia. But that's not what happened. And it's all here, still waiting for me...