Where did "Dunroamin'" come from?

     Behind the legislature buildings in Victoria, there is a old humble historical house wedged in tall overgrown trees with a tiny sign above the door "Dunroamin'".  This was spotted years ago when I lived there while aimlessly wandering around; I doubt I'd be able to find it now.  It doesn't matter, what's important is the feeling it immediately captured for me.  The sign read like an exclamation point, as if to say, this is it!  It took a lot of searching and adventures to finally decide where I need to be.  It's compact stature declared that the residents didn't need much and had their memories to keep them entertained.  At least, that's what it told me as I stood there to admire the little house.
     A few years later I met Rob and together we set off of a wild adventure lasting several years; starting in South East Asia and ending in South America.  Near the end, feeling tired of living out of a backpack and ready to plant some roots, we were living in an Andean mountain town near the border of Peru.  I loved Cuenca, it's cobbled stone streets, the cafes and ice cream parlours, Spanish architecture, the Saturday market when Indegenous people came down from their villages to sell their flowers behind the blue domed cathedral, the quirky characters, even it's dogs that lingered in doorways.  I cried when we left there.
     Cuenca was known as a center for ceramics for Ecuador.  Longing for a place we knew we had yet to discover inspired me to custom order this plaque.  Having it displayed in our adobe house was a mark of serious intention. I knew that someday the right place would come along that would fulfill the same sentiments of that little house in Victoria. 
     Back in the Yukon, as we prepared to leave for Columbia, our last posting, Rob found a photo of this house at a real estate office.  We were living in his bachelor pad, a wee cabin without a door knob and a giant frost heave directly under the oil barrel wood stove.  Ever so casually, he placed the photos on the table and said "I'm buying this".  It was 2 weeks before Christmas, during an economic downturn and people were leave the Yukon in droves.  The house hadn't been lived in for a few years.  The realtor was not eager to drive all the way out here to show it to us, maybe it had to do with the time of year - apparently no one buys houses in December - or it could have been Rob's jacket with duct tape on the elbows.  We trudged through thigh deep snow banks and instantly recognized that this was it.  Without looking at any other houses, we declared confidently, yes, thank you, we'll take it. 

Leaving the Day Job

 

Photo: Returning from raiding Jeanine's rhubarb patch.  Nice view of the new English garden, eh?

"Retirement" some people are calling it, but to me leaving my day job is more of a re-evaluation, a re-structuring of my time at the lake and to ponder "what's next", while focusing intently on being fully present.  Here.  Why be anywhere else when it's so amazingly beautiful here?   

These are times to visit neighbours (and put their forgotten crops to good use, such as rhubarb compote) and feed on their passions for a while.  Time to plant that grapefruit seed I found that was already sprouting or to haul rocks from the local rock slide for a special flower bed or to experiment in the garden or to make a giant batch of pesto from the jungle of basil in the greenhouse.  Time to visit with guests who wander by and to tell them stories of why we choose to live in such a remote place so far away.

Personally, as much as I've tried to do the sensible career thing, it never seems to be sustainable, for one reason or another.  Maybe it's my attachment to this place, an hour away from the city.  Or maybe it's my lack of understanding of retirement, seeing as I've spent much of my life semi-retired anyway.  I've learned to live with less, be mindful of money being a tool and not an identifier of who I am.  Don't we all need something to do that's uniquely ours?  A purpose, some expression of joy?  Something to keep our energy juicy?  I figure if we've prepared ourselves properly, there won't be the dreaded ailments of aging, such as boredom and loneliness.  For me, being creative has been my main salvation and salve that gives me meaning and to be able to share this with other questioning and wandering souls is a blessed opportunity.

Dear Louise,

     You'd be surprised at how often I think of you.  So I thought I'd sit down and tell you of a good memory I have of you.  I remember when I first saw you in grade 6, at Notre Dame.  You were the new kid in school and you had a certain confidence that comes from moving around a lot.  Your French was very mature and different from our dialect.  I wasn't sure what to make of you and so I kept my distance.  Then one day in class you mentioned to everyone that your brother actually had a stick that a beaver had chewed on!  I was completely enraptured by this idea of possessing such a marvel from nature.  So much so, that I decided to do a big project on beavers and on my cover page, I glued a nickel.  I was impressed by my cleaver ingenuity.  Sadly, the nickel did not return with the paper.  A nickel back in 1972 meant a chocolate fudge sickle!  I blamed Raymond somebody, not sure why.
       All these years later, I find myself thinking of this while canoeing on our lake, doing what I love best - collecting beaver chewed sticks.  The plan is to make an awning off the sauna, completely with this harvest.  Can you imagine something as beautiful as that?  Lately, fat ones have been availing themselves.  So there's a fence waiting to be created somewhere.  Last fall during a gray, cloudy, misty day, a red canoe pulled up with a girl in a yellow rain coat.  She had a gift of many smaller freshly polished beaver chewed sticks for me and she piled them on our dock.  I've made a rustic lattice out of it for the new bed of daisies by the shed.
     This year's big project is an English garden, Yukon style.  For me it's not so much about what we'll plant there, it's the doodads I'm going to have fun with.  A sun dial (ours reads: "Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be"), a memorial bench for my friend and neighbour Gail, a bird bath (made by Gail who was a potter), a funky locally made statue of some kind and an archway made of beaver chewed driftwood.  I've been saving some extra precious ones for the rustic elegance effect, reflecting far away lands, yet terraced in front of the guest cabin.  This is where I'll pass to deliver freshly made sourdough muffins, neatly tucked into a willow basket, to hang on an old paddle wheeler's pulley, dangling off their deck.  Nothing says "Good morning and welcome to Crag Lake!" better than that.  "We're glad you're here to catch a glimpse of this wild setting and to be part of what we are literally carving out of it."
     I'm not sure where these massive ideas come from but Rob, this talented marvel of a man continues to manifest them for me and with me.  I am truly blessed in so many ways.
     Do you ever wonder about things like that?  How we recognize parts of our future selves at a young age and then finding ourselves exactly there?  There's a deja vu effect, or a comforting confirmation about choices made and certain directions taken.  That's the beauty of this decade of being 50.

The Label Quest

My grand vision of having a tiny retreat in our back yard was to not only share this amazing and inspirational natural space but to also bring me varied stories in the form of wonderful visitors from many different corners of the world.  I figured in my future years, I'd slow down on my personal adventures yet still want to travel vicariously with our guests.  So far we have not been disappointed by the many unique, charming and charmed characters who have managed to find us.

Our latest guest is Dirk Rohrbach, www.weltgeschichten.com a German adventurer here to write a book on his latest tour paddling to the Bearing Sea in a birch bark canoe he made himself last summer.  Dirk is a good sport who had no trouble humouring me with sending out an alert to his many followers that I was in need of clothing labels to finish my next label quilt.  Many people responded and yesterday I received my first significant contribution in the mail from L.A.  The challenge is to receive 500 labels during his stay here, until April 3.  The official count so far is 79, mostly thanks to Britta.  Many of them I've never seen before.

So Dirk and I are hoping to drum up more to reach our goal.  Later today, I'll be visiting him with my seem ripper in hand.  His generosity has no limits, he's letting me take all his labels!

Much gratitude to Dirk and his many friends!  I'll keep you posted.

The English Garden

 

"Bloom where you are planted" 

Few subjects subdued and quieted her;

big ones like the state of the world, loss of humanity

where we've all turned cold, afraid,

heavily guarded, overly stimulated,

presenting well.

Other thoughts were hedonistic, open, accessible, 

approachable, coital;

embracing of all encompassing juices of existence.

Photo: Royal Roads, Victoria, B.C. from our courting days. This was the garden shed door 

and is now the main inspiration for our future English Garden.

Scattered

 

"The true traveler is she who goes on foot and even then,

 she sits down a lot of the time."

- Colette

 

She seemed scattered at first,

that's 'cos she was, in almost every way.

Still, she liked to think she had it where it counted.

She came from Africa, Acadia, South America;

from the divorce-land of domesticity,

colour schemes and coordinates.

Living in a back pack suitcase

carrying water with him,

 even after the traumas.

She grasped what it was to be displaced,

uprooted;
expulsed from home.

Muse written when we first found a place to be for a while, after being on the road a long time.

My Mexican Parka

Photos: with Ros Oberlyn on the Malecon, La Paz, Mexico & Crag Lake parka

 
During my brief stint as an inn keeper in Baja, three winters ago, I had one of those amazing Yukon coincidences.  One of my neighbours said there was a woman who liked to winter in La Paz who also had a Yukon connection.   So when she walked past the inn a few weeks later, I had a vague recollection of her smiling face.  For anyone living in the Yukon in the late 1980's, Ros Oberlyn would be a familiar sight since she was a CBC TV reporter.  Turned out she had an apartment on the next block from me.  Most memorable all those years ago was Ros' outside winter stories because she wore a stunning purple and red beaded parka.  This may have been one of the first things I asked her once I found out that soon she would take up permanent residence in Mexico "What will become of your parka?"  We negotiated the repatriation of the parka back to the north under a polka-doted palm tree while eating rose pedal and corn ice cream.  Quite a surreal and lovely memory.