“We did a bad thing.” R looks remorseful at me as I wander towards him from my bedroom where I’ve been packing. He went out to start our vehicles a few minutes ago and is rubbing his hands to warm them up in the kitchen. “What did we do?” I ask only somewhat worried. We’re both alright and there’s lots of firewood for the fire.

“We forgot to plug your car in and my truck won’t start.” We’re supposed to be rolling out of here in less than an hour to go two towns over where we’ll spend New Years in a hotel and where I’ll pick up the work truck to drive back out to camp the day after. It’s -32 with a windchill of -40 and all we can do is wait. Wait for my block heater to warm the engine up enough, wait for the sun to hopefully come out and lend its heat as well, wait for someone to come by and give us a boost. Finally around 1ish I hear from my dad, he’s going to Dawson and will stop by and give us a jump. Another hour later and we’re finally on the road.

It might sound bad but this is normal to me, so familiar from my childhood years up here in the northeast of BC, Peace country. A little wedge of paradise in the foothills of the Rockies before the land smooths out to the vast prairie that stretches over into Alberta. It’s so beautiful here and there’s nowhere else on earth like it. When I decided to move back up north this summer after talking with my dad and brother, one of the factors that convinced me it would be good, that I would readjust just fine, was my brother telling me it doesn’t get that cold up here anymore, or at least not for the month long stretches I remembered. This year it rained most of November which was weird and then we had the coldest christmas in years. Averaging -30 all throughout the holiday. Too cold to go snowboarding, snowshoeing, even visiting friends or family. Too cold to do more than the trek from the woodshed to the front door, refilling the daily pile. Temperatures like this are very hard on all machines, increasing wear and tear on engines, wheel bearings, any moving parts exponentially. It’s a recipe for breakdowns and if that happens its dangerous to be too far away from another heat source. Even with all the cold and hassle though I still think moving back up north was the best decision I made in 2021.

Living in Victoria for the past 13 years had been a lot of fun but mostly a lot of hard work just to get by and when covid hit, all the fun was gone. Though I had nothing but time I still didn’t see friends as they were worried about catching it, about following the provincial health orders, about passing it on to loved ones. I understood but being single and without family nearby I felt more alone than ever. I toughed it out for a year and then I was evicted. My landlady needed to move back home, things hadn’t worked out with her boyfriend and she needed somewhere to go, to land back on her feet again. I was still out of work, not sure what I wanted to do, what I should do, or where I should live let alone where I wanted to other than the beautiful city I’d been trying to make my home. It felt like the end of a two year long unwinding of my life there and I chose to accept the decision of the fates. To bow out, let go and make space for a new life. That’s not to say it was easy, or that I didn’t shed tears, or howl at the moon a little.

“Do you think my bike will fit in my car?” I ask my friend Q who is helping me pack up the uhaul rental van with what’s left of my Victoria life: a bed, a dresser, the desk I built, my bookshelf, the cabinet for my soap making supplies + said supplies, boxes of wine and other artisanal booze from local distilleries, books, essential oils… it’s not much I keep telling myself, keep telling my mom when she asks how much I’m bringing when I move in with her, keep telling Q as he helps me pack. It’s not much but the van is full, and there’s still more to go.

“Sure it will fit,” Q says, rubbing his jaw and looking thoughtful. “How many more things are you bringing? You have more small bags or boxes that can go inside the shelves?” This is the third time he’s helped me move in the last 3 years. The first two times were within the first 6 months we knew each other as I finished a two year stint of house sitting full time. A fun, but ultimately an inconvenient way to make housing affordable in the city, especially if you like to make things like I do. We finish packing the van and as we pause in the sunshine to take stock before I drop him off at work and I move my life away, he nudges my arm with his elbow in his Mexican way, nodding towards the van full to the gills, “you know, it’s okay to get rid of things, what you no longer need or what you won’t use anymore. When you get rid of things you make space in your life and good things will come in.” I look at him and the van, thinking of everything I’ve already given up, gotten rid of, or given away over the years. I have a lot less already and without a job I am concerned about the expense of replacing anything more I let go.

“Really, don’t worry about it. Things are just things and when you make room, something better is coming.” He smiles at me nodding reassuringly. He tells me a story about an ex-girlfriend and a favourite dress she had that she wore to tatters and had a hard time letting it go but when she finally did, either the next day or the next week a friend came to visit her and gave her a beautiful dress that she loved just as much or more. “It happens with me like that all the time,” Q says, “I am living my life and all the time things are coming in and it’s too much, it’s like I’m surrounded with garbage. I throw them away and the good things I want are coming into my life. Like that,” he winks at me. “Don’t be afraid, try it.”

I spend the summer with my mom up island lost and restless. While it’s gorgeous living right on the ocean I don’t feel like I belong there either. I try to keep up my habits that help me feel balanced and centred: meditation, running, my exercises on the beach. I ride my bike up and down the sea walk. I don’t know what to do with myself. I feel like a ghost, a hollow shell of the person I thought I would be, the life I thought I would live. Getting out of bed is a struggle each morning but I make it, eventually. I spend a lot of time sitting by the ocean, or walking through the forest. This time here with my mom is good, it’s what we needed for our relationship but we haven’t lived together in 20 years we have our road bumps. I’m not my best self. None of this is easy.

Talking with my dad one night by the campfire while I am up north to visit I begin to see a way forward. In my parents divorce my dad ended up with the family property. 495 acres of wild boreal forest. He lives on it but it’s been slow to get things done on his own. I’d been dreaming of having my own little farm and garden knowing full well it would be years before I would be able to afford a place of my own on a single income. It turns out he has been wanting to do similar things: grow a big garden, have bees for honey, create a little business or two where he could just putter around the farm and get by without a regular day job. So I take a chance and ask him about coming home and growing a market garden to start and just trying it out, see if I even like it. He tells me I’m welcome to try whatever I want. I think I surprised us both. I’d never talked about coming home before.

I find a job I can do and prepare to move myself north with everything I think I’ll need or can fit, crammed into my little cavalier. Before I leave I get rid of everything I no longer need, everything I don’t think is worth it to move such a far distance, even later on when I make a trip back for it, and anything that doesn’t fit in my mom’s little storage closet in the basement or would be in her way until I could make it back in the spring. I disassemble a book collection I’d kept boxed up for years waiting until I had space in my apartment or time to read them into a dozen free libraries around town. Drop off clothes and small furniture at good will. I give my bicycle away, which I had found out later Q was astonished I had fit it into my car, to another single woman and mother. It felt good to let go, to have a way forward, and yet I could hardly think about how my life was about to become. There were so many unknowns. What would life in a logging camp as camp cook be like? How would I re-adapt to northern winter? How was I going to make this new farm life work? I was excited but I knew it was going to be a lot of work. Like every other time I’ve made a big change in my life the full emotions didn’t hit until I was in my car on my way. As I began the long drive north, after saying goodbye to my mom and headed toward the ferry I began to cry. Big wracking sobs shook me as I said goodbye to the life I’d known for the past 13 years and as the tears subsided suddenly something shifted in my inner ears and it was like a blockage, something I’d been unaware of finally dissolved, opening. Suddenly my hearing was clear and I felt a calm reassurance that somehow everything would work out. I even made a new friend on the ferry. A night spent at a friend’s in North Van and 12 hours of driving up through the farms and suburbs of the Fraser Valley, past Hope, thru the twists of the Fraser Canyon, the desert of Cache Creek, the ranches of the Caribou Plateau, the pulp mill stink of industry in Quesnel and Prince George until finally the familiar Rockies of the Pine Pass and the final winding stretch of the heart highway to home.

Those first few days were pivotal. Complete opposite of how I’d spent the last year and a half, I was surrounded by people all throughout the day. Kind women with kind eyes and big hearts adopted me as a friend immediately. I had more interaction and face to face conversation in the first three days than I’d had the entire pandemic to date. People laughing and joking, telling each other stories. I was home. These were my people even though I’d moved away and estranged myself for 20 years, I was welcomed in a way I never expected. I met R, who wooed me from day one meeting me for walks after my shift, listening to all my trials and tribulations with an honest interest and care. He even built us a little fire pit so we could be warm as the nights cooled and we got to know each other. We found the Big Dipper every night on our strolls, walking arm in arm. The moon waned and became full. Those nights reminded me of a story Richard Van Camp once told at a festival about his father finding love again and naming a star in honour of that new found love. R likes poetry and recited Shakespeare on one of those walks. We read to each other, and he loves vegetables like I do. He wants a small delicious life like I do and is just beginning his own spiritual path. It seems a little unreal that I’ve finally found the man and partner I’d been looking for in the city up north in a logging camp of all places. Only time will tell if it really is too good to be true or not. For now we enjoy the solace in each other, make the best of winter like our quiet new years in a hotel before we both go back to work.

That first job didn’t work out but the friendships have, and while it took a couple months to get new training, tickets, and employment it has all worked out in the end. Over the holidays I made my first seed order in over a decade, three or more varieties of different carrots, beets, chard, tomatoes, all the vegetables I remember growing in our garden in my childhood and anything I’ve eaten since that I’d like to try like okra and shishito peppers. I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally have my own garden again. While I’m shacked up as a medic on an oil rig for the winter I’m making plans for summer, experiments to try, making a rough business plan, a 5 year plan, 10. I’m writing again for the first time since graduating. Working on old poems and finally inspired, with enough headspace and time, to write new ones; to work on something bigger than the 9-5 grind. To make a life I am excited to wake up for every morning. It feels big and terrifying and surreal all at the same time. Each step I make towards this new goal not only gets me closer but seems to bring in something or someone who’s not only willing to be part of this adventure but will also be part of its success.

So what kind of farm is it going to be? I’m not yet entirely sure. Other than vegetables I’d like to see how medicinal mushrooms grow, like rieshi, maitake, and lion’s mane, what kind of facilities they might require in the north, and whether or not I like growing them. We’re not quite ready for bees yet but they’ll come. As to farm animals, that will be R’s department along with the compost to which he’s already claimed kingship, and that will depend on how well things go with us. It’s going to be a process of protecting the spaces we’re cultivating from the wild and creating what we need to thrive: building a fence to keep the moose and deer out of the garden, building sheds for beekeeping and other projects, building a root cellar and experimenting with underground spaces to grow mushrooms year round without having to heat a facility above ground, building a space to live in on the farm, keeping it all affordable and not going into debt, making a running trail for me to keep up my healthy habits. As to where I’m going to live while I do all of this, a book I’ve been reading has given me a good idea.

If Women Rose Rooted is a book long meditation on life outside the “wasteland”, author Sharon Blackie’s metaphor for western civilization. All throughout the book she visits old places of Irish, Welsh, and Gaelic lore, and records her conversations and experiences with people who are doing what she’d love to: living sustainably off the land and with the seasons. One such couple lives on a forested Croft on the west coast of Scotland and as I read about their home in the woods while I’m out here on the rig for the winter I couldn’t help but laugh. During R and I’s daily phone call I tell him there’s a couple who reminds me of us in my book. “Do tell,” he requests, exited. I read him the excerpts describing their home and lifestyle:

instead of a house, dotted about the croft are two twelve-foot caravans, seven sheds and an upturned boat… One visitor described it as “an exploded house” and another as “radically detached”… ‘We don’t have insurance or a mortgage or proper jobs, either. But we do have eleven hectares of paradise, and a bed with a view over the sea-loch from where we can watch curlews, black-throated divers, otters and seals’… The idea of living in sheds and caravans as they do, didn’t begin as an active choice: It came about originally because they couldn’t afford to build a house… ‘But once we got to the point where we might have been able to think about building a house, we realised that we liked not having one. A fundamental thing to me is having a different kind of lifestyle and different habits depending on what time of year it is. In a house you have all your paraphernalia around you and so you behave more or less the same way all year round. We spend winters sleeping in a shed tucked into the woods, and in springtime we migrate down to the shore, spending most of our time in a little caravan there. But then by the time midsummer comes around the midges make living full-time in a small caravan intolerable, and so we shift our cooking activities to a cool shed at the top of the croft. In autumn as insects decline, we revert to the spring pattern, and then in winter we retreat to the shelter of the woods, and so the cycle begins again. It’s a form of transhumance. These seasonal changes are an acknowledgement of one of the most basic rhythms of life. I think of it as my own rewilding… Every trip out here is an opportunity to bump into a shrew or an owl. It’s true that if I want a cup of tea, I have to walk 250 meters from my studio to the kitchen caravan… in summer I’ll pass five species of orchids surrounded by butterflies, and on winter evenings the torch might just pick out the eyes and white rumps of roe deer. Sometimes I’m in full waterproofs and wondering if I’m mad to live like this. But then along comes a sparrowhawk and I remember why we do.’*

When I finish R says, “that’s really beautiful how they describe their lifestyle with the land, and nice that it made you think of us.” “Yeah! They even bend the gender roles a lot, he does the laundry and she makes goals and gets things done.” R chuckles at this. “Maybe we’ll end up living out of sheds and caravans like they do,” I tease. “Oh no,” he says. “I definitely want a house to live in.” We’ll see what the journey ahead brings, we already have plans to build the first shack.

Don’t be so afraid to get rid of the things you don’t need, that are wore out or no longer serving you. When you get rid of things you make space for what you really want, what you really need, to come in to your life. Thank you, Q, for this wisdom, you were right.

This blog is a way to share that journey, practice my craft of writing, and keep me accountable.

Thank you for joining me.

* The ‘I’ speaking from If Women Rose Rooted is Mandy Haggith and her story starts on pg 248 of the 2019 September Publishing edition