Either I overworked myself and am taking a while to recover or I was really getting addicted to the coffee I had on the road trip. I’ve been quite sleepy most of my time here. Alternately, I’m having time to relax and my body is taking full advantage.
Yesterday Paul, Paula, Kite, and I headed over to the homestead of a couple who have lived here since the 70’s. While they are living here now in a fairly modern log cabin, they originally lived there in everything from a tipi to a cardboard shack and raised their kids in a military tent while they got their house together. While we were there, the husband, C, showed Paul and the rest of us many of the artifacts that he’d found at a few archaeological digs in Texas. It was such a great opportunity for Paul, who has been interested in archaeology for some time now, to see what it was all about. Sure, we’ve all seen these sorts of things in museums but it was a very rare opportunity to be able to hold 500 year old pottery pieces in our hands. It certainly isn’t something we could expect to do at the Royal Ontario Museum.
Just before the trip and as we were sitting there, though, I had to wonder about the next generation here. For those who haven’t read the yurt years entries, you may be unaware of the interesting dynamic in this part of the country. In this area, there are, generally speaking two main cultures (and bunches of subcultures), one of which is visible as you drive through, the other being visible if you look really hard or know someone. The obvious culture is white christian middle-america. This is, after all, the bible belt, and all it takes is one trip across the radio dial to have it painfully clear that fundamentalism is alive and well here. I tuned past two stations at about the same time on the way here and both of which were saying how we needed to have “faith in our leaders and our government.”
Anyway, the other culture, I believe, arrived in the early 1970’s with the “back to the land movement.” Starting in the 70’s, many hippies moved to the area to try their hand at homesteading and live a life more in line with their beliefs. Or, if you are cynical, to grow their own pot without being hassled. Either way, over the past years, those folks stayed here, had children and began to change the dynamic in this area a little, bringing the likes of health food stores and medicinal herbs companies to the Ozarks.
Now, however, what I’m noticing is that unlike the first generation, my generation is very much inclined to come here (or grow up here), get their head together and then head off to other places. Of our circle of friends that lived here when we did, I can think of only one that is anywhere near here and she’s moved about 4-6 hours away. Everyone else, including us, has moved several states away. It makes me wonder if this interesting dynamic will remain here or if the land will go back to being strictly fundamentalist?
I spoke with Kite about this yesterday and she was able to name a couple of people from our generation who did stick around as well as several people from her own generation that left to go back to “civilization”. And then, of course, East Wind is still here. But still, part of me feels sad for being a part of a small exodus like this. Really, though, this isn’t our place. While I felt welcome here most of the time, I never truly felt like I was in my place like I do in Toronto. At the same time, though, I don’t really know the future. This could be an ongoing dynamic thing with people coming and going back and forth over the years. Heck, even some of the people I stay with here go on extended road trips or off to spend a few weeks or months in the city. Even Kite has come to visit us for almost 6 months at a time. So perhaps my generation’s departure is, for the most part, only temporary.
While on our first trip back, I found the sights bringing back memories, on this trip it is the sounds. This morning I was awakened by the sound of rain on the roof and the trees again as the sun was rising and was brought back to a cold and drizzly day when a friend (another member of the exodus) came by to the yurt where despite the cold drizzle outside we were cozy and warm with our wood fire. Last night, as Paul and I were about to go to sleep, a barred owl called almost right above us and I thought back to the time when Paul was a toddler and was fascinated with owls and the times when I would be roused from my sleep at the yurt by a mating pair of barred owls shreiking and cackling in the trees above us. I hear the shriek of a hawk and am reminded of hot summer days, so hot that we could barely even move, where we’d lie about outside the yurt during the hottest time of the day reading aloud to each other – the only activity we had the energy to take on with no fans and 100+ degree heat. And while I love my city, am glad to have left and have had my share of really bad times here, there’s a part of me that misses the life here.
As we were chatting Sunday night,
Kim asked if, knowing what I know now, would I do it all again. It’s been an interesting thing to think about. While I strongly doubt we’ll do anything like it again in the future, despite some very difficult and unpleasant times, I would not change that bit of the past for anything.
Long time readers (I know there are a couple) who read this blog back in those days will vouch for the fact that I had a great deal of difficulty redefining my identity as something besides my occupation. I had a lot of trouble, also, with going from being a competent person at work who received compliments on and gratitude for my work on a very frequent basis to being someone who got pretty much nothing. With my job no longer the centre of my life, I spent much of my time doing the things that kept my life going, gathering wood, cooking food, dealing with waste, and being a parent to a then 6 month to 2 year old. ‘Attaboys’ are rare to receive for doing a good job of taking out the compost, and while there is a sense of accomplishment to be had for gathering enough wood to keep yourself warm for another night, it didn’t present the same addictive quality that a compliment or better still, a bonus did. The workplace definitely gave me an inflated sense of importance that I was sad to no longer have. But at the same time, as unpleasant as that was, it was an education as to how my inner workings operated as well as how the culture I live in works.
While it seemed at the time that I never had any time to do anything between the childcare, cooking, and so forth, looking back I can see that I had a great deal of time for myself. I read more in those years than in any other time of my life. During that time I read a number of political books, some books on Buddhism, and a great deal of fiction as well. All of that reading has shaped who I am as well, in what feels like a positive way. Over on facebook I have asked a question as to whether you have become more or less conservative as you get older, and I think living in the yurt is a great part of why I now say I am much less conservative than I was five or ten years ago.
One of the greatest things I learned from all of that, though, was that I can come up with what may seem at the time to be a totally crazy idea, implement it anyway and be successful. In my last days of working before moving here, the coworkers who didn’t think I was totally crazy all said we were really brave to just take off and change our lives so dramatically without a reasonable assurance of success. I truly think that our success in just dropping everything, and moving to a yurt in the woods, and managing to be successful at it for almost 2 years directly translated to other similar attempts at ideas that might seem crazy or at least that have a good chance of failure – everything from riding my bike to work to packing up the family and moving to Canada.
Up until I moved to the yurt, I had lived a fairly conventional life, though I did know of the existence of other, less conventional lifestyles (the folks here where I’m staying, for instance, who showed me a yurt brochure when we first visited in 1995). What I didn’t know was if I could manage to adapt to it. Living in the yurt started a long line of tests of our adaptability, moving us from the Ozarks to an apartment in the New Mexico high desert, and eventually on to Toronto. And while we haven’t been living up to the ‘Nomads’ part of the “Quirky Nomads” title, I’m reluctant to change it just because in my heart I still feel that openness to adventure and readiness ofr a challenge whatever the next one may be.
So yes, there were times when it really sucked living in the yurt – there were difficulties with the people who owned the land, there were health issues for Paul (turns out he’s a bit allergic to wood smoke, dust, and the smoke from oil lamps – we never figured that out when we were there and instead wondered why he often got colds), I had several spectacular bouts with food poisoning, and there were other minor annoyances such as the time we came home from the big library late at night to find the yurt ice cold but the draft of the stove was actually flowing backwards meaning that until the fire really got going the smoke filled the yurt; there was the scary job of closing all the 6 x 6 yurt windows (they were velcroed on from the outside) in the middle of a huge thunderstorm – rain pouring down on me wobbling on a ladder on the side of a hill waiting to be struck by lightning. But, the birth of a new person, even if it is yourself, isn’t without pain. And like birth, it doesn’t take long for most of the pain to be forgotten and to be left with nothing but beautiful memories.
It’s almost 8:00 now and I am in the midst of what must be the most restful vacation I’ve ever had. Do you know those lazy Sunday afternoons? The ones where you read or watch bad TV movies in between naps with occasional trips to the kitchen for a snack? That’s where I am right now. Today, after writing that entry I went to the kitchen, had a bit of cereal before going back to bed where I slept until almost 11:00. After I woke up, I fixed a friend’s computer, chatted with Sage a bit, and then headed back to the longhouse (the name of the little building we’re staying in) where I read a bit more. Paul and Kite came by a bit later with a TV and VCR and watched a movie and as is my usual routine when a movie is playing, I fell asleep again, waking up every once in a while to read a few more paragraphs.
At the end of the movie dinner was ready – miso soup, pesto, bread, rice, and cheese, and I headed over to eat while Paul continued to work on his project of cutting bits from lego catalogues and he caught up with me a little later. After dinner he headed over to the coop (the old chicken coop where Kite lives) to play with his lego and listen to CDs of Sage’s podcasts while I spent a bit of time chatting with Paula. I had intended to go back over to the coop with everyone but once I got back to the longhouse, I found that I was ready to write a bit more and likely read some more afterwards.
Visiting here is really good for me. It allows me to reconcile two disparate parts of my personality. There is a part of me that was happy living simply in the country and there is another part of me that is thrilled to be living in a big city. That said, there is overlap. When I lived here, I still occasionally consulted and still laugh to myself about communicating with clients in pharmaceutical companies solely by means of an online voicemail account that said “…I’m either on my phone or away from my desk at the moment…” which was a euphemism for “I only have electricity when I come to visit our friends and don’t have my own phone so leave a message and next time I can check my email I will get your message…” At the same time, back in the city, I don’t feel like the mindless corporate drone I could be but rather I’m the crackpot leftie coworker who doesn’t own a TV and rides his bike to work. Coming here and revisiting this life recharges that part of me in some way and puts my life in perspective a bit. It’s a great opportunity and keeps me sane. At the same time, however, I couldn’t live this life exclusively and maintain my sanity.
Tomorrow is our last real day here – on Friday morning the whirlwind begins where I drive about 16 hours back to Toronto, unpack, do some laundry, and repack for a Sunday afternoon flight and dive right back into the midst of it all. It’s good, though, I’m pretty sure that having had this time to recharge I’ll be all the better able to cope with work when I return.
Recent Comments