Life on the Farm Day 5

The editing got stuck today but a story I was working intensely changed direction on me and took me by surprise.
I went off out to ponder and mull in this glorious weather and came across this strand by the side of a lake with the mountains in the distance. I hadn't realized there was a conference going on. A Canada Geese Conference. They all becamet quite irritated at this human intrusion and scattered.

I took another picture of this fantastic place:

And then headed towards the mountains which were breathtaking, the trees just on the point of turning crimson but nowhere to stop and take a photo.

I try and find common ground with the young mister and missus. They don't believe in reading as everything you'd ever want to know is on their devices and the television. He goes off hunting daily to help his buddies bag their moose quotas and as they all have children he lets their moose kills go ahead of him. He also sells a few cords of the wood he has prepared and she crafts some lovely wooden décor for walls. For example one is a box-shelf at eyelevel made out of repurposed barn wood which holds many photos in barnwood frames. Very attractive.

I find their disinterest in my life quite humbling, because in my twenties I'm sure I felt the same way about old people. What on earth could they contribute to a conversation, they were used up, finished, done. So I'm content to ask them questions and think how very fortunate they are to be living their dreams out loud and lustily while still in their mid twenties. They seriously love the lives they're living. And their parents and their grandparents all live within the wider circle. And most of them came back from the tar sands of Fort McMurray to do so. Long before the wildfires.

I'm very much the student here.

Know Thyself

I'm buggering off for a while. I need to regroup. I found myself a small farm way off somewhere in the middle of absolutely nowhere and booked in for a week. A small farm? Well, a change from the constant seascapes which are stunning, but I felt change, even in surroundings, needed to happen.

I thought of lurking here with the car hidden away and curtains drawn but at my age that could be misconstrued quite badly and white coated "helpers" might not be far away. I'm packing my unfinished manuscripts, some reading, some knitting, my journal. I didn't even check to see if there was internet as I don't care.

On the one day off I had in a MONTH (truly) a dear friend barged in and said it was an emergency and could I divest myself of my pyjamas and dress up a bit and go across the bay with him to sign off on some really important documents for the lawyers, it would only take a few hours.

And something snapped in me. I felt I had only one remaining nerve ending in my head and he had crunched it. Nothing to do with him, I still love him dearly but when your calendar has been crawling with crap for 4 weeks straight and there's not even a day you can call your own in your favourite pyjamas the precipice yawns.

And the grief. Too much of it. And the health, still shaky. And families out here on the Edge, they are all so tight and supportive of each other, never seen the like, adds to the sense of tribal isolation at times. And becomes unreasonably magnified

I may not do well on my own, driving over 600k to the farmhouse (and back, I trust) but I'm ready for different surroundings and being alone with my writing. And reintroducing myself to me. Being alone with words. Being alone to write my inner outwards. There hasn't been time to reflect in yonks.

I need that.

So desperately.