“Everything I Was I Carry With Me”

On the Red Coat Trail you can see the horizon for miles and miles. When I stopped to take the photo above I was mid-way through southern Saskatchewan, stopped to take a photo of two steam threshers, side by side, marking the entrance to a ranch that could not yet be seen. Once I captured a couple of angles of each steam thresher, I was just about to get back into my truck when I looked back across the road that brought me to this vast, beautiful place. It was then that I captured the photo above, hoping against hope it would later show the utter endlessness of the Canadian prairie, a gorgeous green carpet set against an azure sky that filled my heart with a deep sense of satisfaction and peace. What a beautiful world we live in!

I then did something that had become habit on this cross-Canada driving adventure. I checked that everything that I was bringing back from Ontario was safe and sound in the bed of my rented truck. My beloved farm hutch was intact and secure, as were a few cherished pieces of furniture from home. In the seat behind me, four boxes of stored memories from decades past sat stacked, waiting to be opened when I would finally arrive back home in Coquitlam. In the past few weeks I have finally painted all of my new “old” furniture to match their new home. What a relaxing, satisfying activity! I also made my way through all of the boxes that had been stored at my parents over the years. To be honest, I had forgotten that I brought these home to Forest from Toronto when I moved into a studio apartment in the Beaches.

Good grief! Why on earth did I save all this stuff, this collection of odds and ends from my past? The list of ephemera includes: photos from Henderson family photo albums; movie stubs (yes, they were actually pretty good films at the time); concert tickets; author notes from projects I worked on as Publisher at Oxford University Press; atlas covers from decades past; lesson plans from my short-lived time in teaching; University essays; high school essays; a short story from elementary school called “The Million Dollar Dog” about a gumshoe investigating stolen art work; sketches from my entrepreneurial days drawing and printing art cards; a program and schedule from the 1994 Ontario Provincial Broomball Championships in Arnprior (I was a goalie for a team out of Belmont); and all the hockey cards I had unwittingly glued into scrapbooks because who wouldn’t combine a love of hockey with scrapbooking?? I also found letters and cards from friends over the years that produced a wide grin and many fits of laughter. Below these I found tightly wrapped letters from Mom from the mid-1990’s in her wonderful hand-writing, telling me what she and Dad had been up to the week prior. And then the Christmas and birthday cards from Dad with his careful script and thoughtful wishes for the year ahead.

Once I had come to the bottom of the last box, with all these items spread across my living room floor, I realized why I saved these tokens from my past. Each brought back wonderful memories of great times shared with family and friends. How lucky I have been to have these great memories from a fortunate lifetime of love and laughter!

I gathered every piece up and put them carefully back in a few boxes that fit nicely inside the now infamous farm hutch, their job done. After 6000 miles from BC to Ontario and back again, I heard a metaphorical door gently close on my past. A new chapter awaits to be written!

Over the coming posts I hope to share a few stories with you of some of the interesting places I discovered along the routes I traveled during “The Great Farm Hutch Adventure.” You can see some of the photos that I took along the way with my “serious” camera here. And then I will set out on some new adventures!

I will leave you with the quote that inspired this post. It is by Chinese author Ma Jian:

“Everything I was I carry with me. Everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead.”