I can hear the Canada geese honking in my mind right now... Don't get me wrong... I don't want to live in my childhood valley again. These photos don't show the build-up around Beaverdale today; Highway 24 that slices right through the back way into Cambridge (Hespeler), Ontario, the track homes gobbling up the countryside, the freakin castles built behind the pond homes with their wrought iron gates, all that used to be corn fields...
But these zoomed-in shots allow me to go back and remember pond life the way it used to be...
My dad, sitting in our screened-in back porch, on a redwood dual deck chair, quietly smoking his pipe, staring out into this...
My mom, being too damn busy half the time taking care of a huge house and my dad and me to enjoy anything. I wish I had been older to help her so she could have had time to more experience Beaverdale life.
And me, foraging, trekking, sniffing, collecting God knows what or where, or in my backyard looking over these scenes as I made mud pie meatloaf. My mud pie meatloaf was the best in the valley. Ask anyone!
If the essence of who one is, is where they were raised, then this, at heart, is me. Quiet, still, yet teeming with colourful life, all mostly wild. I can live with that.
Photos by Hespelerite, Sarah Silver