#9 Madroots: Memoir

Now and again I’ll do a Free Post of Madroots: Memoir, this is one of them! Welcome back everyone. This poem is about the time when my family moved from Edmonton onto an acreage about a half hour southeast of town. Outside of the, um, tough situations and ongoing horrors we continued to experience, I loved this place. I loved living in the country. I STILL yearn to live in the country, closer to nature-being-nature and with lots of room for a food garden.

While it wasn’t the end of healing for me by a LONG shot (still not there if I’m honest), living on this land was healing for me. It’s where I deepened my connection with stones and trees. It’s where I learned to watch and listen to grebes, teals and mud hens. Where a frog’s lifecycle was obvious. Where we and our neighbours had lots of animals — everything from horses and goats to dogs, guinea pigs and hamsters. AND there were wild creatures like moose, white-tailed deer, skunks, gophers, mice, shrews, and lots of interesting insects. I loved all that.

There are two other Nature Tales poems coming up in the book. It’s a theme that figures high for me. This one is the first of Part 2, the longest part in the book and it contains many of the most intense moments that I write about. Coming up in a post or two is the hardest poem I’ve ever written called “It’s raining cats and dogs.” Sometimes the emotional fallout of that particular story is so overwhelming I can’t even see the words. But I am managing, with the help of my new lovely editor Yvonne Blomer, to find my way to a decent poem about it. But more on that later…

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You already know that I would love to answer your questions and read your comments below! If you feel inclined, I welcome your own experiences that align or that you are reminded of. Private message me in some way if you prefer.

Please share/repost this and/or send any of the previous posts along to others you think will resonate, benefit, appreciate or feel seen by reading these. Thanks!

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Blessings,
Nicole

This our acreage, our Misty Hill, before we had a driveway or a house. The people on the left are walking where the drive would be eventually and the house would sit on the top of the hill. That’s our pup in the foreground.

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PART 2

“You scratch through the wild rose
and choke cherry bushes and into
a spongy land of invisible people.”

***

The House, The Healing and The Nature Tales

We name it Misty Hill, our new acreage.
Build half of our three-story dream
  
a year after dad’s return from bedlam.
I’m twelve and thirteen. Pre-fabricated, 

it's possible to assemble this house over 
one summer, with friends and family. 
I learn to snap a chalk plumb line, string

electric wires through a joist, wield
an accurate hammer, shingle a roof. 

We create: a dinette, a Conversation Pit
with fireplace, an eighteen-foot-high wall
in the living room, airy, bare.

		*

The interior echoes, unfinished, secondhand, 
but the view from hilltop-happy 

is affluent, fecund with busy muskrats, 
a mama moose, orange orioles.

I fall in love with an ashen hoard of boulders, 
once-tumbled down a slope, 
now a contemplative hideaway.

As I learn the land’s lay, I acquaint
with its healers: a twinkling poplar coppice, 
creek languishing into pond, roses wild 

with hips, tadpole congregation 
wriggling in shallows, blue-winged 

teal nests, sky-footed mud-hens 
dabbling as frogs summer-swarm 
and we swerve when mowing. 

A giant puffball spied from the deck,
picked, salt-and-butter-fried into a feast.

A fat purpled mouse eats our beets top-down.
He’s so wide he can’t flip to feet from his back.
Our dog eats the mouse. Lots of Vitamin C,
we chuckle.

We love beavers, by whom we set our clock—
until they dam our culvert, flood the driveway.

		*

In winter, we feed Cedar Waxwings, 
Evening Grosbeaks. Their seeds sprinkled 
atop a giant wooden spool for wire.

We cheer the return of Crooked-Tail, 
a chickadee. Track mouse-made tunnels
through the snow. 

We resist idle time indoors with
the eighteen-foot-high living room wall.

This is me at 16 at the place that corresponds to: I fall in love with an ashen hoard of boulders / once-tumbled down a slope / now a contemplative hideaway.

This is the garden from: A fat purpled mouse eats our beets top-down. / He’s so wide he can’t flip to feet from his back. / Our dog eats the mouse. Lots of Vitamin C, / we chuckle.

L: The back of the house once it was built, the view is from the back common area for all of the acreages in winter, obviously. R: The wall opposite my bed in my bedroom in that house. I still have and use those bookcases.

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Today’s #pilgrimagetobeauty pics:

Spring is really happening here on the coast now!