Category: mindful living

Art, Tools, and Ice Cream

July 20, 2016

On Saturday, I biked the 4.5 km downtown to do three things:  go to the farmers’ market, enjoy ‘Art on the Street’, and drop a few small things off at the new tool library.

Our market is a year-round market, rare in Ontario, but it’s been a fixture of this city for over 180 years, and it has its own building.  In the summer it expands to the outdoors; in the winter, it shrinks.  Fair enough; there’s very little food grown here in the winter, outside of the greenhouse industry, but the baked goods and meats and cheeses remain.  I dropped in only to buy kamut wraps and toss coins into the guitar cases of the buskers, who never fail to make me hum along on a Saturday morning.

Then it was off to the tool library, a few streets over.  While not a new concept, this is a new initiative for our city. If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s pretty simple:  if you need a tool, from rice cookers to cement chisels, from stock pots to a screwdriver, you can borrow it from the tool library. I’d first discovered them when I was looking for a place to donate my garden tools from the old house.  A volunteer had come to pick up that load – there were quite a few tools – but now I had a few more things to give them, things that fit in the panniers of my bike.

The space was functional but effective, and all the tools are being catalogued and bar-coded for inventory control.  In a city with a lot of students, its share of low income families, and a strong community ethic towards sustainable and cooperative living, the tool library is a logical addition.  I’m eyeing the tile-cutter in my basement now: I kept it as we consider what to do with the backsplash in the kitchen…but I could always borrow it back.

I left my bike and helmet locked to the rack outside the tool library, and walked over to Art on the Street.  One street had been closed off to house this annual, tented art display and sale, and the place was crowded, cheerful and noisy.  I wandered among the art for the best part of an hour, coveting but not buying a set of glass coasters from one artist,  a mug and vase from another.  Both ‘covets’ had a raven theme, which calls to me strongly.  I’m always torn at art shows:  I am trying not to buy things, to add to the items we own because we really don’t need anything.  I have a dozen coasters and more than a dozen mugs.  But on the other hand, as an independent artist myself…we need people to buy things.  Even when there isn’t financial need, there’s the need for people to appreciate and value the art we make, whether visual or written or aural.  I’m regretting the coasters, just a bit.

I finished off with a small cone of what might be the best chocolate ice cream I’ve ever had, from a small creamery that makes ‘small-batch’ ice cream from mostly-local, in-season product, before biking the longer-but-flatter river path route home.  In retrospect, I should have had the raspberry-rhubarb ice cream….but it’s Wednesday today, the summer Wednesday market will be on downtown; we’re biking down for an afternoon showing at the little rep cinema…and the creamery will be at the market, steps from the cinema.  What better way to fuel up before the ride home?

 

 

 

 

Biking

July 3, 2016

One of the many attractive features of moving back to town was the opportunity to bike everywhere: to the farmer’s market, to the grocery store, to the library. This city has a wonderful mixed-use trail network plus a lot of bike lanes, and, for the most part, drivers, used to hordes of university students on bikes, are watchful for and respectful of bikes.

It’s taken me a couple of weeks to get my biking muscles up to speed, but for the last week or so I’ve been biking frequently. (The good weather helps, too.) I have a set of panniers that fit over my rear wheel, in which I can stuff my straw hat, a book, my laptop, shopping bags, water bottle, or whatever else I need to take, depending on my destination. My bike is a 21-speed ‘hybrid’: not quite a mountain bike, but sturdier and wider-tired than a road bike, with front shocks, perfect for the gravel trails as well as the roads.

Saturday morning I biked to the farmers’ market downtown. I kept the panniers empty except for a shopping bag or two, and ventured off down what is a new route for me: the bike lane down the major thoroughfare that leads downtown. Before the bike lane, which is relatively new, this was far too dangerous, and I’m still not sure I’d want to do it at a busier time. But fairly early on a Saturday morning, I felt it was safe enough.

It’s downhill most of the way, and a fairly steep downhill. I kept my speed slow, and enjoyed not having to pedal while keeping a close eye on the traffic. But there were no issues, and I reached the market in about fifteen minutes. I locked the bike and my helmet up, took my bag, and did my regular shopping, potatoes and peppers, kamut wraps, asparagus and cherries, greens. Then I stowed them all neatly in the panniers, bought a glass of freshly-squeezed (extracted?) carrot/orange juice, and considered my ride home.

I wasn’t going to tackle riding up the hill, so going back the way I came was out of the question. Basically, my choices were ride either west or east along the river trail, and then head south. I chose to ride east, which brings me out to a short-but-steep hill (I walked my bike) and then takes me into the Arboretum, and a short ride through its trails to our residential development and home. The whole trip – about 12 km – took me less than an hour, including the time shopping.

Today I biked on quiet residential streets over to the butcher’s (with a small insulated bag and ice pack stowed in the panniers), and then on to Staples to get a document bound, a quick 10 km trip. Tomorrow it will be back downtown, to my Monday morning writer’s group, and then a  loop home along the river, westward this time, and up the trail, back to Staples to pick up the document I took in today, a ride of about 14 or 15 km. I’m still challenged by some of the city’s hills, but I’m also old enough not to be discouraged (or embarrassed) by having to get off and walk occasionally.

BD bought a new bike last week, replacing his road bike with one similar to mine: a couple of trips on the trail system convinced him this was necessary. Older bones need a softer ride! He’s out every day, riding downtown to the library, or around the trails to new birding spots. Our gasoline use, even with BD going to check on the other house every second day, has dropped by half, and likely to drop more as we both bike for errands rather than drive. I’m seriously wondering how long we’ll keep two cars, although we certainly won’t make that decision until we see how we manage in colder, wetter weather. There are times when driving is still preferable: I’ve got a couple of evening events coming up, and I don’t want to bike in the dark (or even in the dusk), but the reasons for having two cars are rapidly disappearing. And there is a good bus system here, if we needed a back-up.

I’m very glad that one of my theoretical reasons for moving has rapidly become a viable reality. It’s a strong reinforcer that this was the right move, and the right time to make it.

A Day to Spoil Myself

June 14, 2016

Yesterday was a day for relaxation. After six weeks of packing, culling, moving and cleaning, I was truly tired, physically and mentally. We’d officially moved in on Wednesday, spent Thursday and Friday cleaning the old house from attic to basement, readying it for sale. Saturday I ran errands – the market and groceries, and unpacked some boxes; in between we watched the cats adjusting to their new house and thought about where pictures should hang.

Sunday morning I went for a long walk, eight kilometres from the house, around and through the Arboretum, and then made a strawberry-rhubarb pie when I got home. I think I misjudged how tired I was from the house cleaning, because by the time a friend and I had done a garden tour in the afternoon, and I’d cooked supper for us all, I was frankly exhausted. Luckily there was nothing scheduled for Monday except the natural gas barbecue installation, and overseeing that was BD’s responsibility. I could spoil myself.

So off I went, first for a haircut, which includes a head massage (lovely) and then for a pedicure – which includes a leg massage, as well as the back massage from the chair. By the time those were done, I was feeling much more relaxed. Along with the pampering had come some good conversation with another customer at the pedicure salon, a man a bit older than I getting his feet seen to. He was erudite and thoughtful, and it was just one of those wide ranging conversations – from life in the depression to music – that happen with strangers, a nice bonus on my ‘day off’.

After lunch I just puttered around, reading a bit, until four thirty, when our new neighbour across the street had invited us for tea and nibbles. Or rather, her idea of such, which was definitely a full meal, with delicious spreads (one, made with avocado, hard-boiled egg, mayo and lemon juice was outstanding, something BD can eat, and will definitely be added to our menus!), lots of fresh veggies and fruit, crackers and wraps, scones and loaf and cookies…and after more than two hours of another good conversation she sent us home with doggie bags. So I didn’t have to cook dinner, rounding out my day of relaxation perfectly. I ended it with a glass of wine and Game of Thrones. I slept like the proverbial log, and woke up completely refreshed and re-energized this morning.

It’s easy to forget to take care of ourselves when life is busy. I was certainly guilty of it when I was working, and I notice that in all the planning, organizing, and managing the move needed, I was falling back into work habits, not good for my health, mental or physical. But the move is done, all the important boxes are unpacked (and the rest can be done at leisure), the cats are no longer hiding, and we’re settling in to our new life…one designed to be relaxed, simple, and low-stress , after all!

Image credit: By Mozilla, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44547865

 

The Moving Diaries: The Last Week

June 3, 2016

We’re now at the point where we’re basically camping at two houses. The new house has a basement full of boxes, most of the dishes, pots and pans, and non-perishable food; the old house has most of the furniture, the perishable food, and very little else. We drive between them half-a-dozen times a day, always with more boxes. Sometimes we eat there, sometimes here.

We’re both tired. It’s been six weeks of renovations, cleaning, packing, moving things, unpacking, and there’s another week to go. The movers come Wednesday, so by the end of that day the new house will be mostly set up. Then two days of cleaning and touch-ups on the old house, and it goes on the market on Saturday. We have to keep an eye on it, for insurance purposes, and keep the grass cut and the gardens weeded, until we hand over the keys to the new owners. Which, we hope, will happen sooner rather than later, of course!

Surprisingly, we’ve managed to stay good-tempered throughout this whole process, even in putting together the new gas barbecue (and, to a lesser extent, the new bedframe, which came with some of the worst instructions I’ve ever seen). In part this is because we’ve each taken responsibility for areas the other either can’t do, or dislikes doing: some of the physical work needed here was simply beyond my strength, so BD has done that, as well as a fair bit of packing, moving, and either taking things apart or putting them together; I’ve basically been project manager for all the renovations at the new house, arranged the movers, dumpster, window cleaners and wildlife removal needed here, done the hazardous waste drop-offs, kept the grass cut and the books balanced, done a lot of packing, been BD’s gofer and assistant as needed, kept the master lists of what needs doing and what’s been done – oh, and done the grocery shopping and cooking so we don’t starve.

The unpacking – much of it – can happen more leisurely. I’m thinking one or two boxes a day, no more. BD has the perfect excuse – Euro 2016 – the European Football Championships (soccer, to the uninitiated) start June 10th, and he’ll be glued to the tv. He has a brand new HD digital recorder at the new house…which means never missing a game. And since my study at the new house is a completely separate room, with a door, (unlike here, where I took over the dining room, which has two doorways onto the living room…which is where the tv is) he can watch all the games he wants and it won’t disturb me. And maybe I’ll get some writing done.

The Moving Diaries: Gardening

May 22, 2016

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Our new deck now has a line of pots, planted this morning to herbs and tomatoes. The front porch has six blue ceramic pots of flowers and foliage plants. For the first time in twenty-two years, it was a pleasure to plant these. I worked in the garage, the door open to the sun and breeze, and there wasn’t a mosquito or blackfly in sight.

Unlike here in the old house, where after about April 30 doing anything outside means repellent and long sleeves. Backing onto swamp, surrounded by trees, the bugs are just a part of the nature around us, benefiting the birds and bats, frogs and fish – but not me. I can tolerate mosquitoes, but I react very badly to blackfly, bites swelling to the size of a quarter very quickly. Getting the containers planted every spring was an endurance test…and every year I planted fewer. This year, I’ve pruned the shrubs, and the only other thing we’re doing is keeping the grass cut and edged, until it sells.

I find myself looking forward to gardening again, getting my hands in the soil, planning plantings, in a way I haven’t for some time. The new garden is smaller, and already well planted to perennials, which helps – I’m not having to decide between birding or gardening in May – there is time for both. And for sitting on the deck with a drink and a book, just relaxing. A robin is nesting in one of our trees, and the shrubs had foraging cardinals and chipping sparrows this morning. I’ve put a hummingbird feeder up, along with a couple of hanging baskets of red Calibrachoa to attract them: no luck yet (that I’ve seen), but I live hopefully.  Eighteen days until moving day!

 

The Moving Diaries: April 20th

April 21, 2016

I started on the bedroom this week, sorting out the two drawers full of toiletries, travel miscellany, jewellery, make-up, and OTC remedies. This generated a lot of garbage – more than I would have liked, but there is nothing else to do with dried-up eye makeup or solidified hand cream. The expired OTC drugs are going back to the pharmacy, and the thrift store will be getting a few things.

Tomorrow I’ll start packing clothes into boxes. We’re in the in-between season here – it was 25 C the other day (77 F), but it’s supposed to snow on Monday, so it’s not as simple as packing away all my winter clothes, but instead trying to second-guess what I’ll need, and gamble on the long-range weather forecast approaching reality. If I’m sensible, I’ll label the boxes precisely, for the day it’s ten degrees hotter than it was supposed to be and I need my shorts.

Once a week or so I go over to the new house to take pictures of the gardens, so I know what early spring bulbs are planted where. The house is empty, so no-one minds this. I almost missed the early species iris – it was so hot the week they bloomed they only flowered for a couple of days. The daffodils are just starting, and the lawn is full of violets. I think about the new plantings – scilla, snowdrops, species Narcissus – I’ll put in come the autumn.

In-between, I make the necessary arrangements with the utility companies, the lawyer, arrange for a real estate agent to come to value this house….reassuringly, his estimate and the financial institution’s assessment are nearly identical. I’ve also booked appointments with the renovator and the HVAC company that will install our new gas fireplace.

You will note that it’s “I” that does all this. BD’s Aperger’s-related anxiety is showing itself in subtle ways, mostly by retreat to things he can control – his detailed TV recording/watching schedule, his even-more-detailed bird records, his daily walks and cycling. He’ll be fine in the new house: he’s spent hours and hours looking at the 360-degree visuals of each room on the internet; he’s done schematics for furniture layout, he’s planned his new cycling routes and walks with the help of Google Maps. But the actual work of arranging the move has too many details, too many people to talk to, too many periods of uncertainty for him. If he could do things one at a time, he’d probably be ok….but that isn’t how it works. So it falls to me.

We’re off this afternoon to Home Depot to look at window treatments, having decided that the north-facing bay window in the living room and the sliders in the family room will need something in the winter months – originally we were going to leave them without blinds, but have reconsidered. After lunch: my number one rule for this sort of shopping is never on an empty stomach!

Eating (semi)well on the road.

April 9, 2016

We’ve just returned from a two-week road trip through California and southern Arizona, a trip booked long before the idea of buying a new house entered our minds. Nothing was going to happen with the house purchase in those weeks anyway, so there was no reason not to go.

Since the days of our six-and-seven week road trips, where we mostly camped, took a cooler with us, and bought groceries, several things have changed. One, of course, is that we were flying and renting a car. Secondly – and most importantly – are the food allergies/sensitivities BD has developed. It’s really difficult to find food he can eat, and even more difficult to find restaurants he can eat at. His allergy is to a specific fatty acid – lauric acid – which is found in red meats, most fats, coconut and palm products, all dairy, and some spices. It makes him break out in hives, big nasty hives which even extra-strength Benadryl only somewhat controls. So we need to be very careful about what he eats.

We could have bought a cooler in California, shopped for groceries, and eaten at parks and picnic stops. But there were a couple of strikes against this: one is that, for the most part, it was too cold to do this comfortably – we had snow in the foothills in Arizona! – and the second strike was just that we wanted more ease. We’ve done our share – more than our share – of eating in wind, rain, cold, searing heat and annoying insects, or perched on the side of the bed in a hotel room. Frankly, I’ve had enough of that.

Subway is one chain we know is safe for BD, if he sticks to chicken or turkey, but a constant diet of Subway grows old quickly, plus the sodium content is pretty high. We decided to try Denny’s, the classic diner chain: their available nutrition information is good, and they have something extremely difficult to find in US restaurant chains: reasonably sized meals, if you order carefully.

For dinners, we mostly stuck to the 55+ meals, eating a salad (with no cheese or dressing for BD), fish or chicken with broccoli and another vegetable – corn for me, squash for BD – every night. With unsweetened iced tea, the calorie count was around 650, the sodium, fat, and sugar content low for restaurant food, and there was nothing in the spices or preparation that triggered BD’s allergies. Breakfasts were fairly easy too: ordering a la carte, BD ate poached eggs on dry toast, oatmeal, and fresh fruit every morning; I had the same, or sometimes yogurt instead of the oatmeal. Again, the meals ran in the 650 calorie range, and it was easy to avoid the dairy and oil that would have been a problem. And we both appreciated comfortable booths and table service, especially after a long day, and in the morning when I’m not human before that first coffee.

It was also quite a bit of food. Neither of us were terribly hungry at lunch time, even after hikes of several hours most days. We’d found an energy bar by KIND that BD could eat without problems, so lunches tended to be an energy bar and an apple. BD would add a handful or almonds or peanuts; I’d add a latte if there was one to be had. If we walked a lot, sometimes we had a second energy bar, or more nuts.

Not every meal was eaten at Denny’s or Subway. We ate a couple of breakfasts at little cafes at Morro Bay and Cayucas. We drove to Oxnard (twice) specifically for fish and chips at Sea Fresh, which fries in peanut oil (BD had a double order of chips, it was such a treat.) Only something at Olive Garden triggered any reaction in BD, and it was mild, so a trace of oil or spice, most likely.

I celebrated my 58th birthday while on this trip. We debated a special dinner, but I didn’t particularly want that: what I did want was ice cream, as it was an unseasonably hot day (the only one of the trip) at Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco. I usually avoid eating ice cream in front of BD – it seems cruel, when he can’t eat it any more – but I made an exception for my birthday. And in the little general store in Inverness, California, not only did I find my favourite Haagen-Daas chocolate-coffee-almond bar, but a lime gelato bar with no dairy that BD could eat (and he loves lime). We sat at a picnic table overlooking the bay and ate our treats, enjoying every frozen bite.

We were pleased with the trip – not only did we find the two birds we went to see around San Francisco, ones that have been eluding us for thirty years (because they are found by call, and they only call during breeding season, and that was always while we were working) – but we ate fairly nutritious food and didn’t trigger BD’s allergies. We went for long walks, watched dolphins and sea otters and seals along Highway 1, heard coyotes singing in the dusk at Yuma and watched the sun rise over the mountains. A good holiday. Now back to the realities of packing up this house for the move. Stay tuned!

Changes

March 12, 2016

It’s been a while since I posted anything, and that’s because life has moved very quickly in the last three weeks.

One of the things our two months in England confirmed for us was that we want to live somewhere where we’re less dependent on the car to run errands.  The second thing was that we could quite happily live in a bungalow, and the third was that we really liked not being responsible for the lawn and garden.  We’d thought it was time to leave this old two-storey rural house, with its quarter-acre of lawn and garden, 10 miles from anywhere: what England told us is that we were right.

We always said we’d move before it was too late, when we could make the choice. We came home, spent some time wandering around neighbourhoods in the university town north of us that we know well and love.  We narrowed it down to two, and then to one.  And yesterday, we bought a house.

It’s not quite a bungalow, in that it has a bedroom and ensuite on a second floor, but we don’t need to use those except for guests, or, for the foreseeable future, as BD’s study.  It’s a 10 minute walk to the university’s arboretum, for walking and birding; a 15 minute walk (or 5  minutes on the bike) to the university library, where I like to work, a ten-minute walk to a grocery store, on quiet back roads. We can bike downtown, to movies, to lunch, to the arts centre, to the bookstore, to the summer outdoor concerts.

While we own the house, and can do what we like with it, indoors and out, we don’t own the land it sits on: the university does.  So we pay, effectively, condo fees – and for that we get the lawn and garden taken care of, the snow ploughed and shovelled to our front steps, and the use of a large and well-equipped recreation centre. Or, as BD put it yesterday, to be permanently on vacation.

It’s ours in just less than two months, assuming all goes well with the inspection and the bridge financing – we have to get the existing house on the market, but there’s a bit of work to be done yet.  The new house needs its interior walls painted and a few other cosmetic bits and pieces.  One thing for sure, this adventure over the next couple of months – as we try to do this as mindfully as possible, fitting what we already own into the new house, figuring out what we really need (like a new bed), disposing of what we don’t – will give me plenty to write about!

 

 

 

 

Belonging

February 2, 2016

Growing up as a child of immigrants, the stories you hear of ‘home’ are usually tinged with nostalgia, seen through the rose-coloured glasses of memory. I can’t say this was true of all my parents’ stories – they had lived through the depression and World War II in Engand- but the ones that stayed with me the most were their stories of long childhood walks through the countryside, roaming footpaths and hedgerows, free and unsupervised.

My own childhood in Canada was as free as most childhoods fifty years ago were, and living at the edge of a village there was freedom to roam the farm lanes close to us, the farmers turning a tolerant eye to our activities, and we certainly bicycled the quiet roads around us. But at the back of my mind, it just wasn’t the same. I had grown up on Enid Blyton and Arthur Ransome, and I wanted footpaths and moorland, quiet hedged lanes, little villages hidden in folds of the hills…and as I grew older, a welcoming pub to stop at.

So here I am, nearly fifty-eight, writing in the sitting room of our holiday cottage that we’ve taken for January and February, back from a walk that ticked just about every box on that list. We set out just after nine this morning, turning right up the lane at our front door. A few hundred meters up the hill a gate opens onto a field and footpath, climbing further up the hill, skirting field margins to bring us out onto a quiet lane. A barn owl is hunting in the field to our west. At the top of the lane, the wide Norfolk views open out; to our west is the broad expanse of the Wash, its flocks of waders and waterfowl visible even from here, the coast of Lincolnshire shimmering in the distance. To our east, fields: field peas and sugar beet, wheat stubble, autumn-ploughed fallow, cut with hedgerows and lanes.

We walk in a northerly direction, following paths and bridleways, along field margins and old drove roads through farms, coming out into villages. The sky is changeable, clouds scudding in the strong westerly winds, patches of blue winking in and out. Hedges, green with ivy, keep the worst of the wind off us except when we the route takes us due west. Grey partridge scatter in front of us, calling their distinctive rasping cry.

After about six kilometers the drove we’re on swings west, past a substantial farm, and then south again for a few kilometers, coming out by a magnificent medieval church perched high on the greensand ridge that runs up the coast here. On a bench outside the church wall we sit for a snack, looking down over the village. It doesn’t do to sit too long, though: we’ve another three or four k to go, and tired muscles ‘set’ all too easily. We walk through the village streets, past the old watermill, and on to the footpath that is the last leg home. In a field to the west about a hundred curlew are feeding, beside jackdaws and wood pigeons, and where the footpath enters a woodland long-tailed tits chatter their high-pitched greeting.

We’re home in time for lunch, just after one o’clock. All this walk was missing was the pub, and that’s just up the road: the well-deserved pint can wait until a bit later this afternoon. I have soup to make for dinner and bread to bake. In all my months of recovery from major surgery and post-surgery treatments in 2014 and 2015, it was the thought of walking under this quiet corner of Norfolk’s skies, along these footpaths and lanes, that kept me going. It was the first place we came when my doctors gave me the green light to travel last spring: in the month here then, I went from being able to walk for less than an hour to managing a couple of hours with sufficient breaks. Now I can walk for four, with a five minute break, and it’s only the arthritis in my hip and foot that keeps me from going further, not a lack of energy.

Spread out on the sitting room floor at my feet is the Ordnance Survey map for this area. In a couple of minutes I’ll sit down with it and start planning another walk. Out to the castle ruins towards the Wash? Due east, to the village with the working windmill? Across the fen to look for short-eared owls and woodlark?

This is not Blyton’s or Ransome’s England, if those ever really existed. It’s not the England of my parents’ childhoods, nearly a hundred years ago. It’s not even the England we started to return to thirty years ago, when my family’s pub still stood where the village’s grocery store does now. But it still offers me footpaths and heathland, quiet hedged lanes, little villages hidden in folds of the hills, skies and birdlife and wind and space, and long walks from my front door. My experiences and memories build on and continue from my childhood stories, the ones my grandparents told, and my father (this was his childhood village), and those of his one surviving cousin, who lives a dozen miles from us here, and whose ninety-fifth birthday we are celebrating later this month. I study and explore these villages and fields as part of my landscape archaeology courses, I write about it in my non-fiction work-in-progress, Reverse Migration, and there is a certain place in the fictional land from Empire’s Daughter that is, simply, here. I belong to this land, this little piece of west Norfolk, and it to me, unlike any other place I know or have lived.

Quiet

January 20, 2016

For the worst two months of Ontario’s winter we’ve escaped to a small English village in the still mostly rural county of Norfolk; it’s winter here too, but here that means the occasional overnight frost and daytime temperatures anywhere between 4 and 12 degrees C. There are flowers out, snowdrops and winter aconite and primula. It rains a bit, but we also have beautiful sunny days, and it rarely rains hard enough, or long enough, to mean we can’t get a good walk in every day.

This morning, in glorious 7 degree C sunshine, we were standing on a high point on Roydon Common, a large expanse of heathland a few miles from our village. It’s about 2 km square (a bit more than a square mile), inhabited by birds and roe deer, netted with walking paths, grazed by some Dartmoor ponies, and mostly empty of humans except a few dog walkers. We were looking north-east: to the west is the market town of King’s Lynn and the bay of the North Sea called The Wash; in all other directions, it’s farmland.

We have something here we didn’t realize we were missing even in our rural home in Ontario: quiet. The Ontario house is 4 km or so north of the major highway into Toronto (the equivalent of an interstate or a motorway) and it is never quiet: truck and car traffic is heaviest morning and evening but it is constant, all day, every day. Even 4 km away, with the prevailing winds bringing the sound to us, the highway is a background noise to all we do, in or out of the house. A railway runs through our home village: it’s a spur line, with trains two or three times a day, but it’s still noise. We’re on the flight path for take offs and landings at Pearson International Airport. All of this adds up.

But here…our rental cottage is as quiet as can be, even in its village location. During the day, walking the footpaths and lanes, there is farm equipment, the sounds of livestock, a few cars. The major road is a couple of kilometers a away, and has less traffic than my commuter route from when I was working. We sleep deeply here, undisturbed by background noise that we didn’t even realize was affecting our sleep. The first sound I hear most mornings is the call of the pink-footed geese as they fly over the cottage, moving from The Wash to the fields where they feed.

Quiet is a luxury in our world, and one I suspect many people don’t know they don’t have. I didn’t…compared to many places, our Ontario home is quiet…it’s just not this quiet. I’ve experienced quiet before, camping in remote places, travelling through the highlands of Scotland, but I’ve never lived in it for an extended time since childhood. It’s been an added blessing in our winter escape. Along with flowers in January, wide skies, and skylarks singing.