Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
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A year in and this small town still feels like a warm blanket around my burnt-out city soul. There are so many small salves that, together, have helped me to settle down and meet myself. Mostly though, this move has helped me to reconnect with the finite aspects of time.
Neighbours in a small town have the time and space to keep an eye on your everyday moves. So, elbows up if you’re caught sneaking an afternoon glass of wine or greeting late-night visitors. Be nice to them and equally tolerant of the teenager attacking the drum set next door or the randy neighbourhood roosters hollering at 5 a.m. This gives you a buffer for your own occasional loud backyard cocktail party. In the country, you share a micro community with your neighbours, in this case surrounded by verdant farmland. This becomes a backdrop and a context for your home.
Always give a nod when you spot a neighbour, specifically, I call it the “country nod.” It is not a big smile accompanied by inane chatter. The country nod is a firm dip of the chin and eye contact. It’s confident and tight lipped. No reason to get all bouncy about things.
When I first arrived here, I drove like I did in the city – that always out-of-time, manic style that had me sliding between lanes. The farm machines and pickup trucks I passed on the two-lane roads, I’m sure, just shook their noggins wondering at the infernal stupidity of “cheating time,” instead of savouring it.
In this small town, no one seems to hurry to get places. There’s always metaphoric peach pie at the other end of a short drive, all golden and comforting. Now I drive like it’s a victory parade – no need to rush. Take the time to pull over and watch a flock of starlings perform a ballet in the sky or an errant deer wandering outside the dress shop. You won’t even get an eyebrow to twitch when you’re a few minutes late for a haircut or a dinner party – people seem just so happy that you came.
Small-town life encourages a slower and more observant pace. Watching from a footbridge while trout spawn their eggs in the creek, revelling at the starry sky, bike riding down endless country roads, stopping at the local farm stand early Saturday morning for fresh baked sourdough bread, made with a yeast named Roxanne that is more than 60 years old.
You live with a respect and even reverence for nature in a small town. Humanity is the interruption.
When I saw a hole in one of the wooden beams for the flowery vines in my tiny backyard, I bent down to investigate and there were a pair of small brown twitchy eyes staring back. A darling wee mouse had taken up residence! Darling, until he and his brethren made it into my kitchen where they dine on fruit and the aftermath of dinner or lost crumbs. Silly ego-centric human that I am – I thought the mouse was there as a furry friend. Now there’s hearty country mouse poo all over the counter every morning and no more label on the peanut butter jar.
The weather can change in an instant. You smell it first, then it blows across your face with a cold slap. When a crop can be brought to its knees by a storm or a drought – you get pretty tuned into the rhythms of the land. When the asparagus comes in, it’s on the front page of the local paper – along with a toothy photo of one of the farmers who harvested it.
When I got my puppy last spring, concerned neighbours warned me of the Red-Tailed Hawk living in a nearby tree, exclaiming that they can pick up a four-pound puppy in their talons and have him for the main course. And really, that’s about as dramatic as things get.
The cadence of “noise” is different here, too. In my tiny corner of the world, I have yet to hear a car horn or a jackhammer. However, on a frosty night, the sound of wind machines circulating warm air with an ominous whoosh, whoosh over the vineyards all night is apocalyptic the first time you hear it. However, once you give in to the cavernous breaths of the propellers, they rock me gently into slumber. Mostly, I meditate to the glorious arias of starlings, doves, blue jays and blackbirds. Just watch out when you hear the yips of a pack of coyotes in the fields at dusk. The sound is bone chilling and humbling.
I have welcomed the solace of silence into my life. After work and chores, I take time to sit and rest and be silent. Between the whistles of the hawks and the occasional scrape on pavement of kids playing street hockey, there’s a velvety cloth of silence, thick like golden honey. When I sleep, all I can hear is the rise and fall of my puppy’s breathing, nuzzled into my duvet. The once ominous hours of silence are now the ambrosia that brings me closer to myself.
Wendy Walters lives in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
