Well, we made the move and started living the good life! Sure there are bears to get used to, which was terrifying at first and no street lights, but we’ve adapted. The bears are something that everyone will tell you about with ominous tones and then finish their story with “… but, hey, we live in bear country!”
Our property had not been lived in for a few months and so it was on one particular bear’s route. One blazing hot afternoon my son said “mum, there’s a bear…” I thought to myself, “I’ll bet he’s joking”, then I thought, “what if he isn’t joking”. I got up and as I did I came to look around a bush to see the most enormous bear standing right in my garden looking right at me. His expression seemed to say, “Ugh, there’s a bigger one, now I’ll have to change my route”. As per drilled-in bear protocol, our son, who was only 5 at the time, did not scream or run, but went inside (walking backwards slowly) whilst I shouted at it irrationally “we live here now!” I’m sure it understood. It left disgruntled.
Lin’s Note: Carol is totally sugar coating this 🙂 That bear came back the next day with its family, it did the rounds in our neighbourhood and the large bear charged an elderly neighbour.. (he was fine, but conservation did have to take that bear away)…. Also a couple months later, we found a severed deer leg at the entrance to our woods, quite possibly left by a passing cougar… That said, since we got Ollie there’s been much less wild animal activity – he’s part Ridgeback which were bred to protect the family and take down lions, so we’re in pretty good hands (paws?!)
After that life has been going pretty much to plan. Our house and garden is amazing – we even have an orchard. I’ve spent many afternoons swinging my (finally useful) wicker baskets around picking up apples, grapes, pears and raspberries, thanks to the efforts of the previous owners.
We got used to no street lights because, hey, we live in the country – who goes out at night? We absolutely love the people here. It is a very creative community. There’s also everything you actually really need here: post office, grocery options, yoga studio and a million cottage industries from pottery to eco products and more. There’s even club nights, if we ever get brave enough to go out after dark!
The only place anyone gets feisty is on the highway which has taken some getting used to but I think we’re used to that too now. The only things we miss about the city is Costco and Value Village and a couple favourite take-out places 😉 We’d always joked at the time of moving that if the proverbial ever really hit the fan, it would be better to be amongst less people but still with people who had survival skills, power tools and were generous enough to share them! This was a half joke. Little did we know what was coming next…
We all find ourselves living in a global pandemic. Something that only a few uber-smart scientists knew was a potential reality. I thought it would be more like an earthquake (western Canada is overdue for one) or a war. Never did our half joking scenarios include a global pandemic. How are we doing in these uncertain times? Well, we join most of our neighbours and friends when we say we are so lucky to be living this out in such idyllic surroundings. We have space, nature, a good community but also enough of a civilization to include a hospital, air helicopter and emergency services.
When we first moved, we renovated part of the house and set up the business during our first year. We advertised workshops and were successful in attracting people to attend them. We renovated a stand-alone workshop into a cottage and opened it up in June 2019. We had a short season as we were busy visiting Europe and family and then adopting our daughter. A lot of the pieces of the puzzle were in place and things were going well.
This past year has been very different. We are still doing well but the timing of some of the workshops meant that the teens week-long Spring break one had to go virtual half way through. It then felt strange even advertising for the summer ones as everyone was so preoccupied with living a different reality and staying well away from each other. Online shopping and car park pick-up has become the norm. People here have been really good about physical distancing and wearing masks when that became the recommendation. Home-schooling was a challenge as we were both working from home by that point. There were occasions when I was on a zoom meeting as was Lin, as well as our son having a zoom class while our young daughter ran riot around the house. I take my hat off to any single parents out there or people with kids living in a condo – I honestly don’t know how you did it. It was hard enough doing this living in paradise and we would often chastise ourselves and stop any complaining as we took a moment to remember just how lucky we are, especially since the kids have been safely in school, daycare etc since last June.
Moving to the country has been one of the best ideas. We have and are still assimilating into the environment. Lin is currently doing some really creative music projects. Song writers are using this unusual time to create and put their feelings, thoughts and experiences down in a song and perhaps even have more time to focus on that now that we are out of severe lockdown at the moment at least. International travel isn’t taking up anyone’s time or money and we are all exploring ’local’.
We’ll have to see where this unusual time takes us. There’s the new strains of COVID which have made their way here, which is concerning but we’re opting to not panic. Still, we’re getting almost used to the new normal. Wallet, keys, mask…
Lin: Audio Director
Carol: Bookings Manager
Ollie: Security & Greeter
Gus: Security & Greeter in training