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| The farm - it was the second family home |
It rained again - a real blessing for the heat and fire-fighters. At my sister’s lovely home the other night we sat on her deck watching the storm. It was better than any firework display. Drama in the sky.
It’s impossible to be in this environment, so recently a new frontier for Europeans, not to be awed by its wild grandeur. My sister and brother-in-law forged a life here from the moment of their arrival in British Columbia nearly forty years ago. I remember the scale and difficulty of what they’d embarked upon having seen it first hand when we joined them for a few months in those early days. They succeeded, after mighty efforts, and against all odds it seemed at the time, in making a home, a family and a livelihood, putting Clearwater on the map for tourists and becoming an essential part of the growing community. Now, while they live comfortably in the lovely riverside log home that they built near town, they are still frontiersmen, constantly pushing the boundaries of possibility. The family are a firm, involved in a multi-faceted business that includes farming, logging, tourism packages and fire-fighting. My tiny niece Rebecca manfully leads one of the crews. She is impressive, with all of the indefatigable nature of her dad and an independence of spirit like her mother. She, her sister Holly and older brother Ben were brought up in this environment and are formidable products of a life built on the edge of wilderness. Holly, a photographer, treks into impossible places taking brides and grooms for spectacular backdrops to their nuptials. Ben, an engineer, has narrowly escaped death many times with his adventurous and dare-devil adventures. Their partners are no less impressive. Ben’s Claudia is a vet who can manhandle cows with ease. Holly’s Angus has bagged bear and deer, so they’ll never be short of a meal for their imminent little family. Adam, who towers over tiny Rebecca has settled into life here from his home in Tasmania and has proved himself fully up to the tasks of building a home and living in the extremes. The lives of these young people are following in the footsteps of the alpha male and female. As I write, the family are busy in the rain pulling up the maintenance-requiring pumps from their well. It’s no small operation!
Seeing how this family lives and works, in spite of the many developments that have made life easier for them, I am made to think about how so many of us have forgotten how to be resourceful. We have become so dependent on institutions to provide for our health, wealth and security. We have enslaved ourselves to so many things in our desire for comfort. One major consequence is the extent to which addiction is a feature of modern life. In a world where living on one’s wits, fitness and resilience appears to be unnecessary, where the god is Mammon and it’s so difficult to discern truth from deception, is it any surprise that so many take potions to deaden the angst and confusion.
This house is fuelled by conversation. There is a daily mid-morning coffee ritual that draws in friends and neighbours for a catch up on news and business, of social issues that could benefit from some kindly intervention, of politics, dark or otherwise and of more lofty spiritual things. My feeling is of a well established, wholesome environment headed by two now-mature, if eccentric, characters - my younger sis and her hubby, a great team that I’ve seen develop through the many years. He has described her as the CEO of the family and she describes him as Methuselah. The titles are spot on.
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| Sis assessing the work needed at the farm house |
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| Sis researching stuff |
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| There’s a big river at the bottom of the garden |
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| Sis in her veg garden |
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| All hands on deck |
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