The Adventure Begins

The house at KSR is ready! We drove up yesterday afternoon with two cartons of books, a couple of bags of papers, and the files I want on hand. Mid-afternoon on Friday isn’t the best time to head north on Dufferin—we were slowed by a stop light out of commission and then an accident. It was 4:00 and the sun low by the time we arrived.

It didn’t take long to unpack the books onto a shelf in the office. There’s space there for a lot more, which can’t be said of my shelves at home, where books are stacked in front of as well as on the shelves. I’m not sure more space is a good thing. I’m looking forward to having less at hand, perhaps to having less in general. On the other hand, perhaps that space offers itself for thinking in—room to let my mind wander and see what it might find. I’m looking forward to settling in the study, with its fine windows. 

And it’s exciting to see my books on the shelf, inviting me to pick them up.

Over a cup of tea we sat and listened to the quiet—no wind, no traffic, no voices. I haven’t felt that kind of silence in a long time. Though the afternoon was darkening we went for a walk. Twilight thickened, the air was still and chill. Occasionally we heard chickadees, but saw none. No one else seemed to be around.

The trees are bare now, except for the willows, which still have a yellow-green tint to them, a softness that feels like foliage. But the land has changed. Green is still brilliant in the undergrowth, but it’s a minor note. Neutral colours, the faded beiges of seed heads, the pale grasses, and the browns—dark, reddish, pale—predominate. Here and there a note of brilliant white: milkweed pods exploding with seed that haven’t yet sailed off. But it’s the textures that strike me, stark lines of branches and trunks of trees and then fields where the plants are leaning or drooped over and somehow without clear edges.

The sky had grown colourless, except for a small flush of pale pink. We walked past a large oak whose branches still held scattered leaves and made a lovely shape against that pale sky. In the ponds the reflected trees seemed clearer than the actual ones. The forest and slopes beyond felt slightly blurred. The air was getting colder, the light less, and so we turned back and came home.

Now I’m busy making lists of what I think I’ll need. I hope to gather things together this coming week and be in residence there before the month is out.