well, i've got a couple of days left in Canada, and its sweltering under the fierce sun. Work has stopped and scattered people are sheltering in the shade, along with the deer flies. Its been an amazing month, the language maybe the same, but it has been a totally culture shock... probably the most dramatic change in way of life I've ever experienced. City to wilderness... or maybe not wilderness, but surrounded by it, and feeling like humans are the interlopers here, being squeezed out steadily but surely by the forest, rather than the other way round. The people here are clinging on to the last bits of a way of life that has almost disappeared forever.
I've got this queasy feeling that everything I've learnt will evaporate though when I get home, back to the usual urban surrounds, and I don't want that to happen. The self-sufficiency - and Efficiency - of how life goes on here, from raw necessity is a feeling I want to try and hold on to, and maintain. Living off the land... thats the North American way, an unending resource - not a very popular sentiment in terms of city size consumption, but with small groups, a few here, a few there, it certainly seems to work. And in a place like this, its a sumptuous lifestyle of provision that you can take from nature... if you can hold on long enough.
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feels like i had some new grooves (ruts maybe) carved out hereof experience, behaviour, knowledge whatever, but what I'm trying to make sure of is that they are maintained, at least a little when I drop back into the old, much deeper, more established grooves of London life. Does that make sense? Nick needs a new groove.
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