Certainty

[greenstorm]

I'd like to state, for the record, that any time I'm certain of an event or make a sure declarative about the future that thing will not come to pass. Homes, relationships, jobs, leaving, staying: in my life, if I come to completely expect something, it will not come to pass.

A&E have had a bid accepted on a property in the mid-north Vancouver Island. Everything happens for many reasons each with its own lens:

I. just. Said. That. I. Was. Staying. Here. My heart just believed it and I had less than a day of rest alone in this space after mom left and before they viewed the property.

Also it's spring and people are selling, so this was a reasonable time for this to happen after braking for the winter.

Also A&E have been waiting all winter and are more able to compromise on location, especially since Tucker (without telling anyone, but they got the message at least) removed his requirements from the search. It's pretty remote.

There are a lot of subjects to remove on the offer including sale of A&E's place (they have ten viewings this week), inspection, water test, and ability to get insurance.

I have not been there to walk it. After A&E's place has an accepted bid (if?) I'll fly down for a day or two to look it over, mark trees for clearing, mark fencelines, and then come back up here and live with Threshold for awhile longer. There's no way to go down before it's ready for the animals, after all.

Not having walked it I can't tell you about it. I can tell you about North Vancouver Island, though. It's intensely pacific northwest, west coast. It freezes in the winter intermittently, and not for many days at a time. It's heavy overcast to drizzly well over half the time; almost no one would recognise the rain as rain because not a lot of water tends to come down at once but it is always damp. It's a little dryer and sunnier in summer but less than you might think. Everything is green and smells like leaf mould and conifer and water. Summers are also cool; I'm not sure exactly how cool yet but I may not get much warmer than here. Thing is, it would be the same temperature as here but frost free for maybe twice as long. That introduces possibilities like yuzu and very hardy kumquats.

I don't really want to talk about it though? I'm here with Threshold, and I want to be here, and enjoy here. I don't want to spend my thoughts on places far away, though I do love the planning exercise. I want to be in the present moment because I love it here.

There's lots before this is completely sure: interpersonal, financial, legal. It may never happen, who knows? But it's looking likely at this moment. A&E will look over offers Thursday and until then I am so far outside my mind and my body I'm finding myself just standing places, staring, and it's hard to move.

There's a lot more to say about this. I wanted to put it down here though. Ahead of me may be this place without (yet) a name. I once again don't know what happens next.

Comments

[greenstorm]

Just south of "Sayward, BC" will get you there. You will see a lot of trees, though honestly BC is kind of like that everywhere.

I'm not entirely sure what greenhousing will do in terms of heat; it's awfully grey there a lot of the time. Keeping tomatoes dry, so it doesn't rain on the foliage, makes an enormous difference against the blights. Still, if I can breed for short season I can breed for blight resistance, and lots of people are working on blight resistance by breeding in wild ancestors right now.

That would be a lot of fun :)

Had some good talks yesterday including financial stuff and indicated willingness to take consensus training. I'm super gun-shy (what an expression!) about promises to talk about a relationship after it's been entered into without some of that talking up front, thank you Tucker, so we'll need some more conversation. But. Good start on the anxiety front.

[yarrowkat]

that makes all the sense about keeping tomatoes dry and it broke my brain a little. lol. it rains so much less here!

that all sounds like excellent progress on the conversations. soooo much talking happens in this stage. it's gotta. talking up front, and then continuing to talk, both.

i looked at Sayward BC and wow it looks wet. and very very green. Terra says Vancouver Island is gorgeous (Terra is fron Seattle/ & the Port Townsend area).

it seems very possible that we/i could visit you on your island sometime, when we are in Seattle anyway, that being a place we usually go every couple years; i have some family & several friends there, as does Terra. not that's it's near, exactly, but it seems near enough to make an easy trip.

[greenstorm]

It's good progress. I wish I had more time/energy for them.

I grew up in that kind of area so I didn't understand why everyone who came said it was so green; then I went to the prairies and even moved up here where there was a brown season (and a white season, but that doesn't count). Where you are must be so so different.

The coast is also hella humid. It's just so... moldy. And blackberries and alder trees eat everything.

I'd love that visit!

[yarrowkat]

a brown season 🤣

new people here often exclaim, it's so brown! i usually interpret this (uncharitably) as unwillingness to see the variety and beauty in this often-austere landscape. or to understand the variety within an hour's drive. the desert holds a thousand shades of green, but none of them are the dominant pallette. there must be three thousand shades of brown, and grey green and grey brown. really the dominant aspect is the sky. it's enormous. and nearly always bold bright blue.

mold seems to be the bane of wet places.

[greenstorm]

Intimacy with a landscape is a slow build of attention and detail. There's a certain kind of bond to be had with something that presents starkly to an initial observer and then holds so many secrets; landscapes that are suspicious of people who might treat them badly, and only give up their gifts and secrets as your attention earns their trust. I picture the desert watching these new people and waiting to see whether they'll slow down and look around them.

I'm used to mold, though it's been lovely to have a break from it. It's the blackberries that I think of as being a problem, eating houses and trees; I'm so grateful the property is salmonberry instead, they're short bushes instead of long thorny vines.

[yarrowkat]

the desert spits people out sometimes, too. she's fierce and she wants you to listen and watch. certain types of inattention can kill a person - which is true in every environment, i think, but seems highlighted here. she withholds mercy, and is infinitely generous. i have a poem on this theme to remember to send you when I'm at a computer tomorrow.

and yes, attention and detail build that relationship. I'm still learning this particular desert, different from the one i grew up in, after 24 years here.

and salmonberries are delicious, too! my dad lived in the mountains in North Carolina the last 11 years of his life. that property has two houses, on a hill sloping down to a creek. the Big House, and the Annex which is built over the garage, uphill of the Big House. the main drive comes in from the little road to the northwest, but the Annex has its own drive coming off the small highway to the south. when I first met that land in 2004, that driveway was in use, and lightly gravelled. a few years later, they stopped using it, and by the time i was visiting him at the end of his life in 2015, there was no driveway. it was entirely eilanthus, blackberries, and honeysuckle, and the faint suggestion of a flat strip of earth underneath.

my step-aunt lives alone in that rattling big place now. i have often thought it would be perfect for an intentional community who wanted a fixer-upper. the big house has 4-5 bedrooms (depending on how you count the 'office') and the parlour, library, kitchen, and an upstairs sitting room. the Annex is a 2-br apartment, and the place is on 5 acres with the creek and a spring house and the garage/workshop.