Patrick

On Wednes­day last week, I got a mes­sage from my friend Ray:

Hey, want to come camp­ing with Craig and I?

I almost said No. I swore off tent­ing after a dis­as­trous thun­der­storm spent in a cheap tent. But Ray’s a sea­soned camper, and it’s been a long, long time since the three of us got togeth­er. (We’ve been friend since our uni­ver­si­ty days, and while I’ve seen them each indi­vid­u­al­ly in the last year or so, it’s been over a decade since all of us were in the same place.)

So on Fri­day I packed up some gear and hit the road for Duck Moun­tain Provin­cial Park. We end­ed up sit­ting around the camp­fire, drink­ing and shoot­ing the breeze, till well past one in the morning.

Sat­ur­day morn­ing Ray treat­ed us to what he termed a “sim­ple” break­fast of deli­cious ban­nock, spicy Ital­ian sausage, and bacon fried over the fire…

…and then we spent a cou­ple hours pad­dling around on West Blue Lake, Ray and I in a canoe, Craig in a kayak. After that we had some “basic” lunch^[1]Ray’s idea of “basic” camp­ing food includ­ed pad Thai, risot­to and chick­en, and chana masala; his protest was that “it’s all freeze-dried” but that did­n’t make it any less deli­cious., then Craig and I crashed for an hour or two while Ray read in the gaze­bo. Once the sleep­ers had awok­en, we went to the camp­ground’s store to pick up more fire­wood, then shot more breeze. We lis­tened to the Rid­ers lose on Craig’s truck radio, had some “sim­ple” sup­per and more drinks. Bed­time came a lit­tle ear­li­er than Friday.

Sun­day we got up, break­fast­ed, struck camp, and part­ed ways. Craig’s on the hook to come up with a plan for a camp­ing adven­ture next year; per­haps we’ll end up doing some back-coun­try pad­dling. I guess we’ll see.

My grand­par­ents used to farm up by Fork Riv­er, which is about an hour’s dri­ve from the park. My mom went up to the farm a year or two ago, and said it had fall­en into dis­re­pair. I want­ed to see for myself how it looked, so I head­ed on over.

On the way I passed a num­ber of inter­est­ing aban­doned build­ings, and snapped pho­tos of a cou­ple of them^[2]Lat­er this sum­mer, when I’m on my retreat, I real­ly want to try star trails at one of them, but it’s a long dri­ve. We’ll see..

Then I got to the farm.

I did­n’t dri­ve in, but left my car at the end of the dri­ve­way and walked in. I snapped pho­tos for a panoram­ic view of the yard first.

The dri­ve­way is over­grown with grass, and the yard was full of grass and weeds, waist-high at least. The out­build­ings were in bad shape; a cou­ple have col­lapsed, and the garage’s roof has come down inside.

But the barn’s still some­how standing—given how many sway­back or col­lapsed barns I’ve seen in this province, I’m impressed at how well it’s hold­ing up. I wad­ed into the waist-high grass, damp still with either dew or a recent rain, and took some photos.

The wil­lows behind the house are twice as tall as the house now. In places in the yard, the grass was flat­tened, which sug­gest­ed to me that ani­mals have been bed­ding down there. The prairie life seems to be tak­ing the land back, which, on the whole, I’m OK with.

I almost chick­ened out. Part of me was afraid of what I might find up there at the farm. I spent a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of my child­hood there, and I did­n’t want decay and col­lapse to ruin the old mem­o­ries. But I’m glad I went.

After about half an hour at the farm, I walked back to my car and head­ed home. What a week­end. Thanks, Ray, for the invitation.