Country Roads

This morning, sitting on the deck, I watch a chipping sparrow, a tiny thing with a red cap, drift down from the clothesline onto the lawn. The movement is as effortless as a leaf floating off a tree. The bird disappears into the grass that goes to meadow mere days after being mowed.

In truth, it’s hardly grass at all but a pasture rich with tiny wild strawberries growing close to the ground among sweet pea, wild carrots, Queen Anne’s lace, daisies and black-eyed Susan. If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t mow it all but let it grow into what Axel calls a biotope.

Like many people, we live in the country for the nature and yet, most people cannot control their desire to shape the land, bend it to their will. There is this desire to create a fiefdom that would was unaffordable in the city. These 'castles'are surrounded by immaculate front lawns and constrained flower beds heaped with red cedar chips to prevent weeds.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that a weed is a plant whose virtue has not yet been discovered. But this virtue is rarely recognized by those tending country lawns.

Birch, aspen, maple and pine are some of the many trees I can name in the deep wood that edges our backyard. I peer in amongst the trees to see if there is an opening. I don’t hear the digger today but that doesn’t stop me from worrying again about the road.

When Axel asked me if I could live anywhere in the world where would that be, I answered, “Right here” meaning Montreal. Then he asked if we could live in the suburbs and I looked at him oddly. Then I realized that in Europe, the suburbs are the small, often ancient towns that circle a large city. In short, Axel wanted to live in the country and that matched my own long-held desire. Give me trees and I’m the happiest of campers.

We bought the house in St-Colomban partly for its open airiness – a cathedral ceiling and windows everywhere – as well as for the tiara of trees that circle the property. Sitting at the dining room table, we can barely see our neighbour through the thicket that separates us. And the view out back through the glass sliding doors and onto the deck, is of forest and marsh where toad lilies and trillium grow in early spring. A hare lives there (or nearby) and four kinds of squirrels – pine, grey, black and a huge mottled fellow. Of course, there are raccoons and a dazzling array of birds from pileated woodpeckers to nuthatches. They visit my feeder every winter.

On the other side of the wood, our closest neighbour, is a farm with a few dairy cattle. It must be large because we only occasionally hear any lowing but just last week, driving along the road perpendicular to ours, I was thrilled to see two cows munching grass by the fence.

Now the wood is in danger. They’re building a road between us and the farm. That can mean only one thing, they’ll be cutting down trees to build houses to generate more tax revenue to build more roads and make the little town of St-Colomban which already has 90,000 people spread over a wide tract of land, become engorged with more box stores, more roads and less trees.

Since we’ve moved here, I have seen houses pop up like mushrooms in areas that had been forested. And with them, more little dead bodies on the side of the road.

And I wonder, where are all the animals supposed to go? And where will those country roads lead us next?