Back To The Homestead Wilds

BACK TO THE HOMESTEAD WILDS (From my Archives)

     After writing the first part of the blog today, while holed-up at our Gravenhurst music studio (of all places to write a blog), I arrived home to take Bosko for a walk over in The Bog. We have three trips into the neighborhood forest, and lowland every day, and it's a nice way to break up the routine of everyday living. We all know the inherent ruts of the daily grind, of work, work, and more work. Bosko doesn't care about my issues, or trials, because she's got bigger things to sniff-out, like a new resident coyote, that has been visiting our neighborhood for the past several weeks. Bosko lets me know where the beast is, with the intensity of her tracking ability, and we make a quick retreat. Just in case. I don't mind yielding the right of way. I just try to look calm doing so!

     I did think about what Suzanne had offered, as a casual overview, of the work she has had to edit for the past three years of my daily blogging. Outside of deserving a medal of courage, for tolerating me hovering at her back, while proofing, (which I couldn't stand myself), I suppose she did remind me of how my impressions, of rural farm life, did expand into the folkish side of history authordom. I started to recall my many trips into the old homestead property, a mile or so off Beaumont Drive, in Bracebridge, between Kerr Park, and Stephen's Bay Road. I found it the first winter back in Bracebridge, after returning home from university, to seek my fame and fortune. Well, I've had some minor fame but no fortune. While my girlfriend, at the time, Gail, was still attending classes at university, in Toronto, I would head out for some cross country skiing, on weekday afternoons. There was one ski trail from Kerr Park, which is adjacent to the Muskoka River, that crossed through an amazing former homestead acreage, that I fell in love with almost immediately. Yes, indeed, it was as if I had some intimate connection to this place, in a previous life. You've probably experienced a weird feeling like this, a few times in your own life, without any validation of these emotions. Seeing it first, in the snowy days of early December, back in 1977, made this homestead all the more emotionally alluring. It's not necessarily a good thing for an historian to get all sentimental, about the task at hand. Well, at this time, I wasn't an historian, but I did have my first antique shop open for business, in the former house / medical office, of Dr. Peter McGibbon, on upper Manitoba Street, in Bracebridge. The historian gig came much later.

    The largely intact, two level farmhouse, had been built on a significant hillside, above a boggy lowland, bordered by a huge rock face on the south side of the property. It reminds me of the landscape, that you can look-out over, from the Algonquin Park Visitor Centre. You would expect to find wolves, bear, moose and deer roaming there, and it did concern me especially, when in the late afternoons, on the return trip, I could clearly hear the distant howl of wolves. This was their territory and I was the intruder.

      There was a cart trail up the hillside, to the front of the house, which faced east if memory serves. The lane was heavily grown over by encroaching evergreens, but the snowload, on that very first visit, had pulled the boughs lower, so the silhouette of the farmstead was visible in the scattered sunglow. I stood at the base of the hill, looking up at the abandoned old farmhouse, with that initial sense of awe, ruminating about what it must have looked like a century earlier. It was distressing to think that such a fine location, with such a beautiful view over the lowland, would have been abandoned, to erode back into the earth from which it once belonged. I would have loved to dwell in such a place, in the Muskoka heartland. In my mind, I started to imagine the folks who may have lived here, by first noticing more intimate details, as I navigated my skis, in a sideways cross-over motion, up the laneway incline. The closer I got to the top of the hill, the more I sensed that family aura, I've experienced on dozens of similar pioneer homesteads in the region.      There was a hush, both with the insulation of the snow-load, but also because of the enclosure of border evergreens. The cold wind snapping and cracking frozen tree limbs, through the lowland, wasn't affecting anything on this hillside; and the silence was intriguing. Without thinking about it, I began imagining what the sounds of this place would have been, way back in its first years as a family abode; the voices of adults working at homestead chores, chopping firewood, and the laughter of children sledding down the far slope, into the valley. It was as if, the house was setting the scene, for its own rediscovery, moreso than my own writer's fascination, to put life where there was a void. It didn't take long, before I was filling this vacant hillside house, with all kinds of seasonal activities, pre-Christmas, and comings and goings, up and down this front drive. The horse drawn cutter, coming around the bend, bells resonating off the iced-over snow, with the buffalo robe hanging off the side. I was romanticizing this place, but I couldn't seem to stop. I have no idea who lived here, back to the period of the late 1800's, so the only other explanation, beyond a hopped-up imagination, (like a Hollywood film coming to life), was a sincere but intrusive love for history; re-enactment, for the sentimental heart. There was of course, always the potential, that resident spirits, imbedded here for long and long, were sending me a paranormal welcome. It was just one of those weird situations, I've had many times before, in similar locations, when the environs started to inspire strange thoughts, without any intention on my part, to create an instant family, to suit my interpretive needs at the moment.

     It would become the model homestead, for many future stories, and factored very heavily into the creation of my first book, "Memories and Images," circa 1983, produced with Muskoka photographer, Tim DuVernet, that we released, as an initial foray into book writing. This soon-to-collapse former homestead, was more alluring than I can truly explain. I suppose it became kind of an obsession, at a time when the only other demand on my time, was playing hockey, and chasing after elusive antiques for our shop. I made twice weekly ski trips back to the homestead, through the winter months, and many more when the weather got a little warmer, and the snow melted away. Of course, the bugs made it a tad unfriendly, and the bear near-misses, made it a little more precarious taking the trip into the property. Once I was on the top of that hill, I didn't worry at all about bear intrusions. I don't know why I felt this way, but as it was, I saw bears everywhere else, and wolves, but nothing to bother me during those calm sojourns in and around the old farmhouse. Were the spirits dispatching the animals that may have wanted me (to stay) for dinner? If there were spirit protectors, on that hillside, they were certainly more "Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost" types. There was nothing malevolent being there, although it was still sad, watching this beautiful house, tumble, board by board into the landscape. It seemed worth saving. Maybe the spirits thought I could restore the place, and bring it back to its historic elegance. I suppose however, in the words of these stories, I have kept the essence of the Victorian era farmhouse alive. It will always be that way for me, until I tumble into the earth for that final time. That former dwelling place, may have been abandoned in fact, but in spirit, it was a very full house.

     On occasions when I'd pull open the door to gain access, I would find myself in the former kitchen, and marvel about the way plates were still hung on the wall, and the old built-in cupboards were still holding original plates, cups and saucers, and many utensils, which had spilled out onto the floor, when another intruder dislodged a drawer from a stove-side cabinet. It was a dark room even on a sunny afternoon, so I imagine it very much benefitted, from one of those all day fires in the hearth, kept up by the matron of the house. I could smell the ingrained patina of smoke, and soot, still very much in evidence, long after it had been abandoned. There were pots and pans all over the floor, and milk bottles, which by itself, dated the last occupants of the house. Other than of course, the family of raccoons I got to know, over my many visits. I kept my distance, although I could see them watching me, from an open space where ceiling boards had fallen away. There were even a few framed pictures hanging on the walls, and many broken and gnawed chairs, scattered in what probably had been the parlor. I had never ventured to the second floor, because the stairs had been badly damaged by water exposure, as there was a pretty large hole in the roof, that had rotted away boards on the upper floor, and then the base of the stairs, where I needed access. I could see through the rotten steps, down into what had been a partial basement, or cold room for storing fruit and vegetables for the winter season. The house was in danger of imminent collapse from the very first day I visited. The side section of the house had collapsed when I visited in the spring of 1979, and then again in the fall of the same year. It was a sad reality, but it had no defenders, to save it from, what was a natural, four seasons demise. Each season, played a role in its final destruction. Yet those lilacs, as I remember, were still thriving, on those final two visits. Makes me wonder about what it would all look like, back there, now in the fall of 2014.

     As I wrote about previously, in this short series, all the abandoned homestead properties, cabins, and farmhouses I visited, back in the mid 1970's, to mid 1980's, had distinct auras connected. Even the first few steps on these overgrown, largely forgotten properties, gave me either the sense of dread, sadness, melancholy, or a sort of neutral contentment; more on my part than the interplay of the spirits of the place. It had a lot to do with the season I visited, and if it was sunny, overcast, raining or snowing. The later in the day, even on sunny autumn afternoons like today (here at Birch Hollow), these homesteads seemed to animate into very life-filled places; the birds and squirrels more active, groundhogs making appearances in the fields, venerable old crows cawing from the upper boughs of gnarled pines, and the occasional fox, running across the former pasture, looking for a dinner of a field mouse of two. I might be on site for three to five hours, and hear very little, except the wind whispering through the evergreens; and then the creaking of old trees rubbing against saplings, measuring their odds of survival; and the grating, scuffling noise from my digging device.     Even when I'd take a lunch break, to sit overlooking one section of field, or a valley below the homestead hillside, you would be lucky to see a bird, let alone hear one. But just as I would be packing up, the natural world seemed to let loose. There was nothing particularly paranormal or supernatural about it, other than I found it odd, that upon my imminent departure, this homestead became a very busy place. I suppose, when I arrived, I scared away the creature inhabitants, or kept them from roaming about, just in case I was an unknown predator. I can remember looking back, at one homestead property, after hitting the main road on foot, and seeing deer crossing the field, a bear scratching at a tree on a slope, where I had been working a half hour earlier, and enough birds to look like the cutting room floor, from the Alfred Hitchcock movie, "The Birds." Nothing all that strange, but I did wonder, what would happen if I passed back through the old gate. Would this wildlife retreat again?

     The house on the hill inspired at least two dozen major feature stories, in two books I prepared, and many other heritage articles for The Herald-Gazette, The Muskoka Advance, and The Muskoka Sun. It can be thusly said, I gained a lot of story kindling, from having visited that uniquely situated farmhouse, in Bracebridge. There was always an intrusive melancholy on that storied hillside, as if the old dwelling was seeking refuge in my heart; that as a writer (because I wrote there on each occasion, even in the winter), I could somehow bring back what it once possessed, of a resident family; much as a parent / guardian, wishes against all odds, for a child's return, or a widow prays for her partner's arrival, back into a favorite chair at hearthside; to hear again the familiar humming in the kitchen, of a grandmother with ladle in hand, mixing batter in a bowl. I never really lost the melancholy of that time, and when I recall the house, and picturesque property now, I suppose, as Suzanne noted, I want to fulfill a promise I apparently made, in mindful resolve, to paint a pretty picture of the way it was! Suffice to say, I can't help myself, in this folkish regard, to imagine what Grandma Moses might have infilled with her paints, of this same scene, that I can't do justice today, by the same stroke of naive genius; my pen not as proficient, as was her paint brush.