Toronto: ten years later

Toronto is another place where we lived for less than a year (JF and I moved *a lot* in the first five years of our common life together!). Toronto was synonymous with big jobs in big companies for both of us. It was good money and good experience, but I was so miserable... When the Yukon government called to offer JF a position, we packed our Wesfalia and left without hesitation and never came back... until last week.

We showed the girls where we lived and brought them to Royal Falafel to eat great falafel, where we would sometimes go after walking our big St.Bernard along the Lake...

Then we drove around a bit, but mostly got disappointed because things had changed so much in ten years we could not find what we were after and only succeeded at getting ripped off at the Big Carrot, that used to be a decent priced health food store...

Fortunately, we had a great evening with friends who made us an amazing pizza on the BBQ (Ricardo style). You throw the freshly made and rolled dough on the hot BBQ, cook on one side for 3-4 minutes (just enough so it has nice marks) and put it back on the plate, cooked side on top), garnish to taste and put it back on the BBQ until the cheese is melted nicely. It was amazing. It tasted like brick-oven pizza!!

It was the perfect evening to celebrate our return in Canada! We had a delightful evening and were ready to get back on the road to get to Ottawa!

Coming home

As we inched towards the Canadian border, I tried to stay present with the mixed feelings that were arising within me. The magical feeling of the time spent with amazing new friends, the sadness of seeing our trip come to an end, the excitment of meeting with dear friends in Ottawa very soon and seeing more dear friends and family members that we dearly missed this year in the next few weeks, reintegrating our home, unpacking, cleaning, getting back to some kind of a *normal* life, and what this means for me right now…
What I know is that this year has been one of the happiest for me and I am not really looking forward to get back to a house life per se. I would stop by in a campground or two in Quebec for a month or two to catch up with friends and family members that we dearly miss and would be totally happy to keep traveling in my trailer… I’d go to Maine for a few months, then Oregon… then, California, then, then…

The life we lived in that year was quite unique. Can you imagine that I didn’t need to use a calendar for a whole year? No appointments, no obligations, no meetings… nothing written down… just the inspiration of the day. I loved that. I totally loved the spontaneity and simplicity of our days.

:: Beautiful Letchworth State Park: they call it the Grand Canyon of the East ::

By any mean, it’s not always easy on the road. We just had a really big rush for work this week. Working in a trailer with 3 children can be a challenge at the best of times, sometimes the new surroundings help, but most times, having my mom or friends nearby would be really helpful, for sure. But this week, amidst the rush of work and transitioning back to Canada, the girls amazed us once more. Of their own volition, they made meals, washed the dishes, cleaned the bathroom (and a really dirty toilet: Mathilde, you go girl!) and when the contract was handed, they celebrated by telling us to sleep in while they prepared a surprise breakfast! 

 There is also the relationship to stuff. When I think about reintegrating our space, even just for a short period of time, I feel overwhelmed by the idea of dealing with our stuff… We don’t even have that much, but once you learn to live with what you can carry with you, well, any more than that feels overwhelming really. So basically, going back home, right now, except for the joy of connecting with my loved ones, feels like work, unpacking (house storage and trailer), scheduled life and well, just a lot to do compared to the rythm of the last year… It will be a transition for sure.

The girls are excited to go back home and JF needs some down time, so it’s time to go back, I think. One year on the road is long. Summer simply feels to me like a weird time to come back!

I feel a bit like this one time I was coming back from a week-long trip in Gaspésie when I just started University. I felt lost. Going back to the reality of my life was hard, even if at that time, that reality was quite different. There is something with the coming back from an adventure that makes my heart sink. I want to hold on to it. I know you’ll tell me it’s just normal. I love what my friend Laurence wrote on my FB page when I mentioned having mixed feelings about our return : each ending will be followed by a new beginning. Yes. I know, but I believe that my melancholic side sometimes like to linger in the sadness of what I am leaving behind, not of what is ahead. And I am trying to honor that right now. I feel quite vulnerable sharing this here. But I am OK with being vulnerable, because this is part of being human. And I am meeting more and more of my humanity every day.

Tool making and wool dyeing

As I said in my last post, the girls are totally into primitive tool making right now. The Ithaca area is full of slate which was perfect for making arrow points. They also got super inspired by all the beautiful handwork they saw at Lisa's and at the Waldorf school and picked up the needles as soon as we left her house.

 

:: Sprouts and asparagus from Wegmans, an amazing healthfood store in Ithaca (and an chain in the NY state). Yum! ::

:: Quick healthy meals on the road: figs, tahini and Amish bee pollen ::

:: Mashed avocados with Herbamare salt, sprinkled with sunflower seeds and sprouts on cucumber slices, an inspiration from the Rawfood family recipe book ::

:: Monday morning camping fun: collecting firewood from other campsites ::

Lisa had given Mara some beautiful brown sheep wool and 24 hours later, she had finished her first doll. Mathilde wanted to try her hand at dyeing, so we dyed the white wool we got for her doll in tea and she dyed more in dandelions for the hair. She was so pleased with the results!

Arts, crafts and Ithaca

Lisa is the handwork teacher at the Ithaca Waldorf school and she showed us around their newly built school (right beside a biodynamic farm where the children participate in the gardening activities) and showed us the beautiful projects she does with the first to 6th graders. She has all the grades plant dye the wool they will use for their different projects at the beginning of the year, so they really own the project from beginning to end. 

We were quite impressed with the program she offers her students! She has her 1st/2nd graders make gnomes with the wool, the 3rd/2th graders make beautiful embroidered bags and 5th/6th graders make really nice socks.

And Ithaca really, really pleased us! It's a University town (Cornell) and the locals like to call it 10 square miles surrounded by reality! It is a very liberal community and there is a big homeschoolers coop with more than 100 members, a great primitive pursuits program for my wildcrafters, tool crafters and wilderness cooks. There is an awesome local food movement, great people and great parks and trails around it to hike, run and ski. Yup! We could definitely see ourselves spending more time here! Did I mention there is a place called Dennis where the owner went to study how to make artisan ice cream?... Oh! It was sooo good!

We camped for 3 nights at Treman State Park right beside Ithaca and had pretty much the campground to ourselves. Jamie came to visit with Banyan and I was so involved in my conversation with her that I did not even took photos... There were fruit trees in bloom everywhere and the girls built a beautiful fairy garden with all the flowers. While they were there, we spotted a huge Gartner snake right beside our campsite! I was glad Banyan could identify it and tell us it was not dangerous!

We also went out to the Thai food restaurant for lunch with Jamie and Malaya on another day. It was so great to get to know her and her sweet children in person.

 :: JF made Mémé's crêpe Suzette twice for breakfast. Lisa made strawberry rubarb filling and whip cream from amazing local cream. Such a treat! ::

 :: And there was more beautiful violin practice before the recitals. They even kept us in for one night when it was freezing outside (litterally freezing. Lisa lost most of her herb garden... and there was snow in the morning...). We even got to take a bath. A bath! The last bath we took was at the hotel in Albuquerque for the unschooling conference. In December. It was such a bliss. ::

It was hard to say goodbye. It felt like home. It felt like we could have kept on talking and eating and visiting for ever. It's a good feeling to find such friends. We definitely will be back.

The Glass Museum, Corning, NY

When we drove through Corning to get to our friend Lisa's house, the first thought that crossed my mind was: Wow! Corning! Like CorningWare, like the pots our moms used to cook in. When Lisa mentionned the Glass Museum and how we should really not miss it, we knew it was the perfect opportunity to answer Mara's recent questions about how glass was made. 

The Corning Glass Museum is a combo of an art gallery with a beautiful store, interesting hands-on activities and great shows and demos going on all day. We went to see the Flameworking Demo where the artist turned simple glass rods into a delicate pinguin figurine with a 5,000 degree Fahrenheit gas- and oxygen-powered torch.  

We also went to the Hot Glass Show (glassblowing), where a beautiful vase became alive in front of our eyes. The gaffer (another name for glassblowers) took glowing gobs of molten glass on the end of a pipe and turned and blew and put it back in the oven and kept working at it in front of us. The last time he took it out of the oven, Mathilde let out a loud: Wow! and everybody laughed! She was truly amazed at the process!

:: The famous CoringWare pots ::

Then we finally returned to the Glassbreaking Demo (where we had started) where they show how different types of glass shatter, because Charlie wanted to try to get picked to be the assistant (and he did! And they give the assistant a beautiful glass figurine: he got a polar bear standing on his head!), but the funny thing is that the last item is a handdipped egg-shaped piece and it is not supposed to break the way the facilitator intends it to break... but Charlie had seen the demo before and had his idea in mind... and he broke it! Look at that grin on his face! He was pretty proud of himself! And we all had a good laugh!

Buttermilk Falls, Ithaca, NY

After our Mother's Day brunch, we went for a hike to Buttermilk Falls, at the edge of the City of Ithaca. Buttermilk Falls State Park is in the Finger Lake Region. When the glacier receeded north about 10,000 years ago, water filled the area, creating the 11 Finger Lakes which include Cayuga Lake. Since then, water in the form of Buttermilk Creek has poured down the glacially-steepened hillside, cutting away its soft sedimentary rock. This on-going process has formed the park's gorge and spectacular waterfalls.

  :: Columbine flowers ::

 

 Lisa showed the girls how to recognize jewelweed (that grows around nettle because it relieves the itch from that plant) and how it looks like silver when you turn it around in the water... They loved that!

 :: Our 3 families: Lisa is holding Jamie's Malaya, but her children are Katie and Grace (the two beautiful big girls with red hair) Charlie, the boy on the right with dark hair. Jamie (with the braid) is also Banyan's mom (the blond boy standing besides Charlie) and, well, you know us, of course! ::