the following is also from the original first post
Driving
back from L'Archeveque the setting sun over Ferguson's Lake was so
lovely that I had to stop and take a picture from Barren Hill Road. As
always the feeling of the fading day was ghosting over me like a
pleasing shiver down my spine - no cars, no planes, no man-mad sounds
just the breeze that ruffled the lake and sighed through the spruce and
the tiny sound of wave-lets gently lapping on the stoney beach. I
waited while the sky above darkened into early evening and the old
memories of Christopher Ferguson and others that I had been lucky
enough to know in the Barren Hill community ran through my mind - and
how in the brief span of my later life it has reverted to a vast
background of forest and lakes with only about two inhabited homes - one
in which I know the family the other an unknown to me - the rest empty,
fading away, or gone, the great arboreal forest absorbing them back
into its bosom, with this rural community like many others only a bit
more alive by the influx of summer-from-aways like myself. It was on
Barren Hill Road that the best friend of my life was born and raised and
he and his house is gone. As much as I love rural living, this world
of the future is steadily drawing most of the rural youth to its cities
so that slowly, one by one, the small communities dwindle away or become
summer colonies and the loss is profound - even if it is not of
interest to the nation at large. I drive on back toward Grand River
appreciating the lonely street lights as I crest the hill at the highway
garage. Maybe Stewart and Sue are still up and I can stop and have tea
and chase away my colly-wobbles, talking and laughing with my old
friend's legacy, of son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren, to the
future. And it works, the great embracing feature of the rural life,
rarely discerned in the city, the embracing of your neighbor, the
looking the stranger in the eye, the easy hello, the sincere interest in
what you are doing and how you are going, even when you might be
estranged because of some imagined slight the urge to embrace breaks
forth at someone's misfortune and old wounds are healed, at least for
awhile. It is like a large and scattered family that spends threads of
communication through-out their scattering. I love it and miss it.
My grandmother's sister had a house at Ferguson's Lake. She married a Ferguson of course! I fondly remember renting the MacCuspic's house by the lake in the mid 1960s, and walking up the hill to my aunt's house. The MacCuspic's house was a beautiful white house with a large gate at the St. Peters-Fourchu Road. We would pick berries on the property, and then beg my mother to bake a pie. Many folks would come and pick blueberries there. When I was visiting the area in 2001, I was sadden to see that the MacCuspic's house and others were all gone as well as the lush green fields...
ReplyDeleteI always enjoy your comments Carol - and can only wish that I had come to Grand River and surrounds much earlier in time - but I did get to see the remains of a way of life that is sorely missed in this day and age -
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