There is an acreage in southern Manitoba, with woods. A variety of oaks--some quite large, some twisted and slightly bent in acknowledgment of harsher soil, or injury in their youth--and poplar, also known as trembling aspen, stand silent witness to the days and nights that pass. The smaller but persistent hawthorn, the unpretentious chokecherry, the clumping hazelnut shrubs, all claim their places to fill in the forest.
This small piece of land has never been cultivated (or 'improved', the term used on our property tax statement) as far as I know. It has had various herds of cattle, deer, and bison wander through in their times of occupation, especially the open pasture and adjoining wooded areas.
Now there stands along a trail through the trees a small log cabin, erected decades ago not for survival but for novelty.
Today I sit in this sturdy little hut with the Sunday morning sunshine streaming in through the two single pane windows, a warming fire going full blast in the ancient cookstove standing off to one side, the boastful roaring of the flames a contrast to the humble compactness of the stove.
As I walked here, I realized it is not the hills, not the hills whence my help comes. It is the trees, the company of trees, that bring me sanctuary. This small patch of woods, one of several on the land that we own, has been a part of the gradual process of the land coming to own us. For more than three decades we have been landowners, my husband and I, he for closer to four decades. You could say it has been our passion. There has always been a desire to be farmers, to try and make a living from this land of ours, to raise our children where they could run barefoot, escaping to the woods and fields for hours of freedom. Some years, especially at the beginning, we made sacrifices of lifestyle, leisure and status (living in a mobile home for sixteen years must have had our friends' and family's heads shaking).
Now, approaching our 'golden years' (our now adult children would say firmly entrenched in) we have been rewarded, or blessed--if we admit it was not only our hard work that brought us to where we are today--with the option of a more relaxed pace, with more choice about our daily life and our lifestyle, than those first stressful years.
So I have time, or I take the time, to make the fifteen minute trek through pasture and woods, to this slightly secluded cabin, leaving cares and griefs behind, or at least bringing along just the one or two I choose to accompany me. And while I spend the hours reading in the cabin and putting wood on the fire, or walking and noticing the surprising number of colours tree lichen comes in, or coming upon secret wild nests in spring with tiny hopeful pastel-coloured eggs, or snapping the ten thousandth close up photo of the purely artistic lines of a curled leaf or translucent flower petal, I must always head back, when the time comes, to the life of the farm, the cities beyond it, and the larger world past that. But there is something I bring with me when I return from the woods, something bestowed by the silent trees, the golden grasses, the still and peaceful air. Though it is hard to define, a part of it could be said to be thanksgiving, a sense of renewed appreciation.