souvenir switch-out 06/10/11

                                          The stranger walks past.
                                          When I ask, he says that he is going home

                                                      to get something

                                                                                      and bring it back.

 

So am I.

 

                                           driving away

                                           out of town

                                           along familiar lines

                                           stopping

                                           walking

                                           down to the lake

                                           up the bank

                                           over the dam

                                           through the woods

                                          along the stream

                                           to my old house

                                           where I left something...

                                           and brought something back.

My walk took an alternate route from my apartment to my childhood home.  By circumnavigating a familiar distance between two points and walking as the crow flies, I gave myself time to think about the land itself.  Just like adult perspective can sometimes lend itself to a revisionist history of the memories of childhood, what home means to me is being re-negotiated by a new corporation:

http://www.highlandcompanies.ca/

and the people like me who live here:

http://ndact.com/

http://www.inthehills.ca/2011/06/back/birth-of-a-protest/
http://www.inthehills.ca/2011/06/back/melancthon-mega-quarry-by-the-numbers/

I collected samples of limestone aggregate from the sidewalk, the road, a dam on the Pine River, and the inner walls of my old house, circa 1840s.