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1 | (continued) The chutzpah showed in the choice of that particular house, since I had met its sole resident, Fir, exactly once, the summer before, only because another old friend, Gord, had a trailer parked in the guy’s back yard. It was in fact a full-size highway trailer, which he was slowly turning into a rolling home, but it was irrelevant to my plans; my newly-waterproofed Cannondale tent was entirely sufficient for my purposes. Fir was out when John and I got there, and we unloaded the pickup in the far reaches of the back yard, an east-west stretch of land that had seen neither axe nor chainsaw nor lawnmower for many a year. It was as wild as an abandoned orchard, and I loved it—it was like stepping back in time to the Great Depression; the atmosphere of the place reeked of that era.
Not only could I not be seen from the road, but I was completely hidden from the house as well, nicely positioned on a gently sloping, grassy patch of land, with a fair view of the farms to the east and south. The grass lay just beyond a tangle of trees and shrubs that filled the property between the windbreak and the tractor lane. The windbreak was a row of tall, sweet cedars along the north boundary, and the tractor lane, the only access to the campsite, wandered back through the space toward a gate farther east, leading to several acres of fallow land that had once been planted in field crops, or just used for pasture. Perhaps it was merely the season, or my sense of relief, but I was at first charmed by the odors of new growth, the seclusion, the broad sky, the modest landscape. Of course there’s no such thing as a perfect campsite, but this one had many virtues—all the more remarkable for the manner of its discovery: I’d never been back there before; I hadn’t known the little nook existed. Certainly compared to a stuffy, creaking, overpriced rooming house, owned by a pair of chain-smoking, bronchitic hippopotami, in an increasingly raucous part of the city, this was an easeful setting of dreams. John agreed.
Not in Fir’s case, but in many others, the present tenants were simply the original owners, still hanging on. Needless to say, most of the local residents protested the whole madness furiously, fought back legally, and the entire project has now been indefinitely put on hold. And so after sixteen years of tiresome, marginal, free-lance semi-employment, as a talented but hopelessly unbusinesslike photographer, I had finally acquiesced to reality and acquired an indisputable Identity, with no investment beyond $2,000 worth of gear: I could now regard myself as a Certified Squatter. After admiring my tent and the general layout, John wished me the best, drove off, and I finished setting up my camp. I was delighted to reflect on the fact that it was quiet, clean, comfortable and safe. It was also, of course, exceedingly CHEAP, which pleased me immensely. Now all I had to do was convince Fir that having me there was nothing special, something people in these parts did all the time… a kind of caretaker on the property when they went off to do their business… sort of keep an eye on things, make sure everything’s ship-shape, and all that. You know.
He knew. Two days later he was back from some place in the States, and I told him what I’d done. With admirable self-control, he contained his astonishment and said he didn’t much mind, but that he thought I’d better find some other place to live. Whenever I’m given an ambiguous answer like that, I always interpret the positive component as the dominant one, and ignore the rest, as though it were mere lip service to a More Responsible Point of View. And there I thought it sat, for the time being.
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I later learned that that entire section of Durham Region, some 10,000 acres—over 15 square miles—had in recent years been designated as the site for a new international airport. Fir’s place and many others had been duly expropriated from their owners, then promptly leased to whoever was willing to come up with |
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