Sunday I sprained my hand. I would love to say that I did it while landing a wicked punch at Fight Club, but we all know the first rule about Fight Club, so my hands are tied. Metaphorically. I definitely didn’t do it by putting my hand down on my mattress and preparing to get up. Nope. That would be too embarrassing.
So in an effort to rest my hands, you’re getting pictures of my trip to Vancouver Island. British Columbia moved to stage 3 of our Covid response. This means we’re allowed to travel within the province for fun if we can maintain social distancing and proper pandemic hygiene.
We took a ferry from Vancouver to Vancouver Island. Why are these two places named the same thing? Was George Vancouver compensating for something? We may never know. In any event, BC Ferries asked everyone to stay in their cars if possible during the passage, so our ride looked a lot like getting through Seattle traffic.
While we were there I did a video interview with a news outlet I’m not going to name because I don’t know if my part of the video is going to be used. I was out in the country on terrible wifi, talking about remote work. Very meta.
I thought about the folks at Grow Remote, working to make distributed work a reality for rural communities. I don’t know if I would move to a rural area if I had strong internet, but people who want to get away from cities, or move back to the hometown they love, should have that option. Some of us city-folk would love to rent a place for the summer if we could rely on the internet. The video quality of my interview was pretty bad. I probably won’t be included in the montage. Still, the porch was lovely.
There’s something so bewitching about new places after spending so much time within 5k of my own home.
Vacationing on a farm is such a city-kid thing to do. I freely admit it. You could tell who grew up rural in my team call when I mentioned my vacation plans. My fellow city-dwellers thought it was a great idea. A colleague who grew up on a farm looked at me like I was crazy. She doesn’t like chickens. I was afraid to ask what went down. I didn’t want to have nightmares.
The farmers who rented the cottage to us gave the kids a tour of the barn, social distance style. The kids helped bring in the horses. It looked a lot like following the farm dog as he did the actual work, but nobody seemed to mind. Afterwards they held some baby chicks.
I have this fantasy that someday I’ll own a small-ish bit of land not that far from town. It would have to be big enough for me to have chickens and a dog, and a small vegetable garden. In my mind’s eye, there’s a small studio separate from the house, where I can write and knit in peace. My husband will have his own workshop. I don’t know if I would actually LIKE this lifestyle. All my lived experience is in and around a city. I enjoy getting lost in a crowd. Who knows? Maybe I too would grow to hate chickens.
But for four days and three nights, I lived out that fantasy. And it was fun.