A Village Tale - Spring tease

The Tease

We’ve been having our regular, crazy Fraser Valley spring weather.  Mother Nature is a tease in March.  Just when we think winter must surely be over, she sends along some reminders, like hail with sunbursts and rainbows, to tell us who is really in charge.  And it isn’t us.

Yesterday, we had a day of plunging and soaring temperatures, sunshowers, gale-gusts and lashing rain.  Ms Nature messed around with some lightening until she was laughing and our power was out.  This happened to coincide with dinner prep time for our community dinner.  Luckily for us, our neighbours with a spacious living room and woodstove were chefs-du-jour, and hearty vegie bean soup was on the menu.  They banked the fires in their stove to finish off the cooking on its top and invited us all into their home, instead of sending us out into the dark corner of the barn where our communal plastic dining room* squats and we regularly eat together. 

Candles were lit and chairs gathered into clusters in cosy corners.  We're a crowd at ease now, for such occasions. About half our current village moved in last summer with the finishing of two more buildings, and the intervening six months have been sufficient for the children and adults to create little compatible gangs of the like-minded.  There are some who want to talk about chickens and how to design suitable coops and flocks.  (All one exclusive breed or several together? … Will they peck each other into an order of colour?)  There are others who want to remark on the magic of seed sprouting in greenhouses ( Is now too early, or too late for tomatoes?) ,  or about the mystery of pregnancy in humans  ( Why don’t women nearing term topple forwards from the unbalanced weight?) .  I even overheard a neighbour with ecovillage-business on her mind, asking others’ opinions of various options of membership dues (A one time only payment, for a lifetime of privileges? … Or a more immediately affordable, pay as you go? ) Topics run a gamut, and groupings of people form and re-form as the subject matter shifts.

I watch and listen.

I have only just returned from a quick weekend trip to my previous home on Salt Spring Island.  I visit family, friends and my old haunts to remind myself of all that I miss, and all that I don’t.  And with aura of Salt Spring still hovering around me, I look around the room at the engrossed faces of my neighbours lit in warm light and deep (or trivial) conversation and feel my good fortune.  I know why I’m here, and not there.

There’s a whirl, loud click and abrupt light as the power comes back on.  Our host, just as rapidly as the lights are back on, turns them off again.  And we complete our meal in our own snug glow.

(Please notice that the ‘n’ in ‘snug’ is not an ‘m’)  … :>) – the difference is gratitude)     

*Communal plastic dining room. 

For those of you who haven’t yet visited for a meal, you’ll need a further explanation of what our plastic dining room is.  Our commonhouse will be coming soon, with the construction of the next buildings, and we miss it, but in the meantime, the imperative for us to gather and break bread together is significant.  Our resourceful carpenters have made us a greenhouse-type structure – wood frame with plastic stretched over it, in one of our handy and capacious barn-buildings  - the ‘bunker silo’ that used to store hay-bales in its dairy farm history. But ‘plastic’ doesn’t describe the companionable ambiance when we’re gathered in it, with heaters blazing, fairy lights twinkling and delicious food waiting to be served out.  It’s magic plastic.   And I think we’ll have to call our commonhouse, ‘The Bunker Silo’ to commemorate its heritage.