It is not property with a picket fence and a guard dog. It is a space created by relationality, constantly visited by insects, mice, squirrels, bears, spirits, winds and rain, plants and medicines, and this visiting forms the network that is the container of the home.      
– Rehearsals for Living, Leanne Betamosake Simpson and Robyn Maynard

^{The walls and windows in the place I loved were important and intentional and meant a lot to me, but the home itself extended well-beyond them. In winter I loved the walls because they kept the heat in, in summer I loved then doors and windows wide open to allow for cool breezes to blow through and easy access to all the creatures I loved.  Kids walked in randomly alongside other people’s pets, insects and sometimes even birds.} 

^{Before the foundation and walls were built the land was covered in thick muck that I tried to dig into by hand to create ponds, but I didn’t have the muscle. The skunk cabbages thrived there, and frogs croaked with pleasure between March and June.}

^{The fence we eventually put around the property was made of reclaimed cedar sticks strung together with wire, solid enough to keep out deer and dogs, but wispy enough to offer a clear view of the street. Some might have said it left our home, with its giant windows, a fishbowl, but I liked the gaps in the fence. I liked talking through them. Sometimes I yelled through them if I saw a kid do something dangerous or if I needed one to come home but couldn’t be bothered to actually go looking for them.}

^{I liked walking through the backyard to gather balls so I could throw them over the north side of the fence to the neighbour who liked to burn off steam by practicing his slap shot. I liked pulling blackberries on the east side so that I could catch up with the neighbour on the other side of that fence while she worked on her garden. I especially liked the gap in the north-west corner. It required adept puddle jumping to access, and provided a perfect gap for small children to sneak through.}

^{I loved the place beyond the four walls and four fences.}

^{I loved the street that was unpaved for many years, and the magical little forest on the other side of it. I loved walking through the largely uninhabited properties to the street with an actual ocean view, to a sun dappled little spot that attracted cats and neighbours of all ages. I loved trekking down the two-hundred and fifty-odd stairs to the shoreline and the beach made of fist-sized pebbles, perfect for crab hunting. It’s best for swimming before noon in summer (that’s when the sun hits it), but only if the tide’s not too low, because that’s when stones come alive with semi-aquatic insects.}

^{Every July, one of the waterfront property owners puts out a floating dock. I’m not sure that they like other people using it but, without consistent human visitation the dock turns into a sunbathing spot for otters. It doesn’t take the otters long to make the dock stink so bad no human would want to go there.}  

^{One sunny summer afternoon, a group of neighbours picnicked on the beach together. The kids were sitting on the dock when a seal came rushing towards them. The kids jumped off before the seal jumped on. They started swimming towards the shore but didn’t get very far before a whale came by and breached, knocking the seal off the dock. As the seal swam for its life, so did the kids. Their parents screamed from the shoreline.} 

^{This was one of those moments when the creatures we lived among reminded us that they were in fact, wild.} 

^{“There are no predators here,” was a common refrain.}

^{What we should have said was, “there are no predators here right now.”}

^{According to a local historian, years ago, there were wolves on the Island. But they hunted and killed the dogs, so the first settlers set out deer meat with strychnine and poisoned all the wolves.}

^{The strychnine-laced meat was clearly effective because that’s the only mention I ever heard about wolves on the island aside from the infamous wolf-dog that made headlines throughout the winter of 2011. For months, people made reports about pets disappearing, then a man discovered his dog’s carcass in the woods being eaten by what he described as a wolf-like creature. After that, local pet owners lived in an apparent state of terror. Reports from that time claim that locals were so nervous for their  dogs that they kept them on-leash while walking. Grainy photos showed the creature’s resemblance to a German Shepherd, and as a hybrid, conservation officers declared that the animal was not their problem to deal with. The local vet failed in his months-long mission to tranquilize it. By April, two dozen cats were listed as missing on the local animal welfare organization’s website. Local officials procured a permit allowing for a contractor to shoot the animal despite wildlife regulations that would normally prohibit gun-use. Then in May, a trapper from the mainland lured the beast out of the woods with coyote bait and killed it in one clean shot. The settlers won, yet again.}

^{More recently, a cougar has made itself comfortable on the island. It’s gotten bold, and locals have posted footage of it strolling calmly and gracefully across their decks in broad daylight. There’s no mistaking this animal with anyone’s pet. It’s wild, confident, and seems to be thriving in this exurban paradise. Pets don’t seem to be falling victim to it, but the local deer population is taking a hit. A few people have voiced their concern about potentially dangerous encounters with human beings, especially small children, there are plenty of people urging calm and pushing statistics that show how unlikely this kind of incident is. Reactions to this creature seem more measured, and tinged with awe, than reactions to the wolf-dog. Still, I’ve heard that some people no longer feel safe letting their kids stand at the roadside to wait for the school bus. Peace and safety are deeply valued here.}

^{You move here because you want to raise free-range, nature-loving kids. You want less fear in your life, less noise, fewer streetlights and more neighbourly goodwill. You’ll find bucketloads of all that but also, sharp edges. Not only do collective passions and tempers run hot, but predatory behaviours lurk below the surface. Somewhere on the island, maybe deep in the woods, maybe in a concrete foundation there’s evidence of a young woman named Jodi who was last seen walking out of a party with her ex-boyfriend back in the summer of 2009. Someone knows where she is, and someone knows what happened to her, but even all these years later, no one is talking.}

^{No doubt some social scientist has done a formal study on small, tight-knit communities demonstrating this dynamic -where people protect one another, even when they shouldn’t. They know that what they say will reverberate through their network and the ripple effect of pain could very well tear the whole thing apart. When you love something so much, it’s hard to remember that your job is actually to let go, to let things break if they must, to evolve and grow into a whole other beautiful thing. No matter how tight you hold on, the strands of your web are going to shift anyway.}

^{If I’m not blaming the ferry, I’ll stand back and tell you my connection to home is a casualty of that constant and necessary shifting delicate yet super-strong threads connecting people to each other, to animals and trees and all the rest of it.} 

^{While my feelings about the place ebbed and flowed throughout my time there, I held onto the connecting threads like a life line. I kept planting seeds and watering them.  The memory of it all is vivid and real, and so is the ache of its absence. Most of what held me in place and that I held in return feels out of reach now. I can’t water the garden or engage in the gratifying torture of  hacking away at inch-thick back blackberry vines. It’s an imagined past now, one I can’t go back to.}

^{Home looks different now. It’s a roof over my head and a world of untapped possibilities.}