Other People's Houses

or what The Salt Path, Orbital and Vita Sackville-West made me do

Sunday 22^nd June

I’ve already waxed lyrical about the Banff Centre, so I won’t go on about how sad I was to leave it.

Banff Centre - Kinnear Centre Building

I had planned to take the FlixBus back to Revelstoke, but at the last minute my daughter’s partner offered to pick me up in his very luxurious, very large, and very eco-friendly electric truck.

He was passing through Banff to collect my daughter’s dream sofa - found at a wonderful price in Calgary - for the Carriage House. I had been looking forward to a serious session with my computer on the bus and nervous about making conversation with him for the four long hours back to Revelstoke but I needn’t have worried. We took it in turns to talk and to listen and as we finally arrived, I realized that the journey had been a gift – how often to do we talk to our children’s partners solidly for four hours? Or anyone else for that matter?

Monday 23^rd June

Back in Revelstoke I’m disappointed that I can’t go back to stay at the Carriage House as there is some finishing off to do before the long term tenants arrive. There is a real excitement coupled to a real sadness at the thought of renters, strangers, moving in.

My daughter keeps urging me to come live in the house - six months, a year - and I keep eyeing my calendar, wondering if I could make it work. There's a romance to the idea of an alternative life, a personal sliding door. I often catch myself staring at houses, towns, villages on my travels, thinking: what would my life be like if I lived here.

Apparently there’s even a book called Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House, so I’m not alone. But it’s hard to give up one life for another. My mother used to say, “You can’t have your bottom in two places at once, Jennifer.” Maybe I’ve always had a green eye for other lives.

Tuesday 24^th July – Wednesday 25 July

We’re getting Maya, my 12-year-old granddaughter, ready for her big adventure: a five-day hiking and camping trip on Vancouver Island with two friends. We do a test-pack of her backpack - tent, food, gear - then hauled it onto her. She could barely stand.

It was like the scene at the beginning of WILD when Cheryl Strayed first puts her knapsack on and collapses like an upended turtle on the motel room floor at the beginning of her thousand mile solo hike along the Pacific Trail. Maya didn’t collapse but she could barely put one foot in front of the other.

That made me think of Michelle, one of my writing group here in Canada. She is a serious committed walker, writing her memoir about her nine-month Camino de Santiago walk...Last November she walked the West Highland Way in Scotland and the Ireland Way. She flew into London and stayed with me on her way up north, utterly laden — daypack in front, backpack on back. Her secret weapon? She balances herself with walking poles. Even on the London Underground.

Perfectly balanced Michelle setting off from St.Marylebone, London

I suggested Maya borrow mine. She rolled her eyes — old lady gear! — but we convinced her to strap them on. I have high hopes.

In some sort of synergetic coincidence I am reading David Nicholls You Are Here about a love affair that blossoms during the Coast to Coast walk of the ninety mile route from St Bees in Cumbria to Robin Hood’s Bay in Yorkshire.

These ‘walking to find yourself’ books are dangerously seductive. I need to be a bit more circumspect about reading them because whenever I finish one I start planning some mad, overly ambitious hike. After reading The Salt Path I set off to walk the Dales Way totally under prepared and after the first morning of walking in torrential rain gave up and bussed from one B&B to another. A great holiday but hardly an epic trek.

Gardening books have the same effect – I blame thousands of hours, and many pounds spent, on Vita Sackville-West’s The Creation of a Garden. Although, so far, Orbital hasn’t send me knocking on Jeff Bezos’s door.

Thursday 26th June

I go to my first IRL (I have all the jargon) writing group meeting in a year. It feels like a wonderful reunion despite the fact that we meet weekly on Zoom. We share snacks, catch up on life stuff, which hasn’t really changed much since last week of course, but it feels so different in real life....sorry – IRL.

We are a hard core group of six who have been meeting for about six years. None of us are particularly close friends outside of the group but nevertheless share an extraordinary closeness and intimacy born from being there as each of us struggles to get our stories out of our heads and onto the page.

I haven’t read anything since my query letter and synopsis for agents over six weeks ago (two rejection emails so far, albeit very nice rejections) but this week Leslie, whose book Dancing in Small Spaces (developed in our workshops) was published in 2011, has an essay she wants to publish on Substack.

Leslie has Parkinson’s and her voice is not strong. The essay is quite long – part of the reason she has brought it to the group is to find edits – and she asks me to read it out for her in the workshop. Of course I agree.

The essay is about guilt, the guilt of placing loved ones in care, of how Leslie cared for her husband at the end of his life and how it never felt like what she was doing was enough. And learning to forgive herself.

It is a difficult, emotional, draining read, almost unbearably moving but ultimately uplifting as she - at that moment ‘I’ - found forgiveness for herself and a kind of peace. There is a strange difference between reading a person’s story to oneself, to reading her story in the first person out loud. You discover what they are really like from the inside out. It’s standing in their shoes, being Boo Radley - living in someone else’s house.

Friday 27th June

Whenever I come to Revelstoke I make three appointments several months in advance. Hairdresser, doctor and dentist. I feel like these practitioners are my very own personal ‘team’ – as if I were an influencer or Hilary Clinton.

The doctor does a cortisone injection in my arthritic toe using extreme care and ultrasound and the hairdresser cuts my hair, miracle of miracles, exactly as I ask - BUT the dentist is my favourite as they have a TV projected on the ceiling - always the Home Network, shows about renovating property. I respond with glee if I need a root canal as it means I get to watch an entire series of Love it or List it.

My life might not be perfect if I lived in that house but it’s pretty damn good when I’m living in Revelstoke.