The road past Libau Part I

This summer, while researching details of the setting for Sing a Worried Song, my novel-still-yes-still-in-progress, I went to rural Manitoba looking for a farm where I'd spent many peaceful weekends in the 1970s. My family owned the farm, bought it for next to nothing: 80 acres, (half a quarter section) of sandy land riddled with rocks over most of it, except the part that was swamp. The thing is, over the years we'd heard that the house, barn and outbuildings had been razed. On several occasions, on the way to somewhere else, I'd looked for it, but never been able to locate it.

Us, in the early 1970s.

This year I took a few days to visit my sister Mary at her cottage, which is about an hour's drive past where the farm was located. We were determined to find the site of the old farm. She had looked for it too, now and then over the years. It's strange to lose a place, especially one you've loved.

My mother used to drive us out there and drop us off to spend the weekend, or sometimes a whole week, while she went back to the city to work (Winnipeg is about an hour away). It was the early 70s. I remember walking barefoot the five miles to town, the fine sand of the road as soft as baby powder between our toes. When we reached the highway, we had to put our runners back on so we wouldn't burn our feet on the tarmac. What did we buy at the store? Popsicles, red licorice twists, comic books. We didn't need anything; we only walked to say we'd done it, walked ten miles in a day. At night, we heard coyotes calling, and sometimes saw their eyes blinking like fireflies from the long grass around the farmyard. The depth of the darkness, the loneliness, and the riot of stars overhead on clear nights, was liberating.  I've sought that place or something like it ever since, and sometimes found it and the exhilaration that comes with being unjudged, unmeasured, and minuscule in the scheme of things.