Pastoral pleasures of dynamite, dumptrucks and a tough gherkin

David Sherman

Awhile back, I chronicled how our village in the mountains north of Montreal had been invaded by white people. Fleeing the ravages of urban parking, impossible rents, impossible home prices, bike lanes competing with car doors, sirens, traffic and bad movies at multiple multiplexes, they made their way north to destroy our way of life.

The white invaders were accompanied by phalanxes of multi-coloured dump trucks, cement mixers, and, my personal favourite, dynamite. We quickly learned to live to the serenade of whistles and kabooms. The white folk had landed.

The mountains we call home and what my friend Chris calls ski hills, are between 900 million and 1.7 billion years old. They are a monument to the Precambrian era, thought to be the oldest mountain regions on the planet. Until plots were blasted to dust for basements for ping pong and pool tables, spare bedrooms for errant adult children and their spawn and more weekend white people. Not to mention Airbnbs which are not legal but who’s looking?

Along with mountains blown to dust, elderly maples were guillotined to make room. Some cut for firewood, some left to rot, one birch log is now laid to rest a few feet from our kitchen window. It slid down the hill behind us after they blasted and bulldozed to hammer together a McMansion to look down at us.

This was only an expeditionary force. Now, a few years later, they have spawned. There are now riots of miniature white people as well as miniature canines. Both species are wheeled around in carriages or suffocated in Snugglies lest they endure the rigours of walking without inhaling carbon monoxide.

Miniature white bipeds whine and cry and scream. They wear diapers. They nurse in trendy cafés while I chew my grilled cheese. Miniature canines growl and bark and defecate and are often companions to their full-grown owners in shops and restaurants. These are dubbed “service animals” though the only service I can see them providing is spreading fur, dander and saliva onto my plate or in my nose.

The white invaders also come in medium size, some of whom are of the female persuasion who parade in minimalist attire, meaning as little clothes as are legal.

Far from all-dressed, they take to running down streets to nowhere, sometimes tethered to a canine, sometimes just for the joy of bouncing near-naked through what used to be quiet back roads, ubiquitous, utilitarian Subarus parked in near every driveway.

Modesty is not a characteristic one would attach to the invading forces. Unfortunately, for the invisible grey and bent male habituées of the village, this causes drool stains and sprained necks, nothing a few more daily Tylenol won’t rectify. At least until tomorrow. For some, neck swivelling and pill popping may be the only exercise they get

This invading battalion didn’t arrive semi-naked and jogging. They landed in low-slung Porches and Audis and Lexuses, much to the delight of mechanics tasked with reaffixing mufflers, exhaust systems and other bits and pieces winter snow rips from cars that cost twice what my first home did.

Yes, the scurrilous white invasion includes bipeds of various sizes and shapes but it all translates into city slickers cluttering roads, stores, restaurants and cafés, jacking up prices, noise, and neck pain as well as the occasional ambulance ride for the weak of heart who overdose on visions of tanned flesh.

Bouncing bipeds have been accompanied by another peculiar species, the pickle-ball player.

These invaders attack what were once tennis courts to hit a ball back and forth using a pickle. What can a kosher dill do that a well-strung racket can’t is beyond me but I fear next will be pickle-puck. If a pickle can handle a puck, perhaps I have misjudged the tensile strength of a gherkin.

Other than curious sports and blasting ancient mountains and forests to extinction, the newcomers also display a nerve-torturing love for gas-powered lawn mowers, generators and leaf blowers.

This curious candle-adverse species know not from brooms but wield leaf blowers like flame throwers to smite dust, excess gravel, a few leaves and undoubtedly a ground hog or two. Nothing like a gas-fired mower/tractor or generator to make them feel at home. The generators fire up the instant the power fails and continue 24/7. Sounds like an 18-wheeler idling all night.

Perhaps they miss the cacophony of their former urban lives and decided to share their noise addictions with us, perhaps part of the recovery process of former city dwellers when they go into withdrawal. Perhaps quiet is an acquired taste, like hitting balls with pickles.

They assault our eyes with semi-clothed joggers. Why not destroy our hearing as well. How can a chirping chickadee compare to the full-throated roar of an industrial mower?

The invasive white species that has blasted foundations, bulldozed forests, dropped a few tons of dog dung and made pedestrians dive for the culverts as they rev through the village are also voracious shoppers.

They display affection for spending, seem to relish eating gourmet delights and less delightful ersatz gourmet offerings slung at gourmet prices. Nothing better in a mountain paradise than outlet shops and high-end clothes and country stores with lots that the invaders want but nothing anyone needs.

Strolling through a gauntlet of over-priced everything, molting ice cream cone in hand, seems to pacify the invaders and their well-oiled credit cards.

The commotion the influx has wrought makes our Precambrian beauty a closer match to their memories of big-city living. If they’re lucky, they’ll plant a Walmart or Costco as we plant For Sale signs and head for less sullied hills. Until dynamite and dump trucks find us.