Tranquil pleasures of country living

David Sherman

More than a decade ago, I abandoned the city and ran for the hills. Noise, traffic, parking, pollution and prices in Montreal finally got to me. I needed, ya know, green spaces, tranquility, clean air, quiet. … That? That’s our neighbour and his chain saw. He spends summer cutting firewood for winter. He takes Sundays off to clean up the wood chips and dust. Uses a leaf blower. About as pleasant as neighbour’s lawn mower used weekly so his house is collared by a lawn resembling the 18th hole at Augusta.

But, outside and across the valley is nothing but green, tall coniferous and maples and birch. … That? Oh, that’s just me coughing, sneezing and wheezing. Turns out I’m allergic to pollen and tree allergies, especially birch. Causes my eyes to water and I … ZZZZZZZZZZZ. … Oh, and fall asleep a lot. I take four antihistamines a day, as allergist prescribed, so I’d probably be unconscious without them. But the sight of white birch is … ZZZZZ.

Sorry. … Still, can’t beat the beauty of the greenscape, the endless mountains of fresh, new-born leaves. When you can see them. Wildfire smoke from the Prairies turned the hills brown, as well as the sky but it’s not so bad because … Oh, that racket? … That’s the air purifier and air exchanger. Both run 24/7. One cleans the air in the house, the other filters air as it comes into the house. Frontline against allergies, like everything else, worsened by global warming. Helpful in winter when everyone is cozy around their fireplaces and pumping out carbon monoxide, turning the air into a toxic stew of wood smoke, much like it is now, except it’s local smoke and local trees. I celebrate every birch tree they burn. Burn birch burn.

Birch brings out the sadist in me.

We live in a quiet little street with mostly quiet neighbours. Unless there’s a power failure and several people’s generators power on automatically. They run on propane fed from tanks the size of my first Volkswagen standing like sentries against their house. Not exactly splendour in the grass. They can and do run all day and all night until the power is restored. Can take one or two days. Can take six. Either way, those generators keep rumbling. The sound of nature. While our house is deadly silent, no fridge, no music, no TV, we’re serenaded by generators. Some are your basic internal combustion engines, powered by gasoline and sound like my first Volkswagen. Day and night. The VW smelled sweeter.

But, Hydro Québec is on the job. To reduce the chances of snow and ice and wind toppling trees into power lines and cutting the flow of electricity, they cut down miles of trees running along the highway. Thoughtful. Except for the people who used to live behind a wall of evergreens now find they’re living next to a highway, a main route between us and Mont Tremblant and Lachute, the former a major ski centre and tourist hotspot, the latter the end of a … that noise? That’s one of the motorcycle clubs that love that road to Lachute, a beautiful curving highway cut through the mountains that runs up and down, right and left for about 30 kms, great ride for a Harley or a Triumph. They ride in packs, their sound rattling the fillings in your teeth.

Not a problem because they only run in warm weather, about five months a year. All weekend, every weekend, the blast of their baffles or lack of same, echoing off the mountains for several minutes. Why listen to the squawk of crows at odds with the squirrels who are poaching seeds when you can be serenaded by packs of wild ones?

When the winter comes the birds have left for warmer climes but we are enveloped in an inspiring world of white. There are no snowblowers that scoop up snow, tying up traffic and sucking up parking spots like in the big city. They just plow it aside. Civilized. And they don’t use salt to melt snow and ice like the big city. That would damage fauna and turn the roads to soup. Instead, we go through the climate-change cycle of freeze and thaw, often every 24 hours. Snow melts during the day and freezes at night. Sidewalks and roads are slush during daylight hours, then are transformed into corrugated skating rinks at night and early morning.

Parking is not a problem though getting up the ice coated driveway might be. Getting from the car to the stairs requires skates or cleats. Put in a net, and you’re ready for shinny.

It’s not excessively onerous. You just exit the car, take a 20 to 30-kilo bag of crushed stone from the trunk and spread it before you like rose petals in front of a virgin bride.

This is an effective way of avoiding falling on the ice and breaking hip or head and wrenching back and straining shoulders. The ice will thaw the next day and freeze the next evening and you get to do it all over again, if you can make it down the stairs. They also freeze overnight so a stock of crushed stone is needed by the front door.

Lugging a few hundred kilos of stone up and down stairs is another pleasure the city deprives one of. And it mitigates the need for a gym to lift weights as it enriches a burgeoning population of physiotherapists, osteopaths, chiropractors and acupuncturists. Almost any torture will do. And you can’t find a kid to shovel or throw sand or stone because they go from school to screen.

As for traffic, we have none. Except on Friday nights, Saturday mornings, Sunday evenings and holidays and summer when weekenders and summer rental people stream into town at 140 kms/hr. A stroll down the road is often interrupted by having to dive into a ditch as our new neighbour rips by in his Porsche. Thanks to the pandemic and higher housing city prices, higher taxes and Airbnb, people have flocked here to escape cities permanently, driving up housing prices, traffic, taxes and prices for everything else.

So … Oh, that? … That’s the sound of the excavator behind the house digging down to the bedrock. The whistle and boom you’ll hear shortly is the sound of dynamite to clear that obstructive rock for basements for the homes built behind us in what used to be a forest. Yes, the roar and clatter of dynamite, dump trucks and earth movers might be considered a nuisance for the small-minded but it’s scared the shit out of the deer that used to climb by our place on their way to the woods that have been clear cut for new homes. So, our flower patch is unscathed.

Most of the birds have fled, along with the deer, but the badgers and occasional fox remain, as well as the migrating hummingbirds. Reisa boils sap and fills feeders so they can refuel after their 5,000 km flight from Mexico or Central America – they’re smart enough to avoid the U.S. and Air Canada -- looking better than we do after a five or six-hour flight, the two-mile walk to customs and the hour wait for baggage. And they seem to enjoy their chow. More than we can say for the steamed chicken or pasta served on the plane.

In fact, nothing seems to bother a ruby-throated hummingbird. They just want a little sugar water and to be left alone.