Stay home, we were told. Travel was not advised. Flooding closed highways. Fires forced road closures and prevented campground use. A sinkhole shut down major transportation routes. Snow blanketed the Island.
Silence reigned.
We all felt the constraints imposed on us. That’s for sure. But movement is there, even if it appears in unexpected places, by unexpected means. In this issue of The Strathcona Collective, we celebrate motion.
A girl on North Quadra Island walks out of her tiny house, drawing book in hand, to visit her goats. Her brother paddles his tiny blue rowboat on a nearby lake. Artists in Gold River throw clay that travels the world in the possession of appreciative buyers. A quiet, protected bog welcomes birds. Grapes grow in the vineyards of SouthEnd Wines, and a family grows there too. Of course, gardens never stop growing and a movement spreads.
Creative ideas and money to support them flow across the region and beyond. Artists travel to a retreat where new visions will appear in their minds. A family kayaks off Cortes Island and celebrates their achievement by skinny dipping in an isolated lake. Tahsis invites people, and hikers, fishers, and bicyclists respond.
Industrial sewing machines whir and young people jump from the sky. A poet creates beauty, a soap maker pours her concoction under the full moon, a newcomer learns to live without traffic, honey bees buzz, horses follow the paths of the Sayward Valley, new West Coast-style houses rise up, and families travel to a beautiful house for a home away from home.
Oh, there has been motion all right, and plenty of it. We’ve captured it in these pages.
