Yet another long-awaited update

Oh my goodness, where to start? So many new things to write about, although one thing remains the same: six months later and Chris is still in Vancouver, though we’re starting to see a hint of a glimmer of the light at the end of that tunnel. That “approve” we got back in January was a big step, but we didn’t really know at the time that we still had a long way to go. Now the last batch of documents has been sent in, and we’re waiting for them to be approved (by a different agency than the previous one) so that an interview date can be set…  but then the interview could be anywhere from a month to three months away, so we hear. Oh, and Chris is going to have to go back to Montreal for the interview, because apparently that’s the only place in all of Canada where they process this particular kind of immigration request. Once the interview is done, however, he should be able to cross the border! So that’s the gist of things for the moment. I’ll let Chris write more about what he’s been doing, if he feels up to it!

As for me, I suppose the biggest news is that I’ve moved to this magical fairyland that has been alluded to in previous posts. Some folks call this place a nature preserve. Some call it Shambhalla. I have yet to discover my special name for this place, but it’s starting to become home. This 270-acre paradise is, in technical terms, a land trust managed by an environmental organization. They acquired the land a few years ago, mainly because it is one of the few areas with a relatively healthy population of the Kincaid’s lupine, which is relied upon for survival by the Fender’s blue butterfly. Both lupine and butterfly are considered endangered, and both only occur in the Pacific Northwest, and at that, mostly in the Willamette Valley. There are a few patches of this symbiotic flower/pollinator pair around, and now this one, at least, is protected, with plans for habitat expansion.

Aside from this, the land is quite varied, although typical of the Willamette Valley: oak savannah, dense douglas-fir forest and younger douglas-fir plantation, broad-leaf maple, some ponderosa pine, open prairie filled with grasses whose identity I do not yet know, a creek lined with water birch and willow, and of course invasives such as Himalayan blackberry and scotch broom. Among the more mobile, the four-legged, that is, we find numerous mule deer, a herd of elk, coyote, fox and bobcat, and their lunch, rabbit, at least one each of black bear and cougar (I have not yet seen very many of these with my own eyes yet, though I see their tracks and scat often). As for the winged, some nights I hear great-horned owls calling back and forth to each other. There are the usual suspects: jays (scrub and Stellar’s), crows, ravens, robins, juncos and chickadees, sparrows and kinglets, sap-suckers, towhees, kestrels, red-tail hawks. And the occasional unusual suspect, such as the Townsend’s solitaire I saw a couple weeks ago. Beautiful little thrush, likely just passing through.

So, how did I get here? Well, on this land is a house. A house and a barn. And some surrounding gardenable land, totaling a couple of acres. This is considered the “homestead area,” and on it live people who caretake the land in exchange for a place to live, and now I am one of those people. The other folks here are A and W, and their on-the-verge-of-crawling baby, C. I met them last fall through mutual friends, and when they told me that they were looking for more people to come live on the preserve, I almost jumped for joy. It’s pretty much everything Chris and I have been looking for: a place to live close to the wild, to do the kinds of work we love, and to live in community with others. And it’s in the part of the world that I have always called home. The only thing that’s missing now is Chris!

I’ve continued to be able to go up to Vancouver once a month, for five or six days at a time. Last time I was there we spent a lot of time planning gardens (there is ample gardening space on the homestead area, and much of it A and W have already been gardening in the two years they’ve been here, but there’s more useable land, and there will be more people to feed this year, so expanding the gardens is a priority.) Those of you who read our blog during last year’s growing season may remember how we tend to plant lots of different things that we have never heard of before. Well, we’re trying to scale that back a bit this year (a tough task for Chris, who has already had me get the likes of cinnamon vine and Queen Fabiola something-or-other). What we’re getting more into now, though, is native plants, and I’ve already got quite a collection of fruit-bearing native trees and bushes, such as serviceberry and high bush cranberry, and the fruit-bearing-but-not-palatable-to-humans such as twinberry and Indian plum. I’m sure there will be a lot more to write on this topic once these wonders start going into the ground.

Another exciting project just beginning to take shape is a kids’ outdoor summer camp that I’m helping organize and at which I will be one of the facilitators; Chris will likely become a part of this once he’s down here as well. It’s still in the early planning stages, but it will be a whole mix of science, gardening, awareness and experiential exploration, art and more… We’ll have some more solid information soon, so let me know if you have (or know of) kids ages 6-13 looking for something fun and amazing to do for a couple weeks in July or August! It will be held on some amazing land right at the edge of McMinnville.

So that’s it for now. It’s been hard to keep up with the blogging thing, and I know we always say that we’ll do better next time. Who knows. We’ll be sure to tell you once things start to pick up in terms of immigration though! And, you know, once Chris is here and we’ve got the garden going, I’m sure there will be lots more posts about that!

Oh, and if you are so inclined, we would really appreciate your energy/prayers/rationally-based thought processes for a speedy approval and interview! Hope you are all doing well, and no matter how strange you may be, don’t be a stranger!