The 10-kilometre stretch of Highway 34 between Hawkesbury and Vankleek Hill used to feel like a trip. A big trip. The very first time I heard about Highway 34 was when an excursion to ‘the Hill’ was discussed by my parents. It was decided that I could embark on this incredible journey to somewhere I had never heard of. I sat in the front passenger seat of our car as we headed up Highway 34. I was watching the fields and homes roll by. My father and I were headed to Vankleek Hill–to buy eggs. We arrived at the town. We continued through to a destination. My mind’s eye has a picture of a brick house, us parked in a driveway, and my father and some man headed to a rear shed or barn to get eggs.
I didn’t know that more than half a century later, I would visit that home as a realtor because the owner was preparing to sell.
I would not venture a guess as to how many times I have travelled the length of Highway 34 between Hawkesbury and Vankleek Hill. A daily school bus, much later–me driving through snowstorms, a panicky night trip down the highway to the emergency room with my little daughter and her case of whooping cough, sitting by the roadside during construction waits, heady drives back from a post high-school night out with friends . . . the list is unending.
The memories pile up.
Not a day passes that I do not look up and down my street, recalling my noon-hour escapes from high school. I walked up and down the streets of Vankleek Hill, wondering how it was that this town stood seemingly undisturbed by the modern-day 1970s. I would look at each house, at the low wrought-iron fences, at the blooming roses, curtains moving softly inside the open windows and wonder what it would be like to live here. It felt safe. Untouched. And the brick homes seemed solid, as if nothing and no one could ever change these homes and these streets.
Years passed. Other roads led me away from Vankleek Hill. But now, I live in one of these brick homes. The safety and feeling of being insulated from the world envelopes me as I pull into my driveway. I look at the original gingerbread on my verandah, the perfectly-square cut of the brick walls of my home and allow for a moment of wonder that this sanctuary is mine.
The fence around my back yard carves out the rest of my space, where sometimes friends and neighbours visit. Where birds sing, skunks intrude, squirrels fight over hiding places for their food, cats saunter through as if daring someone to make them move faster, raccoons salvage and the occasional deer bounces in and out again into the empty field behind my back yard.
We find ways to make spaces our own whether we own them or rent them. I see it time and time again. The simplest domicile is made vibrant and pretty with carefully curated belongings. The plainest building is taken under the wing of a caring tenant who plants flowers, adds welcome signs and splashes of colour to tell the story of who they are to all who pass by.
As we travel roads that seem endless, unavoidable, tantalizing, or coming to an end all too soon, I often question whether roads are placed before us or whether we map out our own journeys. Looking back, sometimes decisions seem to have been inevitable. Sometimes, we reflect with useless regret. How unfair that others could sometimes see so clearly where we were headed when we ourselves could not, until that section of the road was behind us.
We may travel with others for a short while, or a long while. We choose a place to live–for a short while or a long while. When it is long, we leave our mark. We add windows, move walls, add extensions, change verandahs or sometimes, we uncover what others have changed to discover original floors, doorways, fireplaces, brick and stone.
Maybe the road I travelled was meant to bring me here, to this small town where I feel the most at home. Where I feel the most like the person I am meant to be. Finding the place that feels the most like home is what so many people are looking for. They can sense it by driving into a town, feeling the breeze off a body of water, walking along a street, or setting foot inside a house for the first time.
A road can have twists and turns where we cannot see what lies ahead, but there is something to be said for the mystery which seems to pull us forward to a point where we want to stop, simply because it feels right to us.
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