Hockley Valley

[vaneramos]

The schedule designates Fridays as my official day off writing the novel. Those afternoons will be adventure times. I intend to head out of town with my camera to explore nature and the countryside. What a blessing it is to have a car at my disposal for my own purposes again.

Last Friday I stopped at Canadian Tire to pick up an Ontario Road Atlas: not the pocket version I'd been carrying around, but one with large pages showing every sideroad. It reveals not only how to get places, but also how to get lost, dig under the grain of the land. From Guelph I headed north to Fergus, then east to Hockley Valley.

At Erin Mills, Margaret Atwood read from her essay in PEN Canada's Writing Life. She expressed mistrust of writers who talk too publicly about the craft of writing. She said they're like magicians revealing other magician's trade secrets, spoiling the fun. Timothy Findley would never talk to anyone about his novels while he was writing them. Maybe I'm being inappropriately intimate by revealing how Pilgrim's Cross takes shape in my life, but here I go anyway.

My first driving adventure was tied up with the novel after all. I need to get to know the lie of the land where the fictional university town of Dufferin will be. I want to spend time there, walking, sitting and recording my impressions, figuring out where the campus would lie, the mental hospital, downtown, the diner where Kelly works. I would commence by driving around the valley, following every sideroad up and down the escarpment.

I quickly realized a single afternoon's visit would barely start scratching the surface. I followed five of the town lines that run between Hockley Valley Road and 5 Sideroad, which more or less follows the crest of the escarpment east from Orangeville. I recorded my journey in photos, especially sites that seemed to relate to my story, or suggested new threads of narrative. I didn't even cover half the valleys roads, and never had time to sit and absorb it.

I didn't intend to hike, but the Bruce Trail winds right through the heart of the territory I was exploring. The day was so fine (warm and windy) and the land so lovely, how could I resist? I parked the car by a bend in 4th Line and followed the trail west. It passed through a field of goldenrod ringing with insect sounds, then proceeded into maple woods. As the invertebrate music fell behind, I encountered a susuration up ahead. Presently the path plunged down a steep ravine. At the bottom, a stream cascaded over blue-grey terraces of limestone. Ferns and moss-covered logs cluttered the bottom. The water was bounded by swaths of Impatiens pallida, which I had never seen in real life before. Mushrooms sprouted everywhere, and tiny frogs hopped across the path.

I hate to think of the people in my imaginary town of Dufferin turning this to an urban park, and yet it would be fantastic and lovely, a park worthy of Vancouver.

I found large, beautiful brown and black feather which I took at first to belong to a grouse. Later on another road I would chance upon a wild turkey and eight chicks (what's the proper word for a turkey chick?), and recognize the lovely brown and black tail on that splendidly ugly bird.

Eventually I had to turn and rush home. Danny would be arriving on the 8:00 bus, and I still had housework to do. Climbing Hockley Valley Road toward the heights, I stopped to photograph a sharp bend where Trent's accident could easily occur.

But I'm nowhere near finished. I expect to spend a few more autumn afternoons in Hockley Valley. I need to go there in morning, too, to see how it feels with light shining up the valley from the east. Adventure time indeed. The task starts uncoiling like an unruly mass of string, but I delight in the untangling.

The first photo overlooks Hockley Valley from 3rd Line, looking north toward Mono Cliffs where I hiked with Danny last autumn. Below is the turkey feather.

Comments

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I appreciate your argument, Bruce. I also know what she meant a little bit. I wrote the first draft of Pilgrim's Cross for National Novel Writing Month in November 2004. I posted every word in my fiction journal, and they're still there to read (friends only). I liked writing it, and enjoyed the experience of getting feedback on those chapters. Blogging is a kind of performance art.

In preparing to rewrite the novel, I knew I would have to step back from the performance aspect. I need to work in solitude this time, so ideas can gestate, so I don't have to apologize to anyone if I scrap entire paragraphs or chapters. These two hours of writing every day are like a gift to myself, a nest lined with down, a whole world to penetrate and savour alone for a while.

You're right, and I think it's basically alright for me to discuss the process in general, although it's walking a dangerous line, risking a violation of intimacy that could destroy the magic, if only for myself. But the fact is I also need to feel connected with other people, and for a period of some months I expect this work to be an important part of my life, and I want to talk about it.

[clairenolen.livejournal.com]

i love those road maps that show every single trail and every pathway....;-)
the feather is so pretty!
last night there was a white one in our yard, but i forgot to pick it up later.......

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I think you would like the place, too. It is a lot hillier than the rest of Ontario!