Sitting on my new couch, purchased to replace the three year old futon which got too stiff and slanted for my old back, I was reading Margaret Atwood’s recent memoir of this name, hard to put down because of 1) its transparent prose style 2) the out-loud laughs its humor continually elicited 3) my love for  her books as they appeared during the 1970’s when we were newcomers to Canada and 4) its references to people I had met (Bev Howard Gibbon) and places I had been or been involved with (North Bay, Camp White Pine) and later, the Northrop Frye archive at the University of Toronto.

But when I came across her mention of an obscure place not in Canada but in Provence, France, where she’d stayed in 1971, I stopped reading and started remembering:

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Love and Marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage

That’s the old song from the play*
We used to sing back in the day,

Remembering an earlier time
When little farms and towns were prime,

Where couples met at church or dance
Familiar spots to find romance.

Since then, we switched our sense of place
The global village became the space

Where modern people first entwine
In the world-wide web, on screen, online.

But some old things remain the same
For our young Candice and her Shane

A community farm, a tie to the land
Co-workers and friends joined in a band,

And in this antique barn just now
The ancient rite of speaking their vow,

The words we witnessed that bind to last
Their lives, their families, their future and past.

A timeless moment, a rock to resist
Amidst the floods of change, to persist.

So, with love in marriage for 58 years
Sustained by that vow, I say, “Cheers!”

*

Thanks Vivian and Judy for forwarding this information.  The fact that it happens to any of us at this age is to be expected, but that it took place two months ago shocked me into recognition of how close what seems far away can actually be.

I checked in with Peter after our return from Germany and his from Montreal with his granddaughter.  He reported that his several undiagnosed health conditions have him walking with a cane. He mentioned that he’s been thinking about King Lear these days. I was prompted to send him this poem by Johann von Goethe and my effort at translation

An old man is always a King Lear

Whoever embraced or grappled with you

Has long since taken off.

Whoever loved or suffered with you

Is busy elsewhere.

The young are here for themselves.

It would be stupid to protest.

Come on with me old fella.

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Louise Blight <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Jun 27, 2024 at 9:46?PM
Subject: Message for Steven Marx
To: <[email protected]>

Dear City Farm SLO,

Would you mind passing this on to Steven Marx?

Thanks very much.

Dear Steven,

I recently came across your Flickr photoset about Lund and The End of the Road, and was immediately transported back to the 1970s and the Lund Farm Day Camp. I attended for two years in a row, an experience that was – unsurprisingly – unlike anything I had done before, and a transformative time for me as a nerdy and introverted kid. It was a great thing you did there, probably for everyone who attended. So after all this time I wanted to say thanks to you and Jan for running it.

It appears that the two of you continue to do great things with your community in California, so thank you for that also.

Louise

Louise Blight, PhD

Adjunct Associate Professor,

UVic School of Environmental Studies

and Principal, Procellaria Research & Consulting

Salt Spring Island, BC

[email protected]

Dear Louise

As you can imagine, it was a great treat to receive your email with its blast from the past.  Another example of the internet’s annihilation of space and time, it came to me and Jan while on a river cruise on the Danube in Austria the week after we concluded a difficult process of selling the property we’ve owned in Lund to our ten-year tenants, Tai Uhlmann and Theo Angel, the couple who we worked with to organize the Lund Reunion memorialized in the Flickr photoset you found, which itself was the climax of the great film they made about the place: “The End of the Road.”  (available here https://www.amazon.com/End-Road-Ronnie-Uhlmann/dp/B07WP6TKY6)

Another connection your message awakened was an article written by one of your fellow campers, Anna Gustafson, published in the Lund Barnacle p.32

Your note strengthens the collective memory of that mythic place and era.  I do remember you as a quiet and serious but very curious kid, and it’s wonderful to learn that you grew up to become a professor and entrepeneurial scientist. I’d love to learn more about your activities than what I gleaned from a google search.

Jan and I returned from Lund to California in 1979, where I finally completed my abandoned PhD dissertation and she became an attorney and elected official (among other roles). In 2012 I retired from teaching English and Environmental Studies at Cal Poly University and returned to an endeavor much like Lund Farm Day Camp, CityFarmSLO.org.

We continued to spend time in Lund every year with our two kids and 4 grandkids until 2023, when we all felt the need to move on.  But your message reignites the old flame, and I feel deeply grateful for it.

Yours,

Steven

Hello Steven,

Thank you for your warm reply. The rivers of the past seem to be converging on the present. I was just in Lund last month, for the first time in about 35 years. I was there doing fieldwork with a couple of colleagues, censusing the gull and cormorant colonies of the Salish Sea: we started our field season in Desolation Sound, and launched our boat at the Lund ramp. It stirred up lots of memories for me; after I finished high school I moved to Lund (in 1981 I think) for about a year and was the baker at the restaurant for much of that time. I lived with my then-boyfriend in the first house on the boardwalk past the parking lot, long since torn down and replaced by Nancy’s Bakery. (After that I followed my dad to Victoria and started university.)

Then the other day I actually saw Gerry Kariaganis, who is married to an old friend from undergrad days that I have just reconnected with after about 20 years. I remembered him from Powell River days as my parents also knew him; this week he told me a story about going home to his cabin on your farm one day and finding the door open and a sheep in his bed.

And of course we drove past your old farm last month too. I had no idea that you two had continued to own it for so long.

You asked about my activities. I mostly study birds – mainly marine birds over the years, but various species these days – and work in conservation. One of my main roles these days is co-chairing the birds specialist group of COSEWIC, the scientific body that assesses threatened species in Canada. https://cosewic.ca/index.php/en/about-us/cosewic-members.html

One of the places I’ve worked a lot in my career is Antarctica, and I’m just finishing a book manuscript about that. A couple of years ago my partner Iain and I moved to Salt Spring Island, so we’re settling into the community and our garden here. I’m so impressed that you’ve created Lund Farm Day Camp writ large in San Luis Obispo.

Jan, good luck on your reelection. If we lived in California I’d volunteer for your campaign.

Louise

December 1942-March 2022

Dear Bob

Deborah phoned me with word of your death a couple of weeks ago.  Since then, you’ve been more present to me than even during the intense emails we’ve exchanged since the reunion I attended at your home in 1996. I regretfully declined to join any more of them because of the difficulty I’ve always experienced relating to individuals within the framework of the group. With no one was that contradiction between social and individual relationships more pronounced than with you.

Back in Netherland Park your role as the classic alpha male made you seem larger than life and me to almost disappear as the tiny omega called “mousie.” And when the girl I’d been in love with since fourth grade started going with you the annihilation felt complete. (more…)