by Robin Kers
(This story was first “published” on the Our Kemptville and What’s Up Winchester Facebook pages.)
At the ripe young age of 54, with a full-time job that drained most of my energy—and occasionally my will to live—I decided to take on a project that would make a sane person think twice: buying a 2.25-acre plot of densely wooded, second-growth land in South Mountain.
The plot was so overgrown that it was like buying a slice of the Amazon with a side of Canadian wilderness. It was surrounded by woods on three sides, and the only thing breaking the monotony was a cornfield across the road, as if the land itself was giving me a stern reminder of what I should have been farming instead of this wild dream.
The idea was simple: clear the land, have our house built, put in a garden, buy some chickens, maybe excavate a pond and live happily ever after. The reality was a little less straightforward.
My toolkit for this endeavor? A chainsaw, some safety equipment, a wheelbarrow, some loggers’ tools, and the kind of enthusiasm that only comes from not knowing what you’re getting yourself into.
Now, I’d like to say that I came into this with some kind of Paul Bunyan-level experience, but the truth is, I trained myself to fell trees by watching a few of those ubiquitous YouTube videos. The kind where everything looks so easy, and the narrators are annoyingly confident. But standing there, chainsaw in hand, facing down a majestic silver birch wider around than a large metal garbage can or a towering maple taller than a church steeple, I almost choked with fear. The thought of being maimed—or worse—by a badly cut or snagged tree or branch haunted me with every pull of the saw’s cord.
Step one: carve a path from the road onto the property. Sounds easy enough, right? Just picture me, standing at the edge of this wall of trees, revving up my chainsaw like a modern-day Paul Bunyan, only with fewer blue oxen and more second thoughts.
Clearing that path was like trying to tunnel through a forest made of granite. It was my first time using a chainsaw and felling a tree, and every tree felt like it was laughing at me as it stubbornly refused to fall.
I hacked, I sawed, and I cursed until finally, there it was—a narrow, somewhat respectable path leading onto what would one day be our dream property. And with each step of the clearing I had to move the bits aside, again and again.
But not without a few regrets. It pained me to cut down the majestic silver birch and maples that had probably stood there for decades, maybe even a half century. Every swing of the chainsaw felt like a personal affront to nature. However, I did manage to stack pieces for future splitting into firewood and salvage all of the cedar, carefully cutting them into 8, 10, and 12-foot lengths. Those would be repurposed into something meaningful later—future shed and fence plans, perhaps a small pen, anything to make sure those cedars lived on in some form.
Next up: the driveway. Because who doesn’t love the idea of backing up a concrete mixer on a road barely wide enough for a bicycle?
As I battled the trees, the brush, and the occasional suicidal squirrel, a new kind of challenge emerged—a neighbor who owned the neighbouring 60 acres and was convinced that our land was, in fact, her land. She was the kind of woman who could give a pit bull lessons on territorial behavior. She was also the previous owner’s worst nightmare and now, apparently, mine too.
She would show up at the edge of our property, waving her arms like she was conducting an invisible orchestra. “This land ain’t yours!” she’d shout, her voice carrying through the trees like an air raid siren. “Don’t be surprised if my hunter friends accidentally fire in your direction” and more comments of that ilk.
Her harassment became a daily ritual, as regular as my morning coffee, but far less enjoyable. The authorities advised us to take photos of her antics for possible use in a prosecution, so we did—turning her outbursts into an impromptu photo shoot.
One day, fed up with our camera-clicking while she clipped away at a bush with tiny garden clippers at the corner of our respective properties, she decided to give my wife a real show.
With a flourish, and her face clearly visible, she hiked up the back of her ratty gray dress, bent over, and presented her abundant pink posterior with a challenge: “Take a photo of that!” she crowed, as if daring us to submit it to the local newspaper.
Unfazed, the next time we saw her, we presented her with a hard copy, and I told her that this photo might just end up plastered on every hydro and telephone pole in South Mountain if her harassment didn’t stop. And just like that, she vanished into the woods, never to be seen—or at least mooned—again.
But while I was wrestling with trees and territorial disputes, another issue was brewing. The local farmers, who passed by my little corner of chaos, had a habit of waving as they went by.
At first, I thought it was just them fanning away the mosquitoes, but no—this was the rural equivalent of saying hello. Unfortunately, I was usually too busy wrestling with the chainsaw, or just too exhausted to raise a hand in return. I later heard that the locals had begun to speculate about me, the strange, unresponsive man in the woods who never waved back. Rumors started to fly. Was I unfriendly? Was I too busy fending off yet another squirrel invasion? Or was I just plain nuts?
We finally met some of our future neighbors when, whilst sitting on the unfinished deck of our new but unoccupied house at dusk, my wife and I noticed dark shadows moving towards us from the road.
It turned out that several of our neighbour’s cows had escaped their enclosure. Not knowing whose cows these belonged to and after racing down the road to the nearest farm house, I joined several neighbors in stumbling around and chasing down and herding the cows out of the dark cornfield and back to their paddock.
(Although 21 years later we are still considered newbies, that was the beginning of a neighborly give-and-take that persists to this day.)
As the house slowly rose from the cleared land, and the sawdust settled, I made a new commitment: to wave at every car that passed, even if it meant propping up my arm with a stick. After all, I was now a part of South Mountain, and if waving was what it took to fit in, I’d wave like my life depended on it.
The house now stands proudly on that plot of land, a monument to stubbornness, determination, and a fair amount of comedic mishaps. Although the 60 acres next door now belongs to someone else, and is in the process of being clear cut for use growing crops, the woods still surround us on two sides.
Now, when I walk down that driveway, I wave at every car, every squirrel, and even the occasional mosquito, just in case. After all, it’s the little things that make a house a home—or at least keep the neighbors from thinking you’re a lunatic recluse.
