From Stone Orchard

I'm reading this wonderful little gem of a book that I've been meaning to read for years.

It's a collection of Timothy Findley's memories from years spent on the rambling farmhouse that he owned with his life partner, William Whitehead.

From Stone Orchard beautifully captures the pastoral life the couple built for themselves after leaving the theatre to write full time, but it's also a virtual who's who of Canadian literati. You'll find mention of their neighbour Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood and Pierre Berton. Even Susannah Moodie makes an appearance, albeit posthumously.

Most interesting is how Findley weaves in how the place serves as inspiration to his work. Early on he tells of tearing down old farmhouse walls to find a carpenter's notes beneath. Anyone who has read Famous Last Words will instantly make the connection.

Findley talks about how, in the country, neighbour is a verb, and being neighbourly is prized above all else. He also cites this Robert Frost poem, which I'll share with you on this fine Tuesday morning:


MENDING WALL

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say '.Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."