Dispatches from the County I: Pastoral Life

In November my family moved 220 km east of Toronto to Prince Edward County, or The County, as it’s known here. We’re in a place called West Lake, minutes from Sandbanks Provincial Park, for seven months we are, or until the apocalypse. Whatever comes first.

The country roads where I go for walks now, which is to say where I live now, these glorious deserted roads, the farmer fields that stretch out on either side, often a single line of trees at a plot’s end to block the wind. It’s rare these days when the clouds give way to a sky still blue. But when they do, it is like something out of a Pissarro painting. Minus the pair of peasants hoeing the land.