A Fresh Start on an Old Frontier
Beginning a blog feels like beginning a new life with a new relationship and a new career… where does one begin? As no place is actually any better than any other, let’s start… here.
There’s temptation to try to fill in the backstory that leaves me standing in an old barn on the South Shore of Nova Scotia in February, after unloading a 26’ Uhaul truck that I’ve just driven over a 24 hour period across an international border in one hell of a winter storm during a global pandemic… but it seems like that might be making it too easy. Clearly, all signs indicate that I’m someone with an appreciation for doing things the hard way.
This is to be my studio, my workshop, my space of creation. And it’s a damn fine one, to be honest. Okay, she looks like she could use some love but that’s coming and the space that is transforming into a furniture studio is evocative of my formative years here in Nova Scotia. The old silvered wood reminds me of feeding our goats as a child, the hay loft with it’s tiny floating dust particles reminds me of the way cigarette smoke curls through undisturbed air when you’re enjoying the thrill of the forbidden as a teenager, and the view of the North Atlantic and, at night, the blink of Ironbound’s lighthouse in the distance, 3 seconds on 3 seconds off, is the beacon that calls you home. My family is from the island of East Ironbound, named for the iron pyrite (fool’s gold) that glitters in every dark stone on the shore and reddens the water in the wells. This is a full circle moment. It’s been almost 20 years since I left Nova Scotia to pursue adventure in the form of a rather exciting life as a circus performer. I’ve lived all over the world and have loved so many places and cultures that I have had the fortune to experience but it does feel like perhaps all that iron I consumed growing up has magnetized me back to this place. I write this sitting some 7km down the road from the place of my birth, my Mom is just an hour inland, my brother just down the coast, and I’m a short drive from the stone where my father lies, along with the older generation of Ironbounders.
I have so much work to do but the foundation is already built and it’s a solid one. Stay tuned. One could grow tall with roots like this.