Nesting time — or maybe an installation performance?
Spotted this creature — and its mate — this week renovating their home. Nest tucked onto a broad windowsill at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario, where I work. Stood and watched them duck in and out with material to refurbish their place, as if watching an installation performance.
It was a warm, humid day — everything still late summer-green, as you can see — but nature has flipped a switch. Early September has brought aerial displays: flocks of geese busy with plans, flocks of smaller avian acrobats mimicking funnel clouds and bee swarms, as if trying out their wings for what’s to come in a few weeks.
Things are on the move. Leaves not yet fallin’ all around, but you can hear echoes of Led Zeppelin’s Ramblin’ On. Here in Guelph, Labour Day weekend brought thousands of students back to U of G campus. It also sent two of our kids to respective quarters at Western and Brock universities. And it brought me to Guelph, nearly full circle.
In 1981 I began my second year of studies at Guelph. Wildlife biology. Completed my degree a few years later but never worked in the field. (Does photographing squirrels through a window count as fieldwork?)
That year I rented an upstairs room in a house downtown. Scroll forward more than 30 years, and I am now living a block down from that second-year rental. Circles. This time, I have the full upper floor of a century home, up with the air and light and trees (and squirrels). Took a week to sort through my jumbled belongings and impose some order in my new nest. Have managed to make something of a home out of the place.
Have also begun exploring my neighbourhood. Last weekend, took a long bike ride around the perimeter of the municipal ward I now call home. Some 20k. Route ranged from established downtown neighbourhoods to new subdivisions to wild bits on the edge, even a former dump site now converted into parkland and a pollinator park.
St. George’s Church, Guelph, Ontario
Within walking distance is downtown itself, of course, including the iconic St. George’s Church just down a block from central St. George’s Square.
Goldie Mill: Up from the ruins?
Closer to home, just down the hill from the Second Storey, is Goldie Mill Park. History snapshot: first mill established on the Speed River in 1827. Bought by James Goldie in 1866. Saw use as wheat mill, flour mill, tannery, distillery and warehouse.
Ruins still stand in a city park. Trans Canada Trail runs through the property.
You reach the park from my place by crossing a footbridge. A heritage plaque says the bridge was built by the Hamilton Bridge Company. That company began operations in Hamilton just three years before Goldie bought the mill here in Guelph.
Labour Day is still a biggish deal in Hamilton. Until that weekend I had lived for my entire life in Hamilton, apart from those four years spent as an undergrad in several rented places, including that single room just a block up from here.
Circles.
And bridges — to new things.
Having beaten the bounds of the neighbourhood, I plan to investigate my new environs more closely. Will report back here and elsewhere from time to time about people and places that make this place what it is. Maybe it will all serve as a bit of a mirror, giving me a glimpse of what I am, too.
What do your own surroundings say about you? Do you see yourself reflected in your place and vice versa? Do you choose where to live, or does the place choose you?
From the Second Storey 