Ready, Set, Rusticate

Rusticate! represents a collection of writings about modern backwoods living in maritime Canada.

‘Rustication’ is the process of going from an urban/suburban setting to the sticks. So it follows that a rusticator is someone who inhabits the countryside.

My own journey led me to rusticate after an upbringing spent in suburbia gave way to the illustrious trappings of nearby Toronto, where I then decided to travel Europe, Oceania, and Canada.

Canada as a land mass is mostly rural. Its forests mostly boreal. Only 2 in 10 Canadians make their homes beyond the street lights of city and town. Who are those 2 in 10? What are they like?

Who is my audience? Is it the debt-laden urbanite whose fantasies of metropolitan flight are found among my tales of shingle-making, cabin building, and neighbourhood bonfires? Is it the web savvy old timer? The retired couple from Vaughn or Halifax with thoughts of wetting their feet among brook and woodland? How about the perennial traveller in search of a tranquil place to belong among friends? What about the fugitive? The immigrant? The radical? Who among you are my audience?

Perhaps it is those who are curious to see what rustication looks like in 2021 and beyond, or those who wish to learn from the formidable challenges that come with rustication, how such challenges build character.

Be forewarned that despite my best efforts to produce content about homesteading, gardening, building, nature and so on, I’m afraid you will also find commentary that is frank. Why? Because what I am doing out in the sticks does not exist in a vacuum. At heart, I am a freethinker, a quality not easily given to exclusion. The lifestyle my family and I share with our neighbours each day contains in it the spirit and the substance of revolt and imagination. It includes dirt and sweat, tears and strain.

Rustication is simply a process of adaptation, a going from one environment to another, with the motivation that the latter environment is more fit to meet the needs of an individual than the former.

It is nothing less than a transformation. I share with you a chrysalis.