The road to Ameliasburgh

The road to Ameliasburgh follows a rise of land from where, on a day like today, you can see forever. Well maybe not forever but at least as far as the highlands of Wilno, of Kaladar; as far as trees and lakes and rivers run this side of the divide that separates the Lake Ontario watershed from the slopes of the Madawaska and the Ottawa country. The horizon reaches over towns, cities and side roads to finally vanish into a hold of sky that cradles the hard granite of the Canadian Shield.

A pileated woodpecker is noisy in flight while a thread of geese drifts above the valley. A quiet breeze rides the open plains and climbs the ridge to where I sit, bringing word of the seasons; of the sweet decay of autumn and the perennial scent of the pines.

Forty storeys below from where I am, the floor of the ice age Lake Iroquois unfolds in patterns not unlike the ancient quilt that rests upon my bed. Ancient in texture and palette, the soil’s ragged surface divides into remnants and like the cloth, once whole, now worked and tempered and divided with a cross stitch of fence lines and farm lanes that hold the borders. My quilt is less precise in its making, but ordered, not by a surveyor’s rod or title deed but simply by a hand sewing fabric in the dim light of the 1930s when remnants were scarce, exchanged, re-fashioned.

The quilt came into my hands a few years back and holds its appeal for the reasons it had fallen from grace for others. It is tattered, worn and frayed in parts and while some may claim it has outlived its service, it retains the dignity of an elder who has lived life. Once fine fabric, picked from catalogues or by the bolt, delicately held for close-up inspection; fine fabric from store shelves caressed by calloused hands; textile keepsakes from ‘back home’; yardage from the weaving mills along the rivers—the Mississippi at Almonte, Ontario, the St.Croix at Milltown, New Brunswick or the Richelieu at Sherbrooke, Quebec. My quilt has heard the murmur of sleeping voices, dreamed the dreams of dreamers, comforted a baby’s cry and has basked like lovers by the light of a wood fire.

I think of the hands that once worked the cloth; that cut and stitched and fit and reasoned the possibilities of what went where. And fashioned for whom, and why? A parting gift? A ceremony? Perhaps for kinship in the lasting days of January? Were there many hands, perhaps a few, or maybe a solitary work of remembrance? One hand neatly embroidered a message for us to see, in crimson thread on a black cotton corner: ‘1939’ it says.

The quilt as collective memory has stored the moments of joy and sweat and sadness of the villages and of the land; of effort and test, of children dancing, of Saturday nights. Artifacts of shirts and dresses, of work pants and gowns; special occasion fabric and everyday cloth make up my quilt.

The hues of the calendar are all here, all faded; the umber and sienna of fresh turned soil, of May and late September. Gathered are the lavender mornings, the chicory tint of summer afternoons and the longing greys of October skies. Patches interjoin in a promenade; a shred of blue linen here while over there, red flannel. The rose of sunrise now joined with corn husks set against a sundown of cranberry, contrasting yet tied in unison with threads of turquoise streams, of mustard and of flax. Patches deep with furrows; some threadbare and pale show the wool fleece liner like fields of early snow or the gravel roads of March. Hand dyed colors telling of the land; all held together by V- shaped stitching that recalls the August doves in flight over fence lines that chapter the story of place.

Now in the distance and far below, a pickup truck straggles along the Rednersville Road, cutting a path through the sea of fall light. I think when the stars of Jupiter fill the room tonight and call the pale shadows across the landscape of my quilt, I will dream the dreams of the remnants and soar above the valley that lies below the ridge along the road to Ameliasburgh.