City Girl Meets Rainforest

I'm a city girl. I love the hustle and bustle of living in a large, metropolitan, city. Toronto was a great place to live, to play, to work. I spent uncountable hours wandering around the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario. One of my favorite things to do was walk down to the lake front near High Park, walk, or rollerblade, along the Martin Goodman Trail to The Beaches on the east side of the city. I did that often. Life was good and full and fun.

Now, I live in a rainforest. There are no museums, no art galleries, no coffee houses, no trail that connects a whole city. How is it I came to live here, you may be wondering?

Seven years ago, my mother and brothers were looking at islands to move to from Jamaica. I commented that if they moved to another island I would never move there. One of my mother's dreams is to have her three children and our families living close to her. My mother told my brother to start looking at mainland instead of an island. The catch though was that that mainland had to be in the Caribbean. And one last requirement for everyone involved was the country had to be English speaking.

Plans were made for the rest of the family to visit here for a week but I wasn't initially included because my mother said I was never really going to leave Canada anyway. I had no intention of ever leaving Canada, she was right, but I was itching to go on vacation and what's better than a vacation that someone else is paying for?

My first impression when I got off the plane was, "No way in hell was I moving here." We drove practically the entire country in that week and my impression remained the same, nice country, can't wait to go home. That is until we drove west. We started climbing the hills, things turned green and lush and someone using my voice and mouth piped up, "Oh. This could work." No one in the car was more shocked than I to hear those words come out of my mouth.

Anyway, the vacation ended and everyone went home. That was in May 2003. By the last week of August I was here. I absolutely hated every breath I took the first year. I promised my mother I'd stay for one year and then I'd go home. But, when the first year ended I didn't leave. During the second year we bought our land and got out of town living. Things improved drastically within days. Now my nearest neighbor is half a mile away. The only artificial lights I see at night are the sensor lights on our houses and the flame from the oil refinery about twelve miles away.

I love the nights here. There are more stars in the sky than anyone could ever count. The night music as that of crickets and frogs. When there is a full moon, I can see everything inside and out and when there is no moon, it's as black as pitch. Some nights I go outside just to stare at the heavens and wonder at the hugeness of the universe.

There is a peace here that I can't explain. My life has changed. I have changed. Maybe I'm no longer the "city girl" I proclaim myself to be. Now my days are filled with a laughing, bouncing, little boy. Lots of dogs. Every kind of animal. Painting, networking and marketing online. Planting and waiting for rain.

Life is good and full and fun.

Cheers :-)
- Rainforest Mommy