First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Illustration by Kumé Pather
As I cracked open the stubborn door to the doublewide, I couldn’t help but see the humour in the moment. It was comical, how idealistic I’d been. Not too long ago, when I married my grinning, ambitious pilot, I imagined a future of last-minute flights to cities with cobblestone streets. I’d sip espresso and scribble prose in my Moleskine notebook.
And here I was, moving into a green-carpeted trailer in the rural, northern hamlet of Fort Vermilion, Alta., population 639. Make that 641, since we just parked the U-Haul. Of course, I knew when I met my pilot that it would take a few tough jobs before he landed a coveted airline position. What I didn’t anticipate, was that the next rung on the aviation ladder would transplant us from our comfortable condo in Edmonton to a trailer dropped on a patch of snow.
Fort Vermilion sits above the 58th parallel, perched on the edge of the Peace River in Treaty 8 territory. Europeans built a trading post in the area in 1788 on the lands of the Dane-zaa (Beaver) Peoples, making Fort Vermilion one of the oldest colonial settlements in the province. Alexander Mackenzie passed through in 1792 in his quest for the Pacific. To this city-dweller, it was entirely unknown territory.
We moved in early December, with a long winter of short days ahead. My husband was about to start his new position flying rural residents to larger centres for urgent medical care. I planned to continue my government communications job from a laptop, yearning for daylight alongside my fiddle leaf fig (and 11 other droopy houseplants). I was scared.
Even before the move, I was struggling. I’d been working from home since the start of the pandemic. My lifelong struggle with generalized anxiety disorder reached a peak. Loud, intrusive thoughts marked my lonely days. I was newly married, with my husband working long, dangerous hours flying a small plane. I felt isolated and unsure – and that was when I lived close to family, friends and could spend time on the bike paths along the North Saskatchewan River. Here in Fort Vermilion, it was hard to imagine how I’d cope.
Tapping into some inner reserve and an unhealthy dose of romanticism developed by reading too much historical fiction as a child, I resolved to see the move north as an adventure. I’d be the “main character” (to quote the Instagram influencers I followed). So I hung my paintings next to the iron plane propeller that came mounted to the kitchen wall, donned my balaclava and walked daily to the edge of the frozen Peace River.
There, on those walks along its silent banks, I thought about how many kilometres this river traced; how long it had been here; how much history it held. It comforted me, to know that the river was here, but going somewhere else, too. It reminded me of the possibility of change. Next to the Peace River, I felt small and so did my fears.
When the river broke in late April, an expanse of ice melting into a glimmering grey-blue, I’d transformed too. My fears were not only smaller but there were significantly less of them to wish downriver. By now, I’d fallen wholeheartedly for Fort Vermilion and it loved me back. With its river, sunsets and acres of open fields, the hamlet wooed me with its unpretentious beauty.
The people embraced me, too. One day, my SUV caught the unplowed edge of the snowy highway and sent me careening into deep snow at 100 kilometres per hour. Before I could call for help, a man pulled over and sent his teenage son under the SUV to strap the vehicle to his truck to pull me out. One Sunday, my husband and I walked tentatively into the church around the corner. Two hours later, we found ourselves slurping homemade chicken noodle soup as our host regaled us with local history. I also met other pilot wives, played cribbage beside their woodstoves and soaked up their gardening knowledge, accepting the seeds and help they generously offered. I was added to the “matrons of Fort Vermilion” group chat.
In the spring, one of my fellow matrons lent me the novel Emily of New Moon by Lucy Maud Montgomery. A big Anne fan, I’d never read this lesser-known series. I gleefully dove into the novel. Eighteen pages in, I read, “Everything we had was small except our love and our happiness.” I scribbled it on a Post-it note and stuck it to my husband’s laptop.
At risk of sounding like the protagonist of a Hallmark movie, it is undeniably true – the simplicity of small-town life suits me. Fort Vermilion doesn’t have a single fast food chain restaurant, much less a coffee shop on a cobblestone street. But it doesn’t matter, because my anxiety is quieter, too. There is less “to do” here, but there are also less decisions, less to compare myself to, less social decorum, less loud messages telling me what life should look like – and no malls, restaurants or other resources to meet those expectations I once held. It’s easier to close Instagram. It’s hard to be “influenced” when I have nowhere to buy the trendy clothes, and nowhere to wear them. I walk to the local thrift store instead.
I’ve found unexpected contentment in the slow days and simple decisions – in planting my first garden, washing dishes by hand and becoming (by necessity) a better cook. I am spending the twilight of my 20s hardly stepping foot outside a square kilometre from my mobile home, and I am undeniably happy. I’ve learned I can be surprised – and surprise myself. I’ve learned I am resilient. I’ve learned how well people will love me and how capable I am of loving myself.
This summer, I felt the Peace River rush over my head for the first time when I jumped in. I came up gasping from the cold and delight. I thought, not for the first time, how aptly the river was named – Peace. I learned the Dane-zaa word for the river is wo chiigii, meaning “big river.” That’s fitting, too. Here, in the hamlet on the big river, my life is small and my joy is big.
Anna Schmidt lives in Fort Vermilion.