"A teenage symphony to God."

The enigmatic words mumble down from his perch atop a rattan barstool and crash land below. He's at his regular place, in his regular pose. Slouched over a half-empty glass at the bar in the beach-front Sunset Grill, situated beside the Paradise Hotel just outside of Long Beach, California. In daylight hours, the bar overlooks a magnificent stretch of the Pacific Ocean; at night, the view is lost in an infinite sea of India ink. 

For our first fifteen-plus years living in the country we were burdened with and hampered by what was arguably the worst Internet in the country, if not the entire planet. Consider: Matt and Ashley, our eldest and his wife, returned from a 2007 Tanzanian adventure during which they spent a few nights as guests of the Maasai tribe, pastoralist herders, who – they swear – had a better internet connection in their compound in the East African desert than we had in Moffat.

Noise happens. Beautiful, ugly. In uplifting splendor, or dispiriting splatter. It happens. And like Forrest Gump’s proverbial box of chocolates, you never really know what you’re going to get. September 10, 2007. We were in Toronto, front row at a Damien Rice concert at what was then known as the Sony Centre, ‘Canada’s largest soft-seat venue.’ We knew little about Damien beyond the earworm that was The Blower’s Daughter, the first single off O, his debut solo album.

Kel had a dream. To quit city life. To buy a country home, avec acreage. To raise our city kids as country kids. To have a hound or two and a horse or two -- maybe even some chickens -- right on the property... To kick-start the search for a country home, we investigated a handful of Old Farmhouses.

Andy Juniper was born and raised in Woodstock, Ontario, third child of Dennis and Doreen Juniper, brother to Denny and Guy. He attended Huron Park Secondary School where he met Maureen Kelly, his future wife: tender teens locking eyes across a crowded Grade 10 science class. You could say, and you wouldn’t be wrong: they had chemistry together.

I was introduced to yoga at a young age. My mother wavered between being a passionate practitioner and a happy hobbyist. She yoga-d in fits and starts as interest, time, and mood dictated. I remember coming home from high school one fateful day to find her on the kitchen floor, madly twisted on her mat like the plot of a Dickens’ novel. Not to make this all about me, but… what I really remember is having to awkwardly step over her to reach the cookies. 

Late afternoon, mid-week, in the period our progeny has taken to calling The Pandemic Times. Kel and I are at home, perched on stools at the island in the kitchen on a video call with a Trust and Estate lawyer.