Family
Perspectives on Parenting©
by Nancy Lambert Davenport
Nancy Davenport's Column:
For Richardson News 09-12-99
Copyright Nancy Lambert Davenport 1999
"Loose moose would have made my day"
I am writing this with my hands coming out through the folds of the, blanket which is wound snugly around me. I am bundled up because I am sitting on the porch of a hotel in Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba, Canada, and it is 40 degrees.
The pine trees I see across the valley are marching up the Mountainside as if to the call of the elk that is trumpeting nearby. It is 7 a.m., and the
sun is beginning to pour a stream of light across the valley below.
As if called to a breakfast bell rung by the rising sun, a herd of horses is ambling out of the forest. A cowboy, so tiny in the distance, looks as if he is a toy on an embroidered quilt. He slaps his jeans with his hat, but the horses pick up their pace only a bit. I can faintly hear his - shrill whistle all the way up to where I sit wrapped up, looking like a cocoon.
The whistle gets the horses trotting. There must be a hundred of them, all different shapes and sizes. They push through a couple of gates, seem
to pay their respects to four huge Clydesdales in a corral who are watching as I am, and are swallowed into the forest on the other side of the valley behind the ranch house.
I am not here to look for a parade of horses. I am waiting for a moose. The Mountie yesterday said they are everywhere. In fact, he warned us to be careful on the road because a moose will walk right in front of moving car.
I should have had that in mind before I got my speeding ticket from another Mountie.
Seeing a moose was my secret mission on this trip. When I was in this same park a million years ago as a very little girl, I never got to see a moose. When someone in the family would call out, "There's a moose!," by the time I got to my knees to see out the window, we would be well
past it.
I remember our huge gray Buick. There were no seatbelts in those days, but my father's arm automatically went out across in front of me like a
railroad guard arm when he had sudden stops. The windows were barely below my chin level when I kneeled. That did me no good because I was required to sit. There was no hope of a moose for me.
My not-so-secret mission of this trip was for my son, Richard to find our distant relatives who live in the area.
Richard has been working diligently for years on our genealogy, and through a relative in France, traced a branch of our family to this area.
Our family apparently came across the United States, and as they traveled some 150 years ago, one part of the family stayed in the United
States, and one part went north to Canada.
We have already met the remnant of the family that stayed in France. They were farmers and continued that profession in Canada until this
present generation. We visited one of the farms in Saskatchewan where this branch of our family has lived and worked for generations.
The house sits on a rise in the land, is framed by a stand of towering maples, and looks out over a small lake.
They struggle there as our farmers do here, never quite finding the perfect combination of weather and supply and demand.
We wandered the cemetery in the nearby town of Rosthern and found our relatives Nicholas and Rose Thille, the parents, grandparents and.
great-grandparents of many of the interesting people we met on this trip.
I have a feeling they had a good life here, surrounded by other people whose grandparents had also taken the challenge to come from France.
I wondered though, as I looked out on that land, how life might have been different for me if my ancestor had taken a right turn instead of
going straight ahead across the United States.
Among other things, I'll bet I would have been better about cold weather, I'll bet I would have been a better cook, and I'll bet I would have
seen a moose.
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Nancy Lambert Davenport
EMAIL: nancdave@swbell.net
URL: http://www.nancyldavenport.com