I hear the rumbling sound of the truck engine and the road under it. Rocks crackles and snaps. I am half asleep. It's a rocky road. Through the windows passes the green shapes. The green shapes and pattern, of the land. Mesmerizing, There's a shade of green, greener than the city grass, or all the other places I've been. A greater green shines the forest almost untouched. I've brought it to New York once, I've used it in Montreal, and in the suburbs, but now I've brought it here. In this very land. I'm seeing through it the story of my family. I'm seeing that now because if I haven't been here for the past 10 years I've been away with it. I've seen through another eye, and created my own story. And now before my very eye is my father and his father's.***** It's a rocky road, because the spring melts the snows and it drips through the wood the same way it always dripped through the dead leaves until the ruisseau. But now it drips and stays in the path that the 3 men built. A path through the greater green It is muddy and full of springholes, and full of small ducks sunbathing, barely looking our way. Let's take a detour, I want to show you something. Said my grandpa in his french canadian, northern quebécois way. My father took a right and drove up a hill and took us where the wood is greyish and white. It lays bare on the ground, thoughtless. ********************** I've opened my sleepy eye to the sound of the rain drops and scratchy radio. No one was talking, they were looking ahead, almost immobile but for their head and neck, absorbing the road. Were they looking at the mist or through it? * I wiped the fresh wetness from the passenger windows then my face to see a peak. A black peak emerging over the lake, over the trees, over the mist. It was there, tall, being itself, in all its grace, immobile, immutable, steady. It's one of the 2 mountains that I keep referring to. It is a fair land. Fairly sized. With a fair-but-good cabin and a well made dock. There's some log wood, and a fireplace. It is a good place. Good as in peaceful. Peaceful not as "there once was a war here" but peaceful as in "one will find his own peace somehow" kind of way. I've sat on the wooden dock and felt the way it did his thing. It came from the forest behind the hill. It came from somewhere we haven't seen. Because if someone ever had seen where it came from we would probably have crushed it already. And by gazing long enough, for my mind to get lost in the bay, it came and rub my neck gently, and placed its hand on my back, and sat with me for a bit. ********************************* We leave the city early in the morning and we drive. We drive out of my father's town to my grandfather's country house. It is a smooth ride along the farms and cows. We drive in those 7 street 3 roads, 4 shops, 20 houses, 13 kids 1 school, no bar, towns. Then more farms, and barns, and sitting cows and grass-chewing horses and frontyard-sitting couple. What are they taking about? As we beam on the road. There's a thousand of these town, and we're passing through all of them by passing in 10 of 'em. Until Huberdeau. It's my grandpa town, with 3 closed schools, and a hardware store, and a soon-to-be-closed depanneur video store. And he lives a bit outside of town on the 8th street. And if his house is exactly like the frontyard-sitting couple one, it is not. There's no front porch so no sitting. He barely sits anyway. It's 6am and he's in his boutique. his workshop-boutique. He doesn't sell anything really, it's where he works, he builds cabinet, tables, and anything made out of wood. "It's 6 am grandpa what are you doing". "I was just a bit stressed" he said. He takes his 2 bags, carefully drops them in the back of the pick-up truck and takes the passenger seat as my brother and I squeeze ourself in the backseats. "Comment ca va les gars?" Grandpa likes to speak about things he hear on the radio. It's fun for a while but I'd rather be looking at the road. 15 year ago, we took this same road in november. and this place is north enough for the snow to come that early. it's a while ago, but I remember fixing the orange-red light of my grandfather truck ahead, leading the 3 truck caravan. the way we drove out of forest seemed more like an escape through the storm. snow was blowing sideway as we dashed through it. fix the red truck lights and hope for them to not fall, fix the red truck lights as they slip and slide and dives in the hill fix the red truck lights "Y'a 15 ans, on est passé par le même chemin, en novembre. C'est assez haut qu'en novembre, y commence parfois à neiger, parfois. Ça fait longtemps, mais j'me rapelle fixer les phares rouges du truck de mon grand père pendant qu'on dévalait et derapait sur les pentes mi-blanche mi-roches de la route en espérant fuir la tempête. fixer les phares rouges au travers la neiges, fixer les phares rouges et espèrer ne jamais les perdre." you see this big rock there? we took that out with the old man grader. and see that path? we made it so the sun could pass through the branches and dry out the spring mess. oh, it's their road. my family made it, the same way family made their roads, 400 years ago. 400 years ago, they used to make roads through the greater green forest, because there was no roads at all, and to call them roads feels fancy now, they were barely anything at all, just a place without trees. what was the look on their faces and the sweat on their faces as they pulled out the roots and rocks, and their hearts to make the simple track toward their restful hall. They found the lake on a map, Lac Chateauvert, it is called. And for Lac is a Lake, Chateauvert means green castle. A family castle, a family cabin, where a somewhat broke family somehow comes together, to laugh and rest, together, and I've missed it dearly, for 10 years. I've been away, with a camera as a dream. Dreaming about things, and trying to capture them. It is fair to say that I am a fool, "the dream is here" I've heard my grandfather say, the dream is here, and I've witness it, away from the city quicks oh I know but I never remember. I brought it to with me the dream machine, and captured my family's movement and their laugh and sweats, and many boats. My brother is cooking bacon on the barbecue, on the porch. We're laughing as he's acting just a bit in front of the lens. He's a bacon flipper extraordinare, and a simple guy. Jeannot, my grandfather, is watching the graciously buttered bread turning gold on the iron fireplace. Donat, my father is calmly witnessing the scene, happy, as I'm camera-witnessing and witnessing the same thing as him. His happiness soothes me very much. Bacon-flipper brother sit at the table, sip his coffee as I close my machine, and pour myself a cup. J'ai pris mon temps, pour capturer la façon dont mon père par à la peche, et nous sur le bateau, et notre retour, à la tombée du jour. J'ai pris les images, de ma famille. //ecrire sur le feu de papi et les ride de 4 roue a mon frere //ecrire sur mon pere seul devant le quai qui regarde peu etre la meme chose qu moi zzz I have a mission today I have to walk around the land and discover it, the same way they did 25 years ago through the waist high foliage and the roots and leaves. Through the thick green and the trees. But I can't do it that way, so I walked on the thin lakeshore, climbed the rocks and trunks and slipped on the small rocks to find a large pond, or something similar. There's some frogs and ducks and barren tree on the sand, and white grey branches floating on the shore, very much looking like deer antlers. I put my hands in the cold water to pull out a red rock. The rock lift slowly as I dig my finger in the sand and I can feel that I'm moving the ground, or moving something. Transforming the land. I place the muddy thing on a bigger rock, and add another one. I take the deer antler and a branch, and place them carefully, without giving it too much though. I'm building something.