Anne Reid:  

Life Wow... Married 25 years May 2007. Never thought it would happen in my twenties. I was wilder then - some people at school may not have known - other than the fact that I rode a motorcycle. When I met my (now) husband in the late 70's, we built a homemade camper for the back of a rebuilt '52 GMC pick up truck, then quit our jobs and travelled west across Canada, down to central California, and back again. It was a fantastic adventure for four months. We decided to move to northwestern Ontario where we had some friends. Trying to move there was incredibly hard because we had a near fatal accident on the 401. We were hit from behind by a drunken driver. The truck rolled over and was hit again by another vehicle while we tried to escape. One person died in the other car when a transport hit them broadside. We were the lucky ones and although we lost 90% of our belongings and our lovely rebuilt truck, we eventually made the trip again at my dad's encouragement. He said, "If you don't go and things don't go well here, you will always believe that your lives might have been better - there will always be a question hanging over your heads. You can always come back if things don't work out." We went, and he was right. A 2 year experiment to live in beautiful northern Ontario turned into 19 years living in a cabin in the bush - the first 7 years without a phone. (I only required that we had hot & cold running water and electricity - and that's about what we had.) We lived on 160 acres with a river running through it - wildlife at the front and back doors and some fabulous fishing and sunsets. We homesteaded after a fashion, growing our own vegetables and raising our own chickens, ducks, and geese for a few years - and I even learned to butcher my own chickens. There's a skill I never thought in a million ye...Expand for more