Chatham-Kent

This place is smokestacks and sunsets.

Silhouettes and silos.

Unpaved roads and tiny little houses. Bales of hay and picturesque boardwalks and muddy little footprints at the bottom of your stairs.

This place is teaching at your neighbourhood school.

It's rushing home on a break because you have to get a camera. It's snapping a picture of nesting owls in the knot of a tree with a ladder balanced precariously between the branches.

This place is ranting and raving.

It's sharing stories, and sometimes spreading gossip.

It's staying apart, but coming together. It's masking before it was popular. It's duct taped walls and inspiring messages and marching for a cause when it matters.

This place is the smell of your Babcia's soup.

It's driving her little yellow car around town.

It's weeding the garden and trimming the trees and shoveling the snow in the driveway. It's where your children learned to walk. The carpet there is a whole lot softer than the cold, hard reality of a slippery hardwood floor.

This place is perfect little framings.

Undiscovered trails and the sounds of unidentified birds.

Calm waters and cool breeze. Tall towers and infinite sightlines. You probably won't remember this, but you walked the dog here once. Or maybe the dog walked you. In any event, we took this picture and promptly carved your names upon the doorframe.

This place is all red barns.

It's playing outside and swinging from ropes in the hayloft.

Counting the rocks in the garden, tracing our names in the sand. At midday, if you time it just right, you can measure yourself just by the length of your shadow.

This place is sleeping buildings.

Angular perspectives and dueling churches in a permanent standoff.

Parking garages have the potential to look pretty. With just the right light they can be damn near perfect.

This place is in need of a tripod.

Two lane streets, pleasant looking powerlines and seeking reflections in puddles.

It's window reflections and searching for lens flares. Late night excursions and long exposure photographs.

This place amplifies the smaller things in life.

The microscopic interruptions. The pause on the remote.

It nurtures your pace and makes you think twice and always brings you back to your roots.

This place is full of thoughtful lookouts.

Small towns are funny kinds of places. Nostalgic outposts where personality trumps population and people always come before profit.

This place?

Is unbridled joy - and limitless potential.

This place - is home.