Sowing Roots In A Mobile Home

Mother Teresa is quoted as saying that “love begins at home, and it’s not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.”  A home is a home as long as you add a little bit of love to it. And from the sounds of it, author Sherrida Woodley has put a lot of love into the mobile home she has lived in with her family since the early 90s near Spokane, Washington.

Originally a dilapidated 70 foot trailer she nicknamed, upon viewing, “Misfit Farms” because of its colony of feral cats living in the abandoned chicken coop, the trailer had a few benefits she could see right away. It was close to a wildlife refuge and the area was in the middle of an ancient lava flow. It also had a tip-out (room extension) already in place. Although Sherrida dreamed of a double-wide home, kids, pets, farm animals and wildlife eventually came to her home to roost and now there’s been too much history for her to give it up, not that she would want to.

Her love for her home grew slowly. The rugged land, with precarious snowfalls (that have shut her in) and strong winds (that have toppled trees), but the nature is pristine. “It’s the wildness of it all,” that she loves most about her home. She can hear the birds chirping and singing daily. She can see moose and deer when she goes for a walk. One year, a squirrel stockpiled an abundance of pine cones in her back shed. When she opened the door, she found a neatly stacked and organized mountain of cones. It’s the little things that she sees in and around her home that she finds so absorbing and fulfilling. By mid-summer the outdoors becomes a kaleidoscope of colours from all the flowers. The ruggedness becomes paradise and her love.

There has been a lot of love over the years in the home that Sherrida found. Not just with her children and husband, but a neighbourhood peacock once even tried to court one of her hens. She watched as the peacock shimmered his tail feathers at the little red hen. But her hen was far too solitary, and the peacock’s love remained unrequited. Like the peacock story, there’s an underside to all this love, as there’s been loss in her home. Sherrida’s daughter died of cancer in 2010. But love is, Sherrida states, “one of the hardest critics and deepest, deepest motivators. Thank goodness for the human (and animal) heart.”

Even through her loss, Sherrida believes her home offers a magical sense of protection to her and her family. Their survival within the ruggedness of the outdoor atmosphere leads her to believe, half-jokingly, in the fairy-tale of the ’Nisses’, little beings that help to determine your fate in the area in which you reside. “Do no harm,” is the mantra and one Sherrida has followed for her love. She has never spent her time trying to tame the wilderness she sees before her. She lets it be. And in return, her home has held-up well over the years. Not one leak. Not one tree has crashed down on top of her family. The love of her home and area has given back.

Sherrida Woodley is the author of Quick Fall of Light.