On Moving, Memory, and the Things That Stay

I have moved a lot. Nearly every year since I’ve turned 18- sometimes more frequently- I’ve found myself in a new place. Sometimes it was just a different apartment, other times, an entirely different country. And the thing is, despite what my scattered history might suggest, I long for one sure, stable home.

Before I moved to Maine, I was living in my childhood home in a suburb of Ottawa, Ontario. I had returned from Montreal just as the pandemic shut everything down. After that, a stint in Peterborough, Ontario, for a work term with the Canadian Conservation Corps. Back in my childhood home- this time for the last time- I knew I would be leaving for good. I was moving to the U.S. and my parents were moving across the country. My one anchor to the world, this house that had remained unchanged through all my comings and goings would cease to exist. The house would still stand, but the home would be gone.

In this grand destabilizing- saying farewell to my friends, my family, my country- I clung to whatever I could. For a time, that meant history, culture. I sat with my aunt, our family historian, and absorbed everything she could teach me. I listened as she and my grandmother told stories: about how my grandfather’s family would shudder when my grandmother put ketchup on her pierogies, or about Great Aunt Thelma, who worked as a codebreaker during the war. I collected recipes. I archived memories. I researched the history of the Lozanskis, who had faced dislocation and migration. As a wedding gift, my aunt gave me a Polish teapot. I held onto it like a kernel of identity- proof that I wasn’t alone, that I was supported by generations of people who had swayed with migration and survived.

It's funny- my parents, two people who came from military families, never felt tied to any one place. Even after spending nearly 20 years in one spot, they never planted roots. They didn’t want to. Their mode was one of change. They lived in a post-modern way, untethered from something as trivial as ‘place’. Maybe because of that, I only felt a stronger pull towards it.

Before I left Canada, I also sought out markers of cultural identity. I devoured Canadian books, immersed myself in Canadian art, I re-listened to the Canadian musicians that scored my childhood. Still now, when a Tragically Hip song comes on unexpectedly, I nearly crumple from a deep sorrowful nostalgia. I used to barely care for their music growing up, but in my leave, their music became a lifeline- a link to my history, to Canada itself.

And here’s another funny thing: I think a lot of migrants experience this, intentionally or not. When you leave home, you start to fictionalize it. You hold up little fragments of culture like, “We have a store called Canadian Tire and it sells everything- from hockey gear, to well, tires.” Or “Jesus Murphy,” a saying I had heard a couple of times but since coming to America has become a firm part of my lexicon. These silly fractured images you hold up and say, this is Canada. Because it is fun in a way, to create these vignettes, these insignificant stories that create a quaint little picture of home, and yet, I began to believe these fictions. I hold onto them dearly. And sometimes, I worry I will lose even these- like how, without thought, I now find myself saying “college” more often than “university”. Someday I might be cleaved entirely, having forgotten what Canadians think, say, do. And for some reason, that fills me with despair.

Now, all of this brings me to lichens- the real heart of the story.

When I was back at my childhood home collecting fragments of identity, I was also clinging to the landscape that had shaped me. There was a marsh about five kilometers from my house that I biked to frequently. In today’s maximizing world- where massive mountain peaks are the bare minimum of beauty- the marsh wasn’t anything special. But to me, it was everything. It lay along the Trans-Canada Trail, just beyond the edges of my suburb, with a little observation deck that stretched into the reeds. The marsh was dense with cattails and lined with conifers- mostly beautiful eastern white-cedars that dipped gracefully over the water.

During University, I spent a couple of summers at home, and one of those summers changed my life. I had just taken a course in natural history, and suddenly the world around me cracked open. After long, hot days at work, I would ride my bike to the marsh and just sit. I listened. I observed. Once, lying on my stomach at the end of the observation deck, a Blanding’s turtle surfaced right at the tip of my nose- I had heard the woody exhale from its nostrils. Another time, I crossed paths with a coyote on my ride home. It just stood there with the late days’ sun glowing like a halo through its fur.

When I returned home for the final time, the marsh was my buoy in a turbulent sea. I knew it intimately- the sound of the dry reeds in spring, the scent of cedar boughs, the chorus of spring peepers that dissolved the boundaries between body and landscape. And, of course, there were lichens. There weren’t many near the marsh- mostly a few crustose species clamped onto rocks- but those tiny, unassuming lichens were a revelation. They introduced me to a world within a world. What I realized is that no matter where I go, there will always be these secret miniature landscapes. Brushing my fingers over their bumpy texture, I felt memories and grounding take root inside of me. So, when I moved to America, I knew I had to find lichens. That would make it home.

The cool thing about New England is it’s essentially a temperate rain forest. There is so much moisture everywhere. And I’m drawn to these wet, melancholic landscapes: rocky shores, boggy mires, thick woods. Maine is perfect for that. Here, the trees drip with lichens. Looking out my window, I can’t see a single tree without some type of lichen on it. They’re different from the ones in Ottawa, sure- but they still hold tiny realms that feel terribly, gloriously, familiar. That is where I found home.

In this age of invasive species, its easy to judge those who brought foreign plants to their new colonized gardens. We see the repercussions now, centuries later. But I offer them a bit more sympathy. Because home isn’t just culture, family, or language-its also the land and its inhabitants. The plants. The animals. The lichens.

Lichens were-and are- a lifeline. The world is shifting at a breakneck pace, but beyond the hill and into the woods, I can still find them Quiet. Patient. Resilient.

Living.