Miriam Leigh

I grew up in Northern Virginia.

I had two brothers,

I often heard, ‘No, you cannot do that because you are a girl’,

I couldn’t understand why,

I knew I could do it.

I would stand and watch my brothers.

 ****

I was about twelve,

I met my neighbor with a vision mindset,

I went trick-or-treating with her daughters,

It was just as I thought.

****

I was really little,

I would go inside the hedge,

I spent a lot of time outside making up imaginary games,

I have to stay inside for a very long,

I realized that the movement became quiet,

I started going quite batty.

 ****

I have always kind of seen nature as a place of solace,

I remember my mom became quite frightened,

But I found it really exciting.

 ****

I thought that we were living in a time,

I thought things were hard,

I thought things were not going to change,

I think, in a lot of ways, they have changed.

 ****

I think just from a really early age,

I just always had this desire and dream,

I couldn’t eve,

I ended up in Vancouver married,

I was pregnant, and a friend told me about Denman Island,

I decided I was going to finally become a hippie,

 ****

I felt like I would die or go crazy,

I spent a bit of time being just wild and crazy,

I became part of a theatre troupe,

I had always wanted to do theater.

 ****

I absolutely had no patience with children,

I didn’t have the kind of patience required to be a classroom teacher,

I think that was really the beginning of doing something.

 ****

I think my second child had been born by then,

I was married at the time,

Juan and I were politically educated,

I can remember in the early meetings sitting there the whole time, shaking with anxiety,

Thinking, ‘I am going to say something that’s politically incorrect.’

Citation

Moore, Niamh, “Oral history interview with Kim Back (audio recording and transcript),” Clayoquot Lives: An Ecofeminist Story Web, accessed April 20, 2023, https://clayoquotlives.sps.ed.ac.uk/items/show/33

.