Oh Canada!

Well I've moved again; this is the third one in two years. The leap from Northern Ontario to Nanaimo was the biggest, obviously, and the change in the environment both drastic and not. So much of Vancouver Island reminds me of where I'll always call Home; the long, winding roads that twist and bend through rock cuts, along vast bodies of water and swift rivers. There's very little simple laying of pavement in Canada; there's a lot of blasting and filling and driving through the land instead of over it. The Canadian Shield, the Rocky Mountains, the bogs and marshes of the Hudson's Bay lowlands, the worn near-smooth Appalachians in the East and the Tongats in the North-East make it a place you have to live WITH and not just ON. Throw in literally thousands of lakes and rivers that need to be avoided or crossed and four terrific seasons in much of the country and you have a place like no other. I grew up playing around massive white pines and sugar maples, birches and aspens, white cedars and spruce. Spring came late but that unmistakable time between April and June made up for lost time. Summer was hot sand, cool water and long starry nights at a fire next to the lake. Autumn was woodsmoke up the chimney, long golden sunsets shining on the reddest leaves anywhere and all of my years ever back to school. Winter is actually what I miss most; the deep quiet and cold of true winter. Out here it's wet and alive and hummingbirds are still around. There are flowers blooming in February! It's not winter, it's a weird wet season that's the opposite of the long dry summer.

This post is nothing but a love letter to the land I miss, and that's ok.

Lake Superior at Sand River and the Bathtub Islands