Westward ho(e)!

Have a listen to Sarah Hepola's interview with CBC on traveling alone.

With too many waxing on about how travel has reordered lives and given them new found direction, travel has, in too many ways, unshaped me.

I was willingly and quickly pulled out of the "go to university, spend money you don't have studying something vague very few give a rat's arse about, meet a partner, get married, spend way too much money again, buy a house, make lots of body wrecking babies that will drain your time, income and energy for the next 18 years while eking out a career from an expensive liberal arts university that no one's heard of and you're still paying for."

Blah.  Twenty-seven, debt free and recently re-unemployed, I couldn't be more pleased.  A mild uncertainty accompanies me like a case of lice as I pour over provincial and world maps while anxiously glancing at my bank account.

While I don't have sponsors like similarly named Sherri I take great pleasure that we're doing it simply because we can.

Where ever we can.  Tonight I'm leaving for a 10-ish day tour with the fella westward along Highway 16.  Fishing, hiking, hanging out, grizz bear spotting and cheap American beer await!

Hepola's full essay here.

On returning

“Welcome home!! Whatever that means these days,” reads an email from a childhood and dear friend who is similarly ailed with itchy feet. I smiled, resolved to ring her and was pleased that she gets it. It being that “home” is no longer a physical place and likely will never again be the geographic location of where we grew up. “Back to where I started” is my preferred phrase because it accommodates a degree of vagueness and openness to interpretation. It also solidifies the self-imposed limbo I live in.

Rarely in one place for more than four months (eight months if uni years are considered) for the last eight years, I am never completely anywhere. Both feet are often firmly planted elsewhere – one in where I just came from and the other in where I’m off to next. While this caters well to my anticipation for upcoming events and desire for reflection, a wake of disposable, temporary relationships inevitably follows as individuals I know turn into people I knew. In a constant struggle to create, never mind maintain previous social circles I repeatedly leave friends, lovers and family scattered about the globe in favour of reckless rushes into the unknown.

When I return to previously created communities I paradoxically expect and inwardly hope I’ll be walking in as I left. Warmly welcomed and easily integrated back in, I’m shocked when all has seemingly changed. Friends are in or have fallen out of serious relationships, working on producing a CD or house shopping, work supervisors retire, coworkers suffer incomprehensible romantic trials, lovers turn into someone else’s, uni houses are populated with other students and the price of beer has skyrocketed.

While grappling to grasp these new developments and comprehend friends likewise venturing out to far-flung ports and outposts themselves, little has mercifully changed too. My aunt still loyally recommends novels, a friend who has always wanted to be more than a friend is still keen, Bonnie Doon’s handsome Tuesday morning aquasize instructor from more than a year ago is still not only teaching but recognizes me, my sister continues to make irresponsible (but remarkably sexually safe) decisions and my mother is pumped at the prospect and actualization of my return – even if it’s just for awhile.

At either end of a travel or binge work contract, as I cycle caulk boots and ribbon for dive masks and quick-dry towels, I find myself begging for that one concession novelist Zadie Smith says we rarely get more of: time.

Time for another dog walk with Gough, who truly and unselfishly means it when he says, “anything for you.” Time for another crib game with Brenda. Time to explore another temple with just-met-yesterday friend Lindsay. Time to hungoverly linger on the pier with Dan as crab traps are pulled up. Time to crawl under Robyn doing back stretches next to a bomb shelter. Agreeing with Smith’s husband Nick that time is how we spend our love, it is the shelter of each other she writes of that truly is the greatest place to return to.

Abroad and where I started, it’s about connecting with people. Sure, I’m embedded in stunning scenery in both places, but it’s not the rolling hills in Laos I pine for, or the glacial lakes of northern B.C. that quietly and persistently beckon me back, or Scotland’s Highlands dotted with sheep, shaggy surfer-dude Highland cows and heather, or Bahamian hammerheads or even Alberta’s truly big sky that I leave and return for, it’s the people, local and otherwise, I shared places with that are the most memorable.

While my address book is swollen with new entries spanning the Norwegian couple that’s still maddeningly in love with each other who tipsily insisted on picking up my Tiger tab in Vietnam to the Serbian model who campily posed with a toothless Filipino man in traditional garb and later Empire hungoverly took up dull spears against him to Roz whose dress was either plastered up on her top or tempting the locals with shoulder sex for sharing an Angkor tuk tuk for two days and cheap drinks for slightly longer to a gorgeous NYC lawyer who brazenly chided our jungle guide for the “free night trek,” I’m soberingly and achingly reminded that in addition to people worth their weight in gold and pho, there’s d-bags all over the globe.

Calgary’s car jackers, Saigon’s midnight muggers, Kratie’s sexually bold moto-taxi drivers and disgusting Filipino construction workers, divemasters, shop keepers and general disrespectful male population take away from a pleasant vacation but more importantly point at greater underlying social and societal discrepancies from the Western and “other” worlds.

In Edmonton for the month before heading north for work, I am homesick for a place that isn’t my home and dearly miss motorbikes, kitchens carried on either end of sticks, livestock big and small and dodging pushcarts and sadistic bus drivers while meandering about the city.

This too is temporary as I’ll likely be back in SE Asia for the upcoming winter, but in the mean time, I am somewhat grudgingly settled (read: most of the contents of my bag are no longer in my bag) and I have the time to reflect, enjoy and appreciate my life for the adventure it is.

Independently drying more goodbye tears

'You're so brave and independent. I could never do what you're doing,' a friend said to me of my travels and specifically of my solo undertaking of SE Asia. Yet when I'm an independent traveller is paradoxically when I'm the most dependent on others.

I lean on friends, family, my mother's second cousin's best friend's son and perfect strangers for rides to the airport, couches to crash on, entertainment and onward contacts and recommendations while I'm away from where I come from.

A closet introvert, I must backflip out of my comfort zone and be my most outgoing and open while away from that dynamic definition of home so I can meet other travellers. The formula scarely wavers. Within 10 minutes of 'Where are you from?' onward plans for the next half week together are made, washing powder is shared and tales from the trail and tail are gigglingly exchanged over the local brew while piecing together why the hostel has free wifi but no hot water.

This is why leaving London tomorrow for a winter in SE Asia will be difficult.

I have been staying at a Sharklab friend's flat. I have been hanging out with a friend from uni. I caught up with other friends from the Sharklab. Embedded in the intimacy of daily life - even if only for a while - with people who know me well has truly been a treat. As I have journeyed solo and been part of so many necessary-for-now, but ultimately temporary and disposable relationships I have relished these pockets of comfort, familiarity and ease with old friends.

Thank you Marc and Sam, my favourite filthy couple, for the room. Thank you Steven for popping my opera cherry. Thank you Steve for renewing my love affair with salt-water creatures. Thank you Louise for exploring York with me and later taking me home. To all of you and friends and family dotting the globe, I am most grateful for your time. The massive knot in my throat and filling-up eyes as I write this are a mere testament to how much I enjoyed our brief time together.

Peace in

After 10 days of catching up with family and friends, changing my ocean kit for forest gear, finally graduating uni and celebrating a birthday, I am set up in my very own room in Chetwynd, B.C. and sharing a house with three other working "professionals."

Moving house

Before coming to the Sharklab, I moved out of my Edmonton house. For just shy of three years, I shared 6608 with a rotating cast of more than 15 individuals and their various insignificant others, pets and irritating habits.

It was the house where I completed the final 2.5 years of my undergrad. It was the house where I created and nurtured lasting friendships. It was the house I unflinchingly called home amid my burgeoning transient lifestyle. I left that familiarity and comfort, even if it had only been for a while.

There was a certain finality as I walked out the door one last time as a tenant at 3 AM on my way to the airport in early January. I was no longer a student, Edmonton resident or a Canadian faking another good winter in the cold.

Below is the ugly process of packing up my room. Condensing nearly three years of stuff into one easy truckload was refreshing. While the majority of my belongings are in a garage at my mother's, all I have with me in Bimini is what I could carry.





Packed, cleaned and ready





My Bimini room is slightly larger than my Edmonton one was. Here, however, there's three more beds, no outside window and one lovely UK gal.



Inside my bottom bunk, complete with the provided privacy curtains drawn

Things I'll Miss

Edmonton has been home for the last seven years. On an off, between summer jobs, international travels and post-secondary education. I doubt I will ever live here again full-time. In no particular order are things and more importantly people I will dearly miss.

Concerts with my girlfriends Chelsy, Jillian, Jen, Krystal

Getting fresh with Orion at Blues and Newcastle.

Aquasizing with Melinda

Winning the furnace war with Sarah

Jennie's paintings

Harassing Hank

Holy Trinity

Visits to Jillian and Kurtis' dominated by babies and beer

Wednesday Wings with friends old and new

O'Connors Sunday sesh

Bittersweet Release

I finished the last exam on my undergrad on Tuesday. It’s bittersweet seeing King’s in the rearview mirror. I have no “I now know who I am” statement that neatly sums up the nervousness, joy, frustration, delight and longing of my university days. And perhaps there cannot be such a proclamation to succinctly capture a half dozen years of personal and academic growth.

I haven’t accepted that I no longer have the student label attached to my head. It’s overwhelming the ones that could take its place. I am currently a sister, daughter, cousin, niece, friend, seasonal bush bunny and traveller but most of those speak more to the who, not what, I am.



My family is not short of outstanding examples from which to draw from as I am still earnestly searching for the kind of woman I want to be. I feel moderately pressured to perform and follow their large, demanding and fascinatingly wandering footsteps. They’re not over-achievers in the traditional sense, but highly successful in their own realms.

I want to be devoted to the earth and her bounty like my mother, dedicated to a personal passion like Steph, well-read, helpful and encouraging like Donna, head-hunted like Robyn, caring for strangers and new-comers to Canada like Shauna and creative like Anita.

Read carefully and you'll see no mention of the other side of my family. Mostly married, they’re making babies like factories. I do not desire that. I value my girlish figure too much to follow their selfish desires to further destroy the earth.

In the short term, I want to develop my seasonal bush bunny skills that will ultimately support my selfish desires to leave Canada in the winter. After 30, I’ll allow myself to play the Grad School? game with myself.

Things I'll Miss

Edmonton has been home for the last seven years. On an off, between summer jobs, international travels and post-secondary education. I doubt I will ever live here again full-time. In no particular order are things and more importantly people I will dearly miss.

Concerts with my girlfriends Chelsy, Jillian, Jen, Krystal

Getting fresh with Orion at Blues and Newcastle.

Aquasizing with Melinda

Winning the furnace war with Sarah

Jennie's paintings

Harassing Hank

Holy Trinity

Visits to Jillian and Kurtis' dominated by babies and beer

Wednesday Wings with friends old and new

O'Connors Sunday sesh

Walk-on Fins

The end of my formal - for now - academic career is in sight. This time next month, all my papers will be passed in and all my final exams will be written.

I bought my ticket to Florida last weekend. That means may trip is actually for real. I spend 10 days in Florida before flying to Bimini Island, my home for three months.

Thanks to previous international travels, I don't need to buy a whole lot of new swag. Thanks to the miracle of online shopping, I have some new bomb-proof Teva sandals and a new pair of Merrel "multis". Multis are shoes that do multiple things for you. Dance on tables, wade waist deep through a raging river, trek into British Columbia's alpine, go to interviews.

All I am lacking is a wetsuit, fins, mask and snorkel set and a waterproof flashlight. I'll buy those in Florida. Shockingly, Edmonton's selection in the winter is rather limited and unnecessarily expensive.

I'm very curious how I'm going to fit fins into my bag. I might be wearing them on the plane. Yes, wearing.

Until then, I am wearing a toque. In Canada. Brrrr.