My blog in a cloud...

Quite lovely really.

Thank you

Too short was your time with me but so grateful I am to have had it. You were kind to everyone you met and gave your love and your affection without condition. Thank you for showing me how to do this too.

If a best friend is someone who is always there with loving support, no matter the situation, or reason, you were my best friend, true and loyal and caring. Thank you for giving me your friendship.

You saw the goodness in people better than most people can and with this knowledge you chose me, were loyal and true to me through my own trials as I was to you through yours. Thank you for allowing me the honour of caring for you and being cared for by one such as you.

You weathered life's trials and unfairness with such strength and such dignity. Thank you, thank you, for teaching me this.

We will meet again, in another life, and we will know each other by the marks of what we have shared. Thank you for sharing your life with me. You are loved and you are missed.

Thank you.
Kate

On endings and beginnings: An abridged version of Our Story

I've struggled with sitting down to write this, this that I want to be the final entry in this chapter of entries. I want to close off and complete the chronicling of my sabbatical. Problem is, somewhat unexpectedly, it hasn't yet ended. Or rather, it's ending has been overshadowed by a beginning that is setting my life on a different path who's destination I'm still unsure of.

So what am I going on about then? Let me start simply then, with the facts and feelings that I will use to tell Our Story. Mike came into my life in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. It was against one of nature's most spectacular backdrops that I found a man and a love that I wasn't expecting. He was the other solo traveller on the week-long horse ride and camping trip I'd been so looking forward to. If I were to pinpoint when exactly this realisation began to dawn on me, it was while we stood staring in amazement at a mountain range after tracking the remains of a mule deer killed by cougars on a river bank. Romantic in it's own unique way.

We spent three more days together in the Rockies, learning more about each other and growing more and more aware of the certainty of a shared future. Then one morning, we parted ways. Mike went west, towards Vancouver and his flight home, and I went east, ever eastward towards the Atlantic. We were both left reeling by the separation. I felt I had found something so fundamental to my own future and contentment. To have it pulled away from me after far to brief a time was just madness. I felt hollowed out, with an empty place just below and to the right of my heart.

Before parting in Lake Louise, we had agreed to meet again in London, at the end of my trip and when I could join Mike on his planned trip to France. And so, my van sold to a couple in Montreal, I flew to London and to Mike. It was there in London, in Hyde Park with the sun beaming down and children running about us that we acknowledged our certainty and I became a future wife to Mike, my future husband. The following week in France felt in some way like a celebration of this intent, of this mutual agreement to a shared life.

So now I am back in Brisbane, awaiting a visa and generally killing time before I can return to that maddeningly immense and immensely expensive city and once more to Mike. My journey of self-discovery, self-reliance, and selfish relaxation may now be over but in making one journey, another has begun in it's stead. This one, however, is one with a shared purpose and with the greatest travel companion I could have ever hoped for.

Back to Brisbane...

"Here my voyages of discovery terminate. Their toils and their dangers, their solicitudes and sufferings, have not been exaggerates in my description. On the contrary, in many instances, language has failed me in the attempt to describe them. I received, however, the reward of my labours, for they were crowned with success." Alexander Makenzie, July 22nd, 1793. Final entry in his journal chronicalling his successful attempt to travel by canoe from Fort Mackay across the Rocky Mountains to Bella Coola on the Pacific.

Another airport *sigh*. This time it's Vancouver and I'm leaving soon for Australia. Home, I suppose, but I've long maintained that home is people, not place. So then where is home if not with him? All will be explained in due course, dear reader, but for now I am allowing myself annonymity, mystery, intregue of sorts. Frustrating tho it might be, you will just have to wait for the full story to emerge.

I was blessed to have on this day of my departure from Canada, a beautiful sunny and clear Vancouver day. I ate ripe blackberries from a vine near Kitsilano Beach and contimplated my learnings at this, my journey's end. Though as cliche as it is, while one journy is ending, another is most definitely beggining.

For now, I can only ask for a flight free of crying babies, for my cat to be well and happy when I return, and for good friends who will welcome me back and listen with interest, even if well-meaningly feigned, to my travel tales. Brisbane, here I come.

Horse riding in France

Written Aug 25

Back from a week's riding in the south of France (the little beach town of Mimezan en Plague to be exact), Mike and I are nursing bruises, scrapes and a variety of sore muscles. The riding was fantastic, if a little wild at times. Gallops along beaches and through forest trails have a whole different element when if a group of 14. Such a completely different experience to the scenic awe and sedate pace of our ride in the Rockies. Instead of swimming in a glacial lake, we swam in the warm surf of the Atlantic Ocean, this time with the horses.

The horses were all Anglo-Arabs, the same breed as my first horse, Zack. Lots of stamina, lots of energy and almost too intelligent for their own good. We rode with a mixed group of French, Italians, Brits, Irish and Swiss and had a great deal of time to ascertain a few national personality quirks. The French members of the group ranged from incredibly warm and friendly to a bit cold and there was one downright rude woman who griped, in French which I am now understanding more and more of, about the amount of English being spoken within the group. She and another woman refused to speak with Mike and the two others on the ride who spoke no French would only speak to me, in slow, deliberate French, when absolutely necessary. In an amusing twist, I had quite a few conversations with another woman with me speaking mostly English and her sticking with French, most of which I could understand. She spoke English just fine and seemed to be understanding it perfectly, but she wouldn't speak it to me unless I really didn't get a word or phrase. While it annoyed me a little at the time, it was actually an excellent way to improve my French.

London Town

Written Aug 15th

For those playing the home game, I'm now in London, staying with Mike, a fellow horse-rider who I met on our ride in Banff. I've been here a week now and it really has flown by. Much to Mike's amusement, wandering the streets of London the first few days, I kept exclaiming, with a little irony and a lot of glee "I'm in London!". It's been an odd sort of thrill to be in a city with such heritage and history, and to see in person so many places and icons that have featured in novels, plays and poems that I've read over the years. Living my life in two former British colonies, It's fascinating to see the roots of my home countries reflected in the architecture and culture of the original. The weather has been weird, even for an English summer and as we left Leicester Square after a massive downpour, we looked back to see a beautiful double rainbow arch over the buildings. Just gorgeous.

We ventured out of London to Henley-on-Thames, as picturesque an English country town as one could hope to find. Beautiful rolling hillsides, tiny cottages with flower-laden gardens, grand estates, and impossibly narrow, tree-tunneled lanes. We walked through forests and meadows and along the Thames itself, and after marveling at the amazing light and coloured clouds overhead, were promptly caught in a thunderstorm.

With the rain settling in the next day, we decided to forgo another walk and drove to Oxford instead. To be in such an important seat of academic history was really quite cool, and the old buildings and colleges really did impress me, especially as they are still for the most part used for their original purpose.

I must admit that the pace (and cost!) of life in London has me a bit overwhelmed after the mellow expanses and laid-back nature of Canada. I can see how living in one of the world's great cities can be exciting and energising, but I can also see that it could be quite draining; emotionally and financially. But I will give it a chance. It's not somewhere that I could ever see myself living long or even medium-term, but I think for a year it would be fun. I'll wait and see what the universe decides to offer up on this one.

On unanswered questions

This evening I will leave for London and then France, and while I'll come back through Vancouver for a few days 2 weeks form now, this is where I'm saying my goodbyes to my cross-continent adventure. I've covered over 6000kms in the past 3 months and have experienced places, people, and emotions that were entirely new to me, although at time vaguely familiar. I know for certain that I am more patient and tolerant now that I was when I left Brisbane at the end of April.

I'm also, much to my surprise, not much closer to completely answering that question that I've carried with me on this trip: What next? What will the next chapter of my life be, especially in terms of career? While the career question is still very much unanswered, it has become far less pressing than it was 4 months ago when I knew without a doubt that I wanted to change careers. To do something completely different. While I haven't answered the question of exactly what that will be, I do now know with absolute certainty that whatever it is, it won't be central to my sense of who I am. I no longer feel the need to be defined by my work and that in itself is so very liberating. So I'll find something that I enjoy, that gives me a lifestyle that I can be comfortable with and that gives me a little of the recognition and feeling of contribution that I need. But my life is so much more than a job title and so I'm comfortable that that question will answer itself soon enough.

Back in Montreal

Written August 4th

Well. I haven't been writing much the past week or so, or at least not much in the way of my journal ramblings. I think it's due to having had company now on the final leg of my cross-Canada trek.

After Jolyon and I left Isle D'Orleans, we continued north along the St Laurence River, the van well-stocked with cheese, produce, bread, and tasty tasty preserves from the farmers on the island. We took the long way round to Parc du Grand Jardins, a national park according to the Quebecquois, but as it's not run by Parks Canada, the group that runs the rest of Canada's national parks, it's technically a provincial park, but calling it a national park fits with Quebec's independent statehood mentality. The separatist movement may have died out after the last referendum, but the spirit is still evident in a lot of small things. I finally got to do a big hike, my earlier efforts having been thwarted by snow, bear warnings, and bad GPS information. Leaving Jolyon to tackle a smaller hike (dig!) I headed out to summit Mount Lac Cygnes, crossing 2 other summits covered in beautiful alpine meadows along the way. The trail was as boulderous as I've yet to come across and so steep that in places I was using hands as well as feet to make my way up. But the views and the sense of accomplishment when I did make the first summit were well worth the effort.

After dropping Jolyon at the airport in Montreal, I've shifted focus to the logistics of leaving Canada. I've found a lovely young family who will be my van's new owners. Jean-Francois and Melanie and their two daughters, Felicie (4) and Emma (1) are so delighted to finally have found the right Westfalia for them, my twinges of sadness about selling what has become my home are tempered by knowing that Clauss is going to a good family who will have many many adventures with him. Strange how sentimental I've become over an object that represent both security and freedom.

Jean-Francois and Melanie have been wonderfully hospitable too. Jean-Francois is a pyrotechnician who works on the annual international fireworks competition in Montreal. He invited me to join him to watch the final show after spending the afternoon with Melanie and Felicie at La Rond, the huge amusement park where the fireworks show is held. I hung out with the rest of his crew and had a very backstage view all the preparations. Such a wonderful way to spend my 26th birthday.

Now I'm staying with Jean-Francois and Melanie at their lovely little townhouse in Little Italy, in Montreal. Clauss is happily tucked in their backyard, snug between Melanie's tiny but productive veggie patch and an assortment of kid's toys. Both my French and my understanding of Quebecois culture are benefiting from my time with them. Yesterday afternoon Jean-Francois and I heading to the enormous market nearby to buy ingredients for a lovely dinner that we made together. I won't even start right now on how amazing the food and produce is here. At least not before I've had breakfast!

On finding the familiar in the foreign

Isle D'Orleans, Quebec

The waves roll gently onto the shifting black sand and rugged boulders. Giant freight ships cruise sedately past, slipping between islands and lines of coast. The silhouette of the far shoreline is punctuated by towering steeples and lights flicker off the water. The view could be BC's coast, but for the lack of the ocean's briny pungency in the air. This is the Saint Lawrence River, trade route and historic life-blood of the eastern provinces.

Isle D'Orleans is a pastoral island in the middle of this vast river, a few kilometres north of Quebec City. It's history as a farming colony is apparent in the beautiful and meticulously maintained manors and farmhouses. Dotted with vineyards, fromageries, cideries, and maple sugar plantations, it's a popular rural retreat for Quebecers.

How strange that I like it mainly because of it's familiarity. It's coastline so much like Hornby Island, off the coast of Vancouver Island, but for the lack of an ocean. It's rolling pastures and quaint villages so much like Montville in Australia's Sunshine Coast hinterlands. Have I really reached the point in my trip where I'm searching out the familiar rather than reveling in the new? I think it may just be a combination of the two. I can very much sense the end of this summer approaching and I'm actually quite eager to return to a more stationary and productive life. I'm keen to put all I've learned over the past months into practice. But not before I've had another month on the road.

Montreal - July 21

I love this city. People are serious about enjoying life, especially when the sun is out. The buildings are just beautiful, the food fantastic and the rent cheap. I've not been writing much these past few days, partly because I have a friend along to share my inner monologue that otherwise ends up as text and partly because I've been alternately busy and tired. Lots of time spent lazing in parks and in our lovely B&B.

I've also been making the arrangements that need to be made in order to finish up my trip. I've arranged to sell my van to a lovely young Quebecois couple with 2 little girls who are keen campers. It was great to see them get as excited about owning my van as I was when I bought it. I'm glad to see that Clauss will be going to a good home, but I am rather sad to be selling him. I only have a week and a half left with my home on wheels.

I've also been invited to join another week-long horse riding trip, this time in Bordeaux in the south of France. Little bit different to the Rockies, but so lovely I just couldn't turn it down. So on August 8, I'll leave Montreal for London then make my way to Bordeaux to meet up with the group. Then it's back to Vancouver for a couple days to say my good byes and then home to Brisbane. I'm feeling very mixed about finishing this trip. I've had some lows and a lot of very wonderful highs over the past 3 months and I'm sure the last month will have both as well. But 4 months is a long time to be on the road and part of me is looking forward to being stationary again. I'll see how long it lasts.

Drivers of Montreal

I arrived in Montreal on Monday, after spending 2 very pleasant nights in Ottawa. Touring the Parliament buildings left me feeling surprisingly patriotic. Actually being on the floors of the House of Representatives and the Senate gave me more of a thrill than I'd expected. Places of power and decision making and such I suppose.

Jolyon has joined me in Montreal now and it's great to have someone to tour, explore and dine with. We've booked an absolutely perfect B&B right near McGill University. It's in a neighbourhood filled with absolutely perfect little row houses, with colourful gardens and external, wrought-iron staircases. The B&B itself is one of these row houses.

Parking on the streets outside is extremely competitive and this morning's amusement was watching half a dozen drivers play cat and mouse with 2 parking officers. Parking isn't allowed on Wednesdays from 9:30 - 10:30 to allow for the street to be sweept. Drivers were actually sitting in their cars, waiting for the parking officers to appear, when they all drove off simultaneously. They then circled back, only to have the officers pop out from a side street where they'd been hiding in wait. Much amusement to watch from our window.

Montreal is terribly French and has a very European feel. A very good warm-up for me and my rusty French before I head to the real France next month.

Obligatory rambling on US/Canadian relations - July 11

I do love this country. I love it's landscapes, it's own style of liberalism, it's people, it's history and heritage. I'm loving getting under it's skin and I will live here again one day.

Yesterday I was in Sault Ste. Marie and stayed at a lovely campsite just outside of town run by a very friendly Austrian family. The place was wonderfully cared and was littered with Parisian playground equipment ("Paris" was stamped on the metal pieces). I had lunch at a restaurant on the Sault river. At one end of a reach of the river was a large bridge. On the other bank was the US. It made me think about something that has come up quite a few times on this trip, and that is how Canada manages to live next to and be to economically interlinked with such an imposing neighbour and not allow it to dilute our own unique culture. I think it just comes down to practice. Having relied on the US as a ready market for Canadian products (something like 80% of all Canadian exports are consumed by the US) for so long I think makes Canada willing to tolerate the quirks and bad habits of our neighbours. It's a bit like having an uncle who's generally a good guy, always brings presents for the kids, but a couple times a year, gets drunk on Jack Daniels and goes around trying to molest your cousins and shooting neighbourhood cats with a .22. We sigh, shake our heads, and hope he doesn't turn the gun on us.

I think it's safe to say that sitting in that restaurant on the banks of that river, looking at Michigan across the way, is the closest I will come to being on US soil. At least until that drunken uncle goes to rehab.

In which my spirits are lifted

After almost a week of some pretty serious driving to make my way east (a couple 800+km days), some absolutely horrid mosquitos that nearly drove me insane, some serious isolation that led to way too much time inside my own head, and 5 days of rain, rain, rain, things have brightened. I'm in Sault Ste Marie (pronounced soo saint marie), a funny little town that has the US-Canadian border running right through it. Half the town is in Ontario, the other half in Michigan. No guesses as to which half I'm in. I'm at a lovely campsite with free wifi, excellent showers, and adorable French playground equipment. And plans are crystalising for me to spend the last 2 weeks of my trip in the UK and in France. I've been invited to join a week-long horse ride through the Burgundy coast. Bliss!

Next it's off to find some lunch on Lake Superior (hopefully) and then an easy drive to Sudbury. Then the weekend in Ottawa (there's a blues fest on) before finally arriving in Montreal. This past week has by far been the most difficult for me, for a variety of reasons, but I've learned from it as well. I think I'll have eggs for breakfast tomorrow.

On Real Wilderness or Pity the Poor Pioneer - July 8

I've made it into Manitoba, and after a brief visit to the very windy Winnipeg, I headed north on a detour to Helca National Park, on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, one of Canada's larger lakes. I took an indirect route to what is already a seriously out of the way place to stop by a series of red garter snake dens. The guidebooks said that it was an interesting place to see great piles of gartner snakes swarming, mating and generally having a good time over the summer. It was in a provincial nature reserve so I'd expected the usual Parks Canada-style do, with an information hut, guides etc. When I did get there, after 80kms, much of which was on unsealed roads, the place was deserted and frankly, spooky. I walked as far as the first snake den and was feeling increasingly uneasy. There wasn't anything obviously wrong with the place, aside from the isolation, but I just needed to get out of there. My heart had started to beat faster and I was getting clammy hands. I found out later from the Helca Park ranger that a little girl's body had been found there in the spring thaw this year, abused, murdered and dumped over the winter. I'm glad I didn't stay long.

So now I'm camped on the banks of Lake Winnipeg. Steel grey, windblown and with giant, glacial boulders lining it's shores, it's making me think about what this area would have felt like to the first settlers who made it home. Today I left the big highways, if you can call them that, and drove through mile after mile of lonely road, dotted at increasingly less frequent intervals with tiny settlements (and can't quite bring myself to call them towns) with even tinier churches. Much of Manitoba and in particular the more far flung regions were settled by hard-done-by eastern Europeans, Mennonites, Acadians, Jews and other groups who society had not been the fairest to. They decided to start new lives out here, in nothingness. But it was nothingness they could own and farm and fairly make a living from, no matter how hard.

As I drove alone today through what to me was enormous and at times somewhat frightening nothingness, plain upon plain of it, I thought of what it must have looked like to those early groups who came the same route. I followed a road and saw occasional cows, dilapidated barns and outbuildings, fences, crops. They would have been confronted by nothing but markers on a map, rivers to cross and marshes to slog through. And when winter closed in, I can't imagine the loneliness and, I'm sure at times, fear of what lay hungry in the snow.

I wanted to see some of Manitoba's lake-studded great north. I'm afraid though, that the southern end of Lake Winnipeg is as far as I will make it on this trip. The wilderness further north is simply too much for me, but it wasn't for those that went before me, without roads to guide them.

The Prairies, in all their glory - July 7

I'd tried to dismiss what everyone had told me about the monotony of the drive across Saskatchewan and Manitoba. "Just burn straight through" they'd said. "Nothing worth stopping for". But I'd said no, I want to experience the open space, the rolling wheat fields and all that. And it has been a lovely drive so far. But only that: a drive.

The motto on Saskatchewan's license plates is "Living Sky" and I'd wondered what it meant. Not "Big Sky" mind, which is what I'd always thought of when I thought of the prairies but "Living Sky". And then I figured out what it meant. I left Saskatoon today in a steady drizzle that had persisted all through the night, kept me so awake in fact that I'd been up at 6:30 and on the road by 9am, a far cry from my usual leisurely starts. In the course of a day and just over 700kms I saw the drizzle gradually lift, turn to mist and eventually, a veritable terrain of clouds. And because of the distance that can be seen over the vast, uninterrupted flatness of the prairies, I was able to see something from the road I'd previously only seen from airplanes: the illusion of the movement of the clouds as I made my way along the highway. Just like the effect of passing at right angles, rows and rows of crops in a field, I saw the varied layers of clouds appear to move as I passed them, made possible only by the distance at which I saw them. I saw how the changing light and changing weather made the view ever-changing and I understood how that sky that hung over the prairies like a ceiling really was alive.