Grouse Mountain Green Imaginings

These were taken in September while on a mountain hike in Vancouver with Max and Mary, my brother and his fiancée. It was a great workout, I glowed the usual cherry red/fuchsia pink, and it was lovely being with family in the majestic outdoors. I like to imagine myself back in those BC forests. I'd forgotten how attached I was to that land.

The Week in Instagram

• Work's been busy with committee and advisory meetings, a great pleasure to seriously ponder all things visual arts.
• John Southworth at the Elmdale Tavern was good friends and magic.
• The season's been unseasonably mild and grey (a bit too much like BC weather). On the cool blue days I loved the sky and light.

Imagining

Last September I took the ferry from Vancouver to Nanaimo, Vancouver Island. I'm trying to imagine myself living there next Summer.

Sunday Afternoon

I think the theme this week has been pilgrimage. Being haunted by the idea of a long walkabout these days, I guess it's no surprise. Lost and found cousins, dusty paths, open roads and artistic yearnings have swirled in my dreams. Twitter even conspired to offer up Brain Pickings' list of the 11 Best Photography Books of 2011. The entire list is pleasure, of course the first book is Annie Leibovitz's beautiful "Pilgrimage". I want to travel and photograph like that. I want to be a nomad with a camera (and I realise in my own small way I have achieved that). Inspired to purchase a copy, I headed off to the bookshop where Camino longing got me searching further and I also picked-up this book by Arthur Paul Boers about his pilgrimage there. I'm thoroughly enjoying his thoughtful writing. It has, for me, the right amount of religious reflection to go deeper than many of the other Camino books I've read. I've been listening this morning to a CBC Tapestry interview with him. So wonderful. And as much as I yearn to physically be there on the Camino, I realise I am always already on that path. This influx of renewed perspective, deeper things to ponder, seems perfect timing for someone about to leave friends and loved ones, my dear sweet Ottawa home of the last twelve years. And as the thought of going gets more real, it gets sadder and tinged with loss. I am a wanderer again.

Promises

Seems awhile back I promised to post some film photos of Whitehorse, Yukon. These are of a walk in the woods at the edge of town. It's dark, grey and raining here today, so feeling a hint of nostalgia for this blast of light and colour.

Sunday Afternoon

The ghosts of unwritten Saturday Morning posts have me sitting at this keyboard today. How to catch-up? How to get back in tune with living and words?

My apartment is officially for sale, some showings but no takers as of yet. I feel a bit anxious and a bit judged  that somehow my place is not immediately desirable to everyone who crosses its threshold. It's silly, I know. But you can't help taking it just a teensy bit personally.

The prospect of liquidating all assets and carving-out 18 months of freedom is intoxicating though. As escape plans get more concrete a cheeky little devil on my shoulder keeps whispering "forget the MBA, go world traveling instead!"

Such dangerous thoughts leave me vulnerable to impulse. Just today, my sister received an email from a discovered cousin in Panama. My sister's the genealogist in the family and has been working for years to piece together all the threads that have crisscrossed and braided themselves across Europe and the Americas.

My first thought at the news of a Panamanian connection was how interesting it would be to embark on a journey of discovery through Scotland, England and France to Trinidad, Venezuela, and now Panama. To follow the paths of the ancestors - a kind of ancestral pilgrimage - I truly would love to do that.

I wonder why we tend towards putting-off doing what we love for doing what is expected or acceptable? What is that tendency all about?