I’m surrounded by boxes after four days of a near empty apartment. We had a miscommunication with the moving company; our stuff was not delivered when we had expected, so we had to make do with what we had crammed in the car and what our new building manager was kind enough to lend us. Sleeping on an air mattress notwithstanding, it was nice to get to know our new living space without our possessions.

The building is old. A little run down, but comfortable. Charming and colourful and compact without feeling cramped. A nice change after the soulless townhouse in Edmonton. Oh, it was a decent place to live for the time we were there, but it had no mystery. This place already feels like it wants to be home.

It has been a week of motion. By car, by bike, on foot. I’ve walked kilometres this week. In sun and shade and cloud. Walked down to surprise tall ships off Kitsilano Beach. To an excellent sushi place. To Granville Island. Up and down the shops near our place. Re-learning my feet.

Tomorrow, I start work. I don’t know if the ordinary style of permanence that a job gives life will tip me into the reality of my situation. Because it still feels like I’m just visiting. Even though everything I own in the world is here. I’m not really here yet. Because if I’m really here, almost everyone I want to share this adventure with is too far away. And I’m not ready for that.

I think it started with the unlikely chickadee that perched on the suspended TV screen at Gate 18 and warbled and chirped to itself. I watched it, wondering where it came in, where it would go, whether it felt lost and alone or just alone. I don’t know what chickadees do when they’re alone.

From then, I wanted to be open in some way. To connect excitement with words in intricate patterns across two minds. And so, I declined the solitary cab and hopped on a hotel shuttle. Rewarded with a woman from Argentina, in Canada on a post-secondary student exchange, and determined to see as much of Canada as budget would allow before going home. She has never seen the northern lights, and so the clouds will clear one night for her. She said. And I hope. When we reached my hotel, we were the only two passengers left. She sent me air kisses, and we wished each other northern adventure.

I’m unafraid of this town. Though clearly, I’m not from around these parts. They can tell. I am quiet and I read The English Patient over my hotel bar & grill supper. I order lemon tea, and I am far away from whatever I didn’t want to talk about. I contemplate conversations with strangers, but rarely lift my eyes from the page.

I am delighted.

Delighted doesn’t quite capture it.

I am gleeful. Elated. Kid-on-Christmas-morning out of my mind.

I’ve driven on the roads that have yet to be cleared. I’ve had to be pushed onto the road by a stranger. I’ve had to forward-reverse-forward-upshift-reverse-forward on several occasions times. Getting anywhere takes that tiny bit longer that seems to make other people cranky. None of that touches this vibration of excitement. This is how all Decembers should be.

My first experience with long-haul train travel was the Eurostar route from London to Brussels. Second experience was the TGV from Brussels to Paris. Third train trip was Paris back to London. I came away loving train travel.

Train travel in Canada is a bit of a novelty—usually more expensive and far less efficient than flight. Even knowing this, a train ride from Halifax to Ottawa seemed like a good idea. It would take longer by about 20 hours (including connection wait times), but I would get to see a part of the country I had never seen. Plus trains are just far more comfortable than planes. More leg room, more wandering away from your seat.

That was my thinking aproximately 36.5 hours ago. Since then, I have spent 28 hours either on a train or in train stations in eastern Canada. What I failed to understand before I boarded is that passenger trains in Canada must surrender any shared portion of track needed for frieght trains. Which can add 3 hours to a trip that is already scheduled for 1 day and 22 minutes. Which I suppose would have been less gruelling if we had initially doubled our ticket price to have a berth for the night. We didn’t consider that a necessary expense at the time. Still wouldn’t. There will have to be drastic changes to the rail system in that part of the country before I consider taking that route again.

My country is beautiful. Impressive, grand, and dignified. But her humans miss the mark on long-haul ground transportation. Someone send me a bullet train to speed against the sunset.

Riding in a boat beside dolphins showing off. Sprayed with salt water and bracing against the pitch and roll of a 35-foot boat. Thinking how the seals popping up in the water look very much like gophers.

Chatting with not-locals (they come from away, having bought the land only forty-odd years ago). But they know the stories. The tides. The gannets heralding the pilot whales in the gulf. These are friends we didn’t know yesterday and may never speak to again.

Walking the Skyline in the Cape Breton Highlands. Less than 8 feet from moose resting in the shade. Watching whales in the ocean below the cliffs.

Revisiting. But that’s a story for its own telling on another day.

Because I’m hoping that I won’t make it back to this pedestrian existence before I leave again. I’m going back to Nova Scotia soon. Where I’ve only lived three weeks of my life. But Halifax doesn’t let a girl go, even when her home is a bump in the middle of the prairies. The ocean takes pieces of your skin and cycles them back again, but never quite the same. So I’m going to a home that was never my home and will always be home in the ways that it is. I will search for whales and puffins, hike through the Cape Breton Highlands, swim in the ocean, wander along the waterfront with my husband, drink coffee from The Mudroom, and spend time with dear friends.

So I’m not here today. I don’t plan to do much more than touch down briefly and fly away again.

2.
Inside the bus. We are not crammed uncomfortably to the gills. Limbs brush unavoidably and we are lazily, solidly one mass of transit in a dusty bright day. Everyone smells clean and summery despite the end of the day and the increasing damp of our collective exhalations. Girls with melting wax lip gloss scented smiles. Boys in their early twenties with loose cotton shirts (sparingly buttoned) and blue eyes snapping for a fraction of a second while I smile brief appreciation. Me tucked in a corner reading and pretending to read. Submerged and perspiring. Experiential dialysis collecting peripheral movement within my skin.

3.
The urge to walk barefoot down the hill is irresistible. So I don’t resist. Hot dogs and mustard waft down from some unidentifiable balcony (maybe several). My feet remember running down gravel alleys and stretch along the smooth concrete and black-hot gravely asphalt. A man jogs past leaving baked-clean sweat and cocoa butter in the air. I follow him to the sloughy lakes and sticky candy of childhood heat waves. Until my feet hit grass. Where a sprinkler is running feebly, uselessly early. And the only thing that keeps me running through full-tilt is the man who wishes I was walking on the street. Instead of finding these fifty steps of springy earth and green between my toes.

The trick is to have them ferried around in a limo and feed them an incredible meal beforehand.

Also, don’t tell them anything about what they are about to experience.

It received exactly the mixed reaction I expected. I am pleased that I went out on that limb. But I might not be put in charge of things next year.