It sometimes boggles my mind, how easy it actually is to cross an entire continent.
Yesterday I woke up at 6am in the Beaver Valley, on the shores of Georgian Bay in Ontario where a beautiful crisp spring day greeted me. I set off to Toronto, now knowing what condistions the roasd were in on the high country between Lake Huron and Lake Ontario. In between thos Great Lakes is the Niagara Escarpment and the oak Ridges Moraine, two incredible heights of land that received a lat winter beating this week from a cold front that scoured the whole area.
All was well with me though, on a good drive along Highway 26 which hugs to Bay from Thornbury to Collingwood and on to Wasaga Beach and Stayner. From there the road turns south becoming Airport Road and takes a bee line across the rolling countryside, up and down the esacarpment, and over the 700 foot high folds of glacial till that are now covered with farmland, pine forest and maple woods. For two hours, the bright sun, spring bird song and beautiful southern Onatrio countryside fill my senses.
Once through Caledon, the country changes radically. The land flattens out and all around are the sprawling McMansion suburbs that litter the edge of Toronto. Along Airport Road, whole sections of farmland have been converted to a monoculture of boring, treeless housing. Nothing is human scale. A small sidewalk is hardly ever used and the four lanes of road feeds commuters to the city and large transport trucks to the distribution centres, warehouses and factories of Malton and the other northwestern suburbs. A large Sikh community lives near the airport, and so the few commercial plazas in the area are devoted to saris, curries and Bollywood video rentals. Here and there, old Victorian famhouses stand surrounded by all of this development, a last echo of the previous wave of immigrants that lived there.
I dropped my rental car, boarded a plane for Vancouver and instantly fell asleep. I woke up over Kelowna just in time for our descent into Vancouver. The coast was grey and cold and pouring rain. Grabbed my bag, jumped on teh Canada Line, stopped long enough at Granville and Georgia Streets for a La Brasserie Chicken Sandwich and then caught the Express bus to Horseshoe Bay. The 330pm ferry delivered me back to Bowen Island.
It is odd standing on the deck of a ferry crossing a small channel in the Pacific Ocean having woken up a mere 12 hours earlier some 4300 kms away. This is a journey that until the last century would have taken years of my life. Instead, I walk off the ferry, shaking a little of the remaining Ontario rain from my suitcase, home before my kids arrive back from school.
Magic.
An incredible trip to Ireland and England with my dad, and yesterday I have returned home. We were in The Burren in Co. Clare for an Art of Hosting and then my dad and I drove to Armagh to see the house his great grandfather was born in. Along the way we met some distant cousins, found the graves of our ancestors and drove through the landscape of our history. Afterwards we went to Engalnd and stayed with friends in Hertfordshire where we lived 30 years ago. Met up with some old school mates, saw Spurs play a dreadful draw at White Hart Lane and caught up with old friends and colleagues.
Today one of our Art of Hosting participants sent this lovely John O’Donohue poem along. O’Donohue was a poet closely associated with The Burren and I read his work on friendship the whole time I was in Clare. This is a good way to come back home, with the memories of a great trip behind me.
Fluent
I would love to live
Like a river flows
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding
That is me at the moment, in the moment.
Long week here in Calgary and happy to be finally homeward bound. Starting with a quick flight over the mountains to Vancouver, train downtown, cab to Horseshoe Bay, followed by a ferry ride to Bowen and a quick ride home.
A poem from my travels this week in Calgary
What we were trying not to see
Behind us a cloud rimmed
By the electric light of a prairie spring’s
Sharp sunset casts a glow
On the towers downtown.
In that moment of reflection
A small truck carrying a small boat
Bolts over the Louise Bridge
Takes a hard right on Memorial Drive
And stops by the new sculpture
Full of quotes about war and loss.
“they’ve been pulling bodies from the Bow”
My companion says and I peer into
What little I can see of the churning
Waters below, wondering for a moment
How anyone could find anything as
Humble as a body in that flow.
Behind us the sun bends below the horizon
And the clouds clasp together to cloak
The twilight’s fading.
From the time I was a 10 year old kid, I have loved flight. It has been a dream come true that my work involves so much time in airports and on airplanes. Notwithstanding the rethinking I am doing about the carbon cost of my vocation, I’m in love with being in the air.
So I was delighted today to discover this blog: Flight Level 390. It is written by an experienced American pilot at a major airline (my guess is US Air) and the writing is as beautiful and clear as the skies he travels through. Lose yourself in it for a few hours.