One of my favourite parts of Paris was being near the Seine River. After a long, cold winter, the real purpose of the trip was not to visit the museums, eat the food, and drink the wine (okay that was part of it, too!!), but to be outside and explore the city on foot.
Every day, and night, included a walk along the river.
Warehouse District graffiti, Regina, SK, February 2018
Celebrate endings, for they precede new beginnings.
…and cheers to a fresh start in 2018…my only New Year’s resolution is to take more pictures!
“Peace is always beautiful…” Walt Whitman
Astotin Lake, Elk Island National Park
I’m a big fan of the Olympics and a bit sad that they are pretty much over. I could wait to post this after the Canada-Sweden men’s hockey gold medal game, but regardless if Canada wins or not, I’ve enjoyed watching all the Canadian athletes. My favourite moments were Regina’s own snowboarder, Mark McMorris, winning a bronze medal in Slopestyle. He is amazingly talented and really well spoken – the sky’s the limit for him. Bobsledders, Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse, won gold again, after winning in Vancouver. These women are fierce! And, of course, the women’s gold medal hockey game between the US and Canada was an instant classic! Amazing!
The Olympics, politics and controversies aside, engage me every time, because they reveal all that is beautiful, daring, real, and yes, sometimes devastating, about the human experience. It’s pretty inspiring stuff.
Here’s a quote from my favourite poet, e.e. cummings which captures what I mean:
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder and spontaneous delight, or any experience which reveals the human spirit.
And, yes, like, millions of other Canadians, I’ll be up early on Sunday morning to watch the gold medal hockey game. Go Canada!
This is one of my favourite pictures I’ve taken this year… (but it almost didn’t happen)…
My birthday this year was a significant one. I wanted to mark the occasion by doing something I’d never done before and by going somewhere I’d never been before. But, once I booked the trip with Ocean Adventures to spend a week in the Great Bear Rainforest and the deposit was made, I almost instantly regretted it!
It’s funny how sometimes we want to do things, but we are also fearful of the unknown, and that can hold us back. Since I’m a Type 1 diabetic I was fearful that I might have some kind of diabetic emergency and would have to be airlifted out (many of the places we went on the boat were remote and inaccessible because of the timing of the tides in the inlets). But I’ve been diabetic for ten years and all the traveling I’ve done has been in the last ten years, and I’ve never had a diabetic emergency because I’m careful about monitoring my blood sugar. I had to be realistic that yes something could happen, but I know how to take all the precautions so that something doesn’t happen, so why not trust myself? (And, since I’m quite klutzy, the thing I should have been worried about was stepping into a hole while walking through a meadow of wildflowers wearing ill-fitting rubber boots and almost breaking my ankle…yes, it almost happened).
Then, there was the fact that I’ve never spent any significant time on the water. Sure, I’ve been on boats and ferries, but never for hours and hours, let alone, days at a time. Why did I think I would enjoy being on a boat for seven days?! And did I mention that there would be five other people on the boat that I didn’t know and we would be in close quarters for those seven days? What if we didn’t like each other? What if those seven days were spent hating the people I was sharing the experience with? But, really, we would share a love of nature and photography, at the very least, so even if we had nothing else in common, at least we shared that. (And, of course, it ended up that we all enjoyed each others company, and even had a few tears when we were saying goodbye on the dock at the end of the trip).
So, sometimes your desire for a new experience trumps fear. Sometimes you have to suspend your own disbelief and take a chance. It might work out or it might not, but at least you’ve had the experience.
It starts with an idea and that idea grows and then you take action to make it happen. Sometimes you just have to trust yourself and take a chance. The worst that could happen usually doesn’t come to be.
That’s the most significant thing I learned this year. That seems appropriate for a significant year.
I’ve been very fortunate in the last few years to see some pretty amazing scenery in my travels. I’ve posted a picture previously of the last morning on my trip through the Great Bear Rainforest as we headed back to Hartley Bay to meet the plane. But while the scenery itself was spectacular throughout the whole trip, the last morning was extra special as we made our way through the early morning cloud cover. After I finished taking pictures, I just stood there and soaked it all in. The whole trip was amazing, but that experience was the perfect inspiring ending.
