Hold Your Horses

Settling down. It's become one of the major tensions in my life the last year or so. It's incredibly easy to settle down. Maybe this isn't a universal experience but I find myself settling down over and over again. Meet someone, get comfortable, talk about plans, settle down. And yet, that's the very thing I fled in my exodus from my former life. And here I am again, wildly fighting my own tendency to settle down. It turns out I love change. I have work lined up for my Prince George move that may allow me to make some pretty solid connections with people in Halifax and I can't help but think that that might be a great spot to make my next big move. But then I walk out my front door and am hit in the face by how in love I am with Haida Gwaii and how much I'd like to have kids sometime kinda soon (mum, don't panic). Everyone I know and spend time with is settling down. Looking to buy property mostly, looking for a partner, splitting up with the partner they've realized isn't the settling down one. It's jokingly called the Charlotte Shuffle up here, but when your social circle is, well, the only social circle, swapping partners is inevitable.

It's hard for me to balance my nesting, homebuilding, stasis with this newer excitement and interest in moving and changing and pursuing. It's hard to figure out where the knee-jerk reaction ends and the real preferences begin. The idea of owning a home right now actually makes my skin crawl. The expense, the responsibility, having so much of my financial wealth tied up in one thing...one not-always-so-easy-to-get-rid-of thing. And I remember living in my apartment in Vancouver and wanting so badly to move somewhere else, just somewhere else in the city even. But we were locked in to a property we had a fair bit of responsibility for.

My social circle is composed mostly of people 22-25 and 29-32, so I fall sort of in the middle but often feel pretty old. I don't party as hard all the time, I've got a whack load of education and a pretty good idea of where I'd like to go with it. And yet when it comes to doing the 'grown-up' things I'm way behind. Like a hopeless 20 year-old who's headed where ever the wind will take her.

Reflection

It's been a long time, an amazing year and four months and an intense time of change. I spent this morning on the back of my friend's motorbike, the afternoon singing at an incredibly beautiful memorial for a woman I've never met but know well and respect deeply, and this evening cutting a friend's hair on the deck.

In the past year I have accomplished so much, learned so much, lost so much and found so much. And it just doesn't seem to stop. In four months I'm moving to Prince George for another chapter, another lesson, another stage. Haida Gwaii is my home and always will be. I will always be on my way back here, even if I don't necessarily make it here every time. I've found so much family here. So many mothers, strong women who keep me honest and ask me the questions I don't want to answer. So many fathers, who are constantly telling me things like where to fish, to park facing the way home when I'm on the backroads and how to use a maul properly. So many brothers who show me new skills, take me out adventuring and bring out the more reckless side I never really knew I had. So many sisters who support me, encourage me and amaze me every day with their bravery and excitement about the world. I've fished, crabbed, canned, canoed, kayaked, sang, performed, designed, coordinated, planned, loved, laughed, danced, drawn, sewn, knitted, surfed, taught, learned and connected. I found my place on the land and in the community and people have shown me how much they love me for it.

I miss my family outside of Haida Gwaii every moment of every day. My parents, my sister, my friends and loved ones whose lives I only hear about by email and phone calls. I live in a place that's hard to get to and harder to understand and sometimes ever hard to love. But I love it. I don't really know how to leave, can't really remember how to function in a city where the environment is so far away from what I do every day. I'm sure I'll figure it out pretty quickly but it's weird to think about. Heating my home by moving a switch, being able to shop for groceries on days other than Monday, buying gas at all times of the day and night and never wondering if I should have filled the jerry can. Not waking up to the ocean every day. But at the same time, my life has to move forward again and to do that I need things that only a city can offer me, like a university and a well paying job.

And so, I prepare for another shift. And I hope to god that someday, a very long time from now, I'm remembered in the Skidegate small hall the way I saw a woman of the islands remembered today. With music and laughter, food and so much love. So many people, of all ages, from all over. She taught me a lot, this woman I never met, about how to be a person and a musician and part of a family.

I'm still me, but I'm also so much more.

Blustery, blustery days

 So we've been having quite a bit of interesting weather the past few weeks. Last weekend was, apparently, just the first in a series of winter storms we can expect between now and, oh, June. The earthquake two weeks ago did very little damage, all in all, but this wind definitely left its mark.

These waves, despite looking rather picturesque, were about 8 feet high.

And now there's plastic awning all over our lawn.

This was a hearbreaker. I loved this tree!

Greenhouse will be needing some attention...

The front gate blew off it's hinges and now lives in the garage.

This is our bar, Howler's. It's not extremely well ventilated.

Before you, the RCMP parking lot. To the right, Howler's roof. To the left, the pole that slowed its progress.

Winter

And thus, with barely a hint of fall leaves, winter has arrived in Haida Gwaii. My roommate L and I harvested our (mostly still green) tomatoes, bell peppers, plums and potatoes today, stuck all the herbs in the greenhouse, stacked a cord of wood in our garage and split a ton of kindling. Our house is freezing but the fire is starting to roar and hopefully we'll be warming up (and shedding some layers) soon. We're all officially obeying the speed limits again as there's ice and frost on all the roads and the sanding trucks have started making the rounds. There's snow on the mountains and a serious chill in the air.

Oh, and I may have whooping cough.

Summer 2012 in Pictures

Bike trip from Charlotte to Port Clements!

Bought a wetsuit.

Canoe trip in Jaskatla Inlet

Urchin. I ate this one :)

All these rocks are from the same teeeeny island.

Our canoe, complete with all the waterproof clothing a girl could ask for.

$39.99/lb?? We pick these by the greedy, greedy handfull.

This is Johnny. Short for John. Short for John Snow. She's rad.

To be clear, the green ear is from her ID tattoo.

Solo car camping in Grey Bay. I love my truck :)

Roommate L and I went down to SKung Gwaii and Rose Harbour.

Rose Harbour. Such a cool spot.

The Two Most Important Days of Your Life...

... are the day you're born and the day you find out why.

It's been so long since my last update that I don't even think I can apologize for not updating for so long. It's quarter after three on a Friday and I'm in that exhausted, end-of-my-rope, super honest place that usually means the very last thing you should do is write a public blog post. But here I am.

I've reached an interesting conundrum. Since we talked last I've landed what I might describe as a dream job for me (not 'the' dream job, no such thing, but 'a' dream job for sure), working in community health and wellness, on the ground, in the trenches (kind of ), doing things and making change and transforming whatever I can transform up here. I've been doing this job for a month and half now and every day I see more and more of how much work there is to do here and how much I want to do that work. Ironically, and here's where the conundrum comes in, I've also been working on a medical school application that I've been focusing on, for the past year or so, as the path to 'what I want to do with my life.' But now I'm faced with the idea of leaving Haida Gwaii for six years to do the work I want to do, despite the fact that the work I want to do is here, now. It leaves me unsure how to proceed.

In other news, I spent the summer crabbing, fishing, learning to shoot guns, driving standard, going surfing, picking wild berries and making way too much jam, camping, paddling, falling in love, growing food, building my home and my life, and just generally continuing in this breath-taking and unexpected transformation of myself. I think it's pretty much safe to say that every assumption I've ever made, every paradigm I've ever believed in, every belief I've ever held and every truth I've ever known has been changed in some way over the past nine months.

Successes of Today

Today I joined the ambulance service.
Tomorrow: volunteer fire department.
I'm learning to spin fire poi. And getting certified as a Wilderness First Responder.
I've been camping up a storm, covered in bites from Haida Gwaii's charming collection of black flies, mosquitoes and no-see-ems.
And soon I will have a phone that treats all Canadian numbers as local. Meaning I can actually call you, whomever you are, and we can catch up!
Love,
Cait