November is nearly half over, and I’m just now pausing to say that I feel I missed October. Altogether. It has been a particularly busy year and I sometimes sense I’m missing my own life. Like a dream, where your actions have little impact or control on events as they slip past.
During that stressful month, we manged to get away for a weekend to a west coast paradise, though strangely encapsulated by mystical fog. Fog that crouched so heavily on BC’s sunshine coast that we only saw the sun briefly the first afternoon we were there. Despite the bone-chilling mist, we had a wonderful time, exploring forests thickly carpeted in moss and dozens of varieties of mushrooms. We warmed ourselves in our cozy cabin and with hot drinks & food from the Gumboot in Roberts Creek. We tasted apples at a homespun apple festival in Davis Bay.
The highlight for me, and our reluctant children once they got over their initial fears, was canoeing, albeit in a canoe identified as being “the one with the duct tape on the bottom” by our hosts. As a teen, I lived for our annual camp where I could canoe, hike and climb at Canadian Adventure. It was awesome to share this experience with our kids, silently cutting through the water between tiny islands, chasing seals and gulls.
I was reminded how much I love nature, art and literature. There were lots of great books in the cabin that I poured over between adventures. We also felt very much at home in the small communities on the sunshine coast, with lots of room and inspiration for our photography and art. I spent some time with our youngest, drawing one day.
From a spiritual perspective, I can’t get over how aware I am that God is there, that he really created this beautiful world, when I am in nature. I love the stillness of old-growth forests towering over me, of boots being lost silently in moss.
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