Holly

“This is a great moment, when you see, however distant, the goal of your wandering. The thing which has been living in your imagination suddenly become part of the tangible world. It matters not how many ranges, rivers or parching dusty ways may lie between you; it is yours now for ever.”

- Freya Stark

Very soon, I’ll be embarking on the journey that I have been working towards for the past year of my life. A journey that will take me away from my home, my family, my friends, my life as I know it; but one that I welcome, for I hope that it will restore me. 

Last summer I graduated from university having studied Fashion Communication at Northumbria University in the UK. I knew that after my degree I wanted to travel, but wasn't sure where that impulse would take me. Then in September, my best friend, Sophie, and I took a trip to Canada which would set the direction for the next few years of our lives. 

Flying home with nothing but a resolve to return, Sophie and I agreed that in a years time we would come back, for we were far from satisfied with only 15 days in that beautiful country. In labour of this dream, I have delayed moving out and pursuing a career in the field that I studied, instead living at home with my parents and working in retail to be able to afford our return. In this time I’ve been able to spend more time with my family, make new friends and cherish my oldest ones. I’ve had some wonderful experiences this year and I’ve actually done a little unexpected travelling already. Life has been beautiful and easy, however, it will always take it's toll.

In a strife for integrity and honesty, two qualities that I hope to claim, I will admit that it's been a little grey inside my head recently. I have given in too much to my silence and the quietude of my life, as result I have become a little anxious and at times selfish. I hope that this is something I can conquer, especially as I want to repay those who have given me far more than I have been deserving of over the last few months. 

Now that the time has come for me to leave this chapter of my life and begin a new novella in a Canada, I hope that the characteristics I admire of the country will help restore in me the qualities I have been wanting of recently. I want to witness the magnitude of the landscape, be winded by the extremity of the cold, respect the ferociousness of that wilderness and seek inspiration and salvation in the new souls I encounter. I want to learn more of the world, and of myself. 

For a good while I think I have forgotten exactly what it is I have been chasing after; I’ve spoken so many times of Canada that it has almost taken on an alien form, such as when you repeat a word too many times and can no longer remember how properly to pronounce it. What I want to feel, what I returned home too early from last October, is a feeling of contentedness, tranquility and cliche as it is of me to say; freedom. 

It was the feeling I experienced upon the first day that Sophie and I arrived in Banff, returning from a short walk up to the Bow Falls Viewpoint. We were standing on the footbridge that lead us back to the YWCA, looking out at the Bow River with Sulphur Mountain on our right and Mount Rundle to our left. It was a feeling of complete awe, of powerlessness; how could we compare to the magnificence of those mountains? the purity of that glacial water that ran beneath our feet? In feeling small, it made all the things I would worry about seem small too, they no longer mattered. In my world now, where my life feels a little claustrophobic, my problems seem dwarfing even though I know them to be trivial. As we stood there, looking out at a landscape beyond anything I had ever seen before, I felt happy and alive, a feeling that two weeks prior to I was the polar opposite of after someone very dear to me stepped out of my life. I felt restored, hopeful again. 

We experienced this blissful state of elevation so many times over our two weeks in Alberta, in both the once in a life time moments and the most modest of them all. Everything gave us cause to be thankful and feel limitless; the landscape, the sun on our skin, the adventures we had and the company we kept. Those two weeks were some of the best of my life, and that place my favourite on earth.

When people have asked me why I am going back to Canada, this time to stay for around ten months instead of a mere two weeks, I have sometimes failed to give an adequate answer. Sophie and I will be living and working in Banff should everything go to plan, it’s a town in the Rocky Mountains that in the winter receives plentiful snow fall and sub-zero temperatures are an every day occurrence. I don’t ski, and so to many it's a puzzle as to why I would want to spend an entire winter in the freezing cold. I’d lost sight of it as time carried me away from those moments last year, but that is why I am going; it is that feeling of complete freedom and content that I want. I know the weather will quickly turn colder and I won’t be able to recreate those moments, but I don’t want to recreate them, what has happened cannot be repeated or recovered. I want to be able to find that feeling in more moments, to take them into my life and make them not an object of pursuit, but a state of being. 

I am well aware that this idealised fantasy in my mind of what our time in Canada will be like is probably not going to come true. Fantasies are fantasies because they are not reality, however whatever may come our way in the next year or so will no doubt teach us things we could not have learnt through any other experience. With such a breath-taking setting in which to study life, I cannot wait to begin. 

While we were there last year, Sophie and I made some lovely friends who were planning to live and work in Canada on a working holiday visa. We spent a week with them going on hikes, going to the pub, watching episodes of Sherlock in the TV room of our hostel and sharing ridiculous anecdotes. Their stories fascinated me; we all came from different corners of the earth, were of different ages and mindsets, but here we all met, laughed and treasured each others company.

Without hearing about their lives and their plans, Sophie and I would not have considered the possibility of our moving there for a year or two to work. 12 months later, here we are saying our goodbyes and preparing for an experience neither of us can wait to start. Travel is a natural curiosity found within humans, but we all have different reasons for venturing away from home and for choosing to roam the places we do. As I enjoyed listening to our friends’ stories then, I want to discover more in the hope that myself and others can be inspired and learn from them. 

That is what I want this blog to become; a cumulation of tales from travellers who have been far and wide in search of greater horizons, knowledge and life. I have shared with you my story and what I hope to find through my adventure in Canada, I wonder how different the next story will be to mine…


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