The days are getting longer. There is a window in my living room that measures this. Every afternoon, the sun comes around the apartment’s corner and shines through; tracing a beam of light across the rug like a sundial. What time does it read? Break time.

When I’m working from home, this flash serves as a poke that pulls me out of my head. The sun chides me:

Hey you! Yeah you - the one sucked into that screen and a false sense of urgency. Late-stage capitalism be damned, come feel my glorious warmth like you are meant to!

I concede. This silent admonition is as much a marker of time as the steady noon bells ringing from a distant church.

I hit pause and head to the kitchen to perform a prostration.

First: I spoon 4 grams of Japanese green tea into a pot. I bring the water to 78 degrees and gently pour it over the leaves. I bow, eyes closed, taking a moment with the scent - verdant, distant, a memory of a spring past.

For 45 seconds, I breathe.

Then, lifting my posture and the pot, I make my way to the living room. I kneel and place the pot in the sunbeam, fill my worn ceramic cup, and hold - the clay takes on the heat and warms my hands. A sip - it’s hot. Another sip - it’s not as hot. The flavour shifts as the temperature drops. The light shifts as the sun continues across the sky.

As I get older, I’m finding a deeper appreciation for rituals. In returning to the same thing across time, that which changes becomes notable. The sun’s angle cycles with the seasons, its beam landing in my home differently each day. Its strength surges and wanes. Its arc accelerates and lingers.

My mind swirls in the ether of attention; a singular moment becomes a choice of activism against the relentless momentum of life. Slowly, the mind stabilizes.

In this spirit of “same spot different day”, I’m drawn to familiar places - near and far - over and again. And try to do so with fresh eyes.

One of these places is a perch on the Osborne Street Bridge that overlooks Winnipeg’s Assiniboine River. This sidewalk is a heavily commuted one; a flurry of feet flowing from the dense residential village and out into the community. A railing marked with grafitti declares “BE HERE NOW” - and so I do, pausing to gaze out over the river and take a moment to breathe it in.

Just like the window at home, the light here also shifts. And it has been a quiet project of mine this past winter to photograph this arc across the season, from freeze to thaw. I invite you to take a minute with the following series of images, slowing down in consideration of both time and space.

If I had shifted my angle or focal length, plenty of other photos could have been had. A step to the left or right, an infinitude more. But in holding the frame steady across the days…it provides a different sort of window on the scene.

Thanks for slowing down with me. As the footer on every email says, this newsletter is brought to you by the power of green tea - across time.

Cheers to that,
David

I stop in my tracks. Ahead, a child lays in the snow - prone. Beneath that snow is ice, and somewhere below that is liquid water in its unseen winter stasis. But up here in the land of the breathing…is this kid breathing? Like a fish jumped from the water beneath and tired out after flopping around, they’ve settled into an eerie stillness between life and death.

The fish-y situation blocks my path. Yet, another person walks past without a second glance. Am I the only one seeing this? …Should I poke it with a stick??

“Danny!” a voice calls out from the ether beyond my parka’s hood. That’s a strange name for a fish. Nevertheless, the spirit stirs, ambles to its feet, and totters off in a non-linear way - off towards the voice I still cannot identify.

Ahhhh winter in Winnipeg. It’s a season that, dare I say, is underrated. A stone’s throw away from my home, the river trail is full of people who would agree - though I’m not sure Danny would be one of them.

When the river freezes, it comes to life as an active transportation corridor. Pedestrians, skaters, skiers, cyclists…we all emerge from our holes to commute and play, no pavement or combustion required. Instead, it’s a return to the original highways - the waterways.

I relish every moment of it. I recommend it to all my friends abroad. And apparently, I also write newsletters about it.

Still, the cold makes people hesitate. So let me offer some encouragement in a couple of ways. First: there’s no such thing as bad weather when you have the right clothing. And second: let me introduce you to my neighbourhood, where I’m a wholehearted four-season Winnipegger.

Careful slipping down the bank as you follow me onto the ice, dear reader. River access requires a bit of care.

You’ve never walked on water, you say? Ahh, well welcome to the realm of prophets and chionophiles.

Our first stop is a culvert. Be wary! For the freeze around it is thinned by a trickle of water. But stop and listen for a moment…do you hear it? Chewing - LOUD chewing - comes from the dark within it. No no, it’s not a monster from the childhood documentary Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that raised us. It’s…ahh, there he is! The resident burrowing beaver emerges and saunters up the riverbank to get a woody snack.

Onwards. We round a big bend, lit apartments rise up on one side while dark residential skies lie on the other. Again, listen! The rolling hoot of an owl comes from the darkness, conversing with an echo of itself off the far buildings. That’s our resident barred owl.

Oh! And look who’s coming right up the trail in front of us!! This is Gordie; a black lab who walks his owner 8 km every day at sunset. He casts us backward looks for scritches as we sidle in for a bit of his walk.

And then there’s the light. Lift your eyes and notice the magical character it takes on at -30 degrees Celsius…a crystal clarity, a pastel hue. Sun dogs chase the day in a low arc across the southern horizon, and aurora dance on the night’s dark stage to the north.

And the sound. The snow muffles the city’s din, drawing attention firmly to one’s feet on the ground. The crunch under boots…with a little practice, you’ll soon be able to ballpark the temperature out here based on its texture.

And, of course, the people! “Be bold, start cold,” they say. And “they” are the folks you pass in fellow layer-upon-layer-upon-layer outfits, offering easy smiles and waves in ecstatic comraderie.

This is my neighbourhood. Sure, it’s cold. But what else?

There’s a lot to be enjoyed in the what else.

I stand by my statement that winter is a great time to visit Winnipeg. And if you do take the bait, I’ll be the big bearded guy giving you a wave with a smile that the cold just can’t wipe off my face.

Cheers,
David

I’m trying to be better about my phone usage, acutely aware how a quick glance can become a stolen hour of time from my partner. But I’m also abundantly aware of how awesome the little device is.

The problem is not the phone itself, but my potential to use it…unwisely. I’ve landed on some loose rules for keeping it out of reach - no phone at the dinner table, in the bedroom, yadda yadda. But when the northern lights come out to play, all rules are off (including bedtime!). You’d best believe I’m lifting screen to sky and buzzing friends late at night with an “OMG LOOK UP!”.

Solar activity tends to happen in a cycle that spans eleven Earth-years, and it just so happens we’re at a peak. I distinctly remember the last time this was the case: St. Patrick’s Day, 2014. Walking home with friends late that evening, a shimmer in the periphery became a wide-eyed realization that the northern lights were out in full force - green on green on green, reflecting the shamrock colour of the day. We settled on a dark patch of grass alongside a Winnipeg bridge, our group getting larger as wandering strangers stopped and joined - quietly watching together in reverie.

This year, it is on Remembrance Day that the sky opens up and draws our gaze above the streetlights - reds popping like a poppy, dancing with greens across the sky in a gentle sway. An Uber driver pulls into a loading zone next to me as I stand stunned on the sidewalk. He looks where I’m looking and I hear an audible, “Whoa…” from his rolled down window.

With any storm, I find its magic is in the serendipity; something wild washing over one and all, a humbling reminder of one’s existence. And so it was when it caught me and the Uber driver offguard on a routine trip around the block.

There are a few things that awe me about this:

1. The northern lights - obviously.
2. The camera technology - a phone can take a steady handheld 3 second exposure, whereas previously this was only possible with a tripod and camera (AND the knowhow on how to use these things!).
3. The communications technology - instantaneous sharing.

From pocket to sharing, it’s seamless. But there is a risk in how it’s so smooth: we don’t slow down to appreciate the wonder of it all.

I’ve been thinking a lot about wildness lately, thanks in part to rereading Gary Snyder’s The Practice of the Wild.

Snyder draws a distinction between wilderness (places set apart, preserved, mapped) and wildness (something that resists domestication and erupts anywhere, even in the heart of a city).

The northern lights feel like this kind of wildness. They happen when the sun decides, doing their thing whether we’re witnessing it or not; being, completely.

What strikes me is how our technology mediates this wildness in contradictory ways. An app tries to tame the aurora with prediction and certainty: “KP index 8.23, visibility good between 10pm and midnight, 73% chance of spontaneous amazingness in the sky.” We attempt to capture it, box it into rectangular screens, encapsulate it into a suspended memory.

Yet the wildness persists.

I wrestle with the challenge of embracing wildness in a modern context; how we might live with wildness rather than apart from it. A phone is both a barrier and a bridge - distancing from direct experience, but also extending my perception, connection, attention.

It becomes about holding both: the direct encounter with something wild and unpredictable, and these new tools that are themselves products of undomesticated human creativity. The aurora above and the smartphone in hand are natural expressions of forces - one cosmic and ancient, the other collective and emergent.

The key is to be mindful, rather than mindless; a distinction that can transform the same action into different experiences. My late yoga teacher Jonathan Austman used to say with a wink, “If you’re going to smoke, really smooooooke!” Instead of slipping into habitual automation, being present changes everything.

It always seems to come back to slowing down.

After a chilly few hours gazing at the northern lights from our balcony, my partner naps on the couch in her snowsuit. The greens continue to dance across the horizon, outlasting us.

Sweet dreams are to be had - with a couple of snores to keep it real.

David

Cutting room floor

A decade ago, crowds of wandering strangers gathered on the dark edges of bridges in Winnipeg - quietly watching together, in wide-eyed reverie. Today, there’s a more of an individual and manic vibe - less happenchance, more…chasing? My friends in the country have complained about increasing numbers of city-slicking storm chasers getting into “situations” on lonely back roads, so maybe this is an urban version of this.

Ah, Winnipeg: a name that means “muddy waters” in Cree. Some would say that Portage and Main is the heart of the city, but truthfully it is at the intersection of two large rivers: the Red and the Assiniboine.

Over the years, these natural routes were replaced with pothole ridden ones - and development sprawled outwards to farmland, mini malls, and gated communities. But for all of my years, I’ve never lived more than a short jaunt from the river’s edge and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I was brought in as the Director of Photography on a short film project, titled “Meet Me on the River.” The small crew was full of local talent; the result was a poetic love letter to the rivers we live our lives alongside.

Under the steady gaze of director Boeseya Petra, this film showcases several river transitions - the obvious one of water’s freeze to flow, but also a more human one of building a canoe from scratch and then pushing off from the shore. These concurrent stories begin in the heart of the city and are traced to the mouth of Lake Winnipeg.

The soundtrack is original, composed by Samantha Selci. Drone work, handled by Trevor Menard. Self-filmed canoe building, by Rob Kokesch. ‘A-camera’ filming and editing it together, done by me (David Quiring). Field and production support from Quinn Greene, Siyee Man, and Rhonda Baker.

This seven-minute short film is a crescendo from winter to summer and an invitation to slow down. I am admittedly biased, but I think it would pair well with that coffee you’re holding:
https://youtu.be/4plQIGtQoNA

Muddy or frozen, water is the basis for life on this planet. I’m glad to have been part of a project that celebrates its significance.

Cheers,
David

There is a secret trail tucked away between two overgrown bushes at the back of my favourite local campsite. It doesn’t go far, but it does take you somewhere special - up and over a rocky spine of Canadian Shield, through a prime blueberry patch, and down to a private point on the water.

This trail intercepts a single braid to a neighbouring site, and it’s here that two free range boys from who-knows-where bound after us as we all chase the setting sun to water’s edge.

They’re nine and six year’s old. We’re pushing forty. Their joints are juicier.

We perch on a rock and settle in. They secure the perimeter, chatting incessantly to each other and occasionally lobbing sideways questions to me just to make sure I’m still listening:

Digs up a chunk of moss, “Do you like tacos?”
Yes, obviously.

(…three minutes of puttering around…)

Throws a rock in the lake, “Ronaldo or Messi?”
Messi, duh.

(…two more minutes of messing about…)

Hits a tree with a stick, “What’s your favourite food?”
We had grilled cheese for dinner.
sage nods of appreciation all ‘round
They had burgers.

(…a minute of trying to look busy…)

Tries to lift a boulder, “I’m using my gluteus maximus - another word for butt.”
No snickers amidst the serious work.

(…the liminal space between two thoughts…)

Out of nowhere: “Do you guys like your phones more than each other?”
I answer honestly: sometimes.
Adding: Do you think adults spend too much time on their phones?
“Yeah.”
Yeah.

We had been checking the weather as a tornado warning had just buzzed our pockets, but it still touches a nerve.

To what degree does technology add to and take away from our lives? It’s a question worth considering, because the most important thing that we have is time and much vies for it. Do we want to mindlessly give it to companies for which our attention is a business model or actively focus on those directly in front of us? We have a choice where to direct our attention.

Having answers to any question in our pocket isn’t necessarily the issue - it’s reaching for them so often we forget how to think. Our vast digital social networks aren’t inherently problematic either, but become so when we start mistaking them for IRL connections. And while AI can be powerful as a tool, we risk letting its mediocrity replace the creative drive that leads to mastery and unexpected breakthroughs.

I could go on about the lack of consideration in development for things like climate impact, economic disruption, and social shifts (all of which have no simple undo button)…but I digress.

We are a culture that has become addicted to answers. When a question comes to mind, what do we do? Reach for our phones. To instead sit with the question and allow space for not knowing…this is a counterculture act. It’s amazing how, even this way, the answer is often right at our fingertips.

I’m all for technology, but only so much as it can serve this planet and all of us sharing its ecosystem. It doesn’t need to be a binary all or nothing.

A random question from random kids; a nerve struck.

The storm is clearly visible on the horizon now and no amount of refreshing the radar’s view on my phone is going to alter its course. It will hit when it hits, and the morning will come anew.

Take care,
David

The crows have been gathering again. The first night, a family of five. The next, more than twenty as word got out to their feathery friends. Tonight, hundreds - their black forms stream across the sky, diving in play as they follow some unmarked leader from roost to roost. We’ve lived here for four years, and they mysteriously gather like this a couple of times each year.

Just as mysteriously, the winds have tilted the weathervane a few degrees in a magical gesture that has vanished summer’s oppressive wildfire smoke for an evening.

You don’t realize how much you take for granted simple things, like fresh air, until they’re gone. But when it’s back, you embrace it for what it is.

Life spills out onto our balcony. Kids run around the concrete courtyard below - tonight, a Ukrainian refugee is learning to ride a bicycle with yips that are a mix of glee and terror. Flower petals float down from somewhere above; a splash of colour against the concrete. The wind gusts through the panopticon, and we all breathe it in deeply.

My partner and I raise a glass of whiskey to each other: slainte - a toast to health. I take a sip and gaze across the familiar horizon; life washing over me.

So. Things have been quiet on the newsletter front for these past few months. There’s a reason for that: health.

I’m not ready to talk about this elephant in the room, as I’m still trying to understand what’s going on and incanting suspicions feels dangerous. But I need to nod to it in the corner, otherwise anything else I write right now will feel like a farce.

What I will say is: just like clean air, let’s not take the health we have for granted.

The budding cyclist in the courtyard below shrieks, an excited wobble taking them into a curb and over the handlebars. Mom comes running and all the rest of us can do is hope for the best.

Thanks for reading,
David

Scratch scraaatch SCRATCH.

There is a squirrel making noise in the roof as I type this. It sounds like he might be carving a wooden spoon, but I suspect he’s actually up to something a bit more nefarious.

Scritch scraaaa…

The racket fades to nothingness; a question mark not to be answered tonight.

Snow falls. So too, the temperature. And when everything is good and frozen, the land opens up.

Some snowbirds fly south. Some rodents hole up. And some of us bundle up and venture out.

Out on the frozen lake, silence rings clear under the pellucid light of the sun’s low arc across the sky.

Winter is my favourite time to walk the land. Fresh tracks in the snow reveal that I’m not the only one. An island, a bog, a ridge…everything is within the reach of a steady plod. Distance closes and intimacy is found in the spaces between.

Out here, away from the incessant buzz of the modern world, I can hear myself think. Fractured thoughts at first - narratives with no beginning or end - but slowly, they settle, and I arrive.

Back in the city, it’s not so different.

A nocturnal Godzilla ambles clumsily around in the upstairs apartment. It sounds like he’s putting together IKEA furniture tonight - at least, that’s the bedtime story under the clock’s flash of 3 AM.

Okay…maybe things are a little different in the city. There is a relative hum about; the people, their hustle, and screens that outnumber us blinking / bleeping / buzzing for our attention in some desparate attempt to pull us through mental portals and out of the rooms we live our lives in.

*gasp*

Remember to breathe…

I have a love/hate relationship with technology, stemming from roles both as a consumer and computer scientist. I love the problems it can solve when used with care, but hate the problems it can create with capitalism. And when our attention is the economy for the latter, it’s literally “their” fiduciary responsibility to grab for it with every trick in the book. It’s no wonder that our focus is fractured from time to time.

Technology is a tool. The good and bad of it lies moreso in how we use it than the blinking / bleeping / buzzing thing itself.

The question becomes, how can we use technology and not be used by it? Or, more specifically in this context, how can we titrate into the cacophony of connection and not give up our focus? It’s a koan I have been sitting with lately, fighting the survivalist urge to nuke my online presence and disappear off the grid. There is deep value to being informed, but there is also deep damage to being derailed. Doubly so in both regards, as we navigate the escalating chaos of these times.

Personally, willpower has proven to not be enough. I need hard lines: deleting the news widget from my phone, reaching for an analog watch, implementing a no-phone policy in the bedroom so that it’s just me and my thoughts and Godzilla assembling IKEA furniture.

Is this weakness? Yup. I’m weak and fully admit it. The feed is addictive and delicious, like a bag of salt and vinegar chips I was too lazy to portion out into a bowl. But denying this weakness or shaming ourselves only serves the tech giants (and food oligopoly). The real goal isn’t willpower; it’s creating richer, more present days with the finite life we’ve got - something impossible when constantly scrolling.

In disconnecting from the infinite feeds vying for my attention, there is space. And this contrast then allows me to step back into the flurry with clearer head and re-connect as I would rather: being fully present when reading the news, having actual conversations with new and old friends, sharing thoughts through digital pipes to people like you.

It’s not about being online or offline, it’s about being awake in both; finding a way to oscillate between the two intentionally and sustainably. The answer to the koan, it turns out, is one that shapeshifts day by day.

Time in solitude is part of this dance. I disconnect so that I can better connect - in love with the woods, but not ready to run away to them.

And with that, it’s time for bed.

Be well,
David

Hello. Hello!! HellooOOOOOOOOoo!!!

I incant this greeting thrice, shouting it into the digital wind of these capricious times. Maybe it will be heard. Maybe it will simply feed the engorged number that reflects unread messages in our inbox. Either way, I hit send.

How are you holding up?

On or around January 20th (because of Martin Luther King day, obvs) I received a metric tonne of hopeful messages / newsletters / manifestos. But since…things have gone rather dark.

This past summer I was at a backyard barbecue. It was one of those warm summer nights where an open invite is sent out into the neighbourhood and, one by one, a cast of unlikely characters trickled in off the street to form a circle around the bonfire. The evening was balanced by equal parts staring into the flames and lively conversation around them.

Two beers in, a question arose in the flickering light: “Are you pessimistic or optimistic about the future?”

It’s a tough question, to which no one had a quick answer.

I flash back to fourteen. Sitting on a dusty curb outside a corner store alongside two close friends, we watch cars whiz by our slow lives and wonder aloud of the future. I light up a candy cigarette and take a deep drag, exhaling an optimism brimming from the childhood confidence that comes from getting the shopkeeper to sell me a lighter.

So too we gather as adults around the fire, though my outlook on the future is now decidedly less confident.

I learned a new word the other day:

Polycrises: A complex situation where multiple catastrophic events occur simultaneously and become causally entangled, creating impacts that are more severe than if these crises occurred in isolation.

It has existed for a long time, but the United Nations has been actively using it in their reports recently to highlight the cascading ecosystem impacts of accelerating climate change, widening economic inequality, the troubling erosion of democracy by rising autocrats and oligarchs literally rewriting the law…and that’s just the tip of the iceberg (pun intended).

It’s a lot. Yet still, I hold on to hope.

Rebecca Solnit puts it better than I can in her book, Hope in the Dark:

Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes-you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involve-ment; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand.

So, am I pessimistic or optimistic about the future? Neither, truly. But I do still have hope.

One more quote, this one from Howard Zinn:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

HellooOOOOOOOOoo!!!

I incant this greeting once more, shouting it into the wind of these capricious times. Maybe it will be heard, maybe it will simply drift into the unread archive, feeding the engorged number that reflects unread messages in our inbox. Either way, I hit send.

Take care,
David

A preamble: This is a 10-minute read. I suggest grabbing a warm beverage and getting cozy.

Choo choo
Choo Choo Choo
Choo
Choo

This eloquent masterpiece of poetic expression, humour, and depth lights up into my DMs on a train edging into Scotland. Written by my distant cousin Eilidh, whom I first met twenty years ago when she came to visit Canada, it’s a poke of fun at me after my utterly failed attempt at a limerick.

With a sheepish smile, I look up from our buzzing WhatsApp group. The ocean’s blue winks through a window at my right. To the left, the rolling landscape shifts; getting rockier and sheepier the further north we get. The English border slides past without announcement, belying the contested history to define its shifting line.

The distance between us closes.

I’m here in Scotland. I’m HERE! In SCOTLAND! This has been a long time coming and feels surreal. A decade of promises preclude my arrival: the “of course” exclaimed into an invitation within a goodbye hug, the commitment to celebrate a marriage beyond a missed wedding day, and somewhere along the way a silent pact to myself to reconnect with ancestral dots. It feels good to fulfill these vows. Leg injury be damned, my feet are finally here on this ground.

An open embrace greets me at the Edinburgh train station - Allan and Ann, Eilidh’s parents. We’ve kept in touch after hitting it off many years ago at my sister’s wedding and my propitious pilgrimage is largely due to their encouragement. Their hearts are huge and personalities strong - each a force to be reckoned with in their own right.

Tongues flapping with so much to catch up on, there’s a moment of hesitation from everyone as I reach for the car’s door handle. Allan pokes fun at the eager Canadian looking to get behind the wheel. Oh - whoops. Hey, it’s not my fault they don’t drive on the right side of the road.

We roll out, first with a quick tour of the city, then onwards to the Fife countryside.

The primary focus of this trip is not the Royal Mile and its ilk; it’s to visit people. Some of them I know by distant bloodline and others by distant meeting. Regardless, these cousinfolk are my compass and orient me to this place, pointing out unseen connections to the land, history, and moment.

Tonight we eat and drink without restraint, celebrating this time together. Tomorrow we rise early, hop in a caravan, and all head up to the Isle of Skye where we will set up a basecamp for five nights together.

There’s nothing quite like a long drive to get to know each other better, and many hours on the road quickly proves to be an integral part of my Scottish education.

Here’s how the teaching system works:

1. The direct method: Talking, listening, pointing, asking dumb questions, fumbling my tongue around unfamiliar words, etc.
2. The embodied method: “Here, try an Irn Bru with that sandwich.”
3. The alternative method: A rotating set of music CDs featuring different Caledonia roots - some traditional, some pop, and many a mix of both.

A familiar riff tickles my ears. After a couple of bars, I turn to meet my partner’s wide eyes in the back seat. “Is this…Beyoncé!?” We silently exclaim to each other. Allan begins humming as the vocals kick in. Yes - kind of. It absolutely is the song ‘Crazy in Love’, but a Scottish-ified cover by a band named Snow Patrol. The road rolls on as we all hum along, Jay Z’s rapping interlude replaced with some lyrics about the BBC that I can’t quite make out.

I’m sucking wind and, especially with these repeated long travel days, grateful to have others to lean on. Unfamiliar scenery rolls by as we cross the country in a single day.

The further we get from the pulsing urban heart, the thinner the paved arteries get. Road shoulders disappear as we wind up and over the mountainous interior. Coasting down to the ocean, we squeeze onto a bridge that takes us from mainland to island. A left turn, then single track; each hilltop now a pullout to watch for oncoming traffic sharing the lonely expressway.

A pothole reminds me of home, though for the most part the roads are much better kept than in Canada. Our drive is smooth, except for the occasional tourist not knowing the etiquette.

We arrive at our destination before sunset: a croft (small working farm) where we will set up camp alongside highland cows and pigs (and other campers) for five nights.

It’s morning and I’m brushing my teeth at the communal bathroom. A grizzled old Scottish man shuffles in to join me, spitting out a squeaky, “HeLLO!” that surprises both of us. Flustered, he clears his throat and tries again, with a low and guttural, “Hello.”

I reflect back the manly greeting with a laugh and we continue to chat with exaggerated raspy voices and chuckles.

Skye is a huge island. Venturing a different direction each morning, we move from sea to sea to sea.

It feels good to get back on the feet after so many days in transit.

Over tea, we talk differences and similarities to our countries’ politics. Whisky is poured and I’m taught how to play dominoes. No leniency is granted to the tipsy new player, and so I learn the hard way.

A highland cow calls me over to take her twilight portrait.

“Her name’s Ginger,” a woman at the neighbouring croft explains, “And she has the worst temper I’ve ever seen on a highland cow.”

But damn, she sure knows how to pose.

The days are full and time slips past. Before we know it, Skye is in the rearview mirror and we’re saying goodbye-for-nows at the Armadale ferry terminal.

My leg has proved to be better on dirt than pavement and the weather forecast promises pleasantness, so we’re moving forward with the plan to hike the northern half of the West Highland Way.

Ushered by animals, we cross over to the mainland. I walk under the familiar glide of an eagle and touch its etched likeness on my belt for good luck. A pod of dolphins cuts the sun-soaked surface alongside our boat. Hoards of Harry Potter fans unload from a steam train as we take the regular ol’ train southwards to our hike’s starting point.

Highway, rail line, and trail conveniently intersect at the Bridge of Orchy, and we hop off to hook up with the West Highland Way.

The hotel here is an anomaly; a lone shelter amidst the tortured, boggy landscape that stretches from horizon to horizon to horizon. Its lounge is warm and filled with hikers finishing their day. Scattered across booths and tables and bar stools, all lift a glass in salute to the day’s last light.

Each character is as diverse as their hiking strategy. We are somewhere in the middle of the freshness scale - fresher than the grizzled folks who’ve been pitching tents, more wind-worn than groups following itineraries laid out by outfitters. It will be bunkhouses and B&Bs for us, village waylays cobbled together so that we can travel light.

The chatter in the room is a hum of voices, but as twilight settles in it takes on an anxious tone. A woman mutters something about “changing plans to get an early start” as she ducks out to look into pre-dawn checkout instructions.

That doesn’t sound right.

I refresh the forecast on my phone to…that doesn’t look right. A warning flashes an announcement that the promise of fair weather has been replaced with an unapologetic proclamation of “a deteriorating situation” for the region.

I look outside as I finish my whisky. Never trust a weather forecast.

The next few days and nights are moist. Everything is wet - a steady sideways rain finds impossible ways to penetrate through all waterproof layers, drip by unrelenting drip. Camera and journal stashed deep in my pack, I hike to keep warm through the boggy and treeless landscape with nigh a shelter in sight.

HERE COMES THE RAIN AGAIN
FALLING ON MY HEAD LIKE A MEMORY
FALLING ON MY HEAD LIKE A NEW EMOTIONnnnNNN
…

We shout the lyrics of ‘Here Comes the Rain Again’ by Annie Lennox into the wind. Two days ago, Allan spun up the song as we cheerfully drove through sunshowers on Skye. Now, treading water above sea level, it has become our living soundtrack as we submerge immerse ourselves in the full Scottish experience.

The bunkhouse is full of soaked hikers. Wet gear is hanging EVERYWHERE, turning the sanctuary into a humidor of stanky moistness - not doing much to dry any gear whatsoever.

One friendly roommate peeks out from the dirty socks lining his bunk to assure us that he doesn’t snore. Our other friendly roommate cheerily pipes in, assuring us that, he too, does not snore.

We fall asleep to a chorus of snores.

Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot…peaks and vistas are misted away in greyness, and the world pulls inwards. The mountains disappear into the infinite; so too the people we meet along the Way.

Much could be said of our days on trail, but the truth of the experience is much more embodied. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot…one step at a time. This is only this.

Andy insistently pours me a bath after joking about it for three days. As an outdoorsman and in-law, I suspect he knows a bit of what we’ve been through these past few weeks with both nature and family. That, or he’s simply reading the wear that’s plainly written on my face.

The hike is done, but I suppose I am still a bit dusty.

We’ve settled into Eilidh’s home in Dundee for a few nights; a proper visit that has been a long time coming. Her husband Andy welcomes us with open arms; so too their young daughter, who takes my hand, immediately becoming the shadow of her Canadian cousins.

All of us are coming off our own version of busyness: job transitions, studies…even the wee one has a cold that puts a cap on her otherwise bottomless well of energy (turning down ice cream is as true a sign of illness as I’ve ever seen). And so, loose plans are kept loose.

I top off the tub with hot water and settle in. The hesitant but forceful tones of small fingers marching through piano practice tintinnabulate the steamy air. The soft murmur of voices lays a steady baseline for harmonies of laughter.

I am safe. I am taken care of. I am grateful.

There was a joke about getting me in a kilt after this soak, but I’ll worry about that later.

“Did you know that the official animal of Scotland is the unicorn?” the five-year-old asks keenly of me. I do not. She goes on to tell me all about it, as she points up at the unicorn portrait hung on the wall of her pink (pastel pink on vivid pink on technicolour phosphorescent PINK) room.

I’ve fact-checked it and she’s actually not pulling my leg.

I am passed the last sip of whisky from the silver quaich - a special two handed drinking bowl from their wedding and brought out to share with honoured guests. We look through old prints of photographs of Eilidh with my mother in Canada, realizing it has been exactly twenty years since our first meeting.

“Where is home?” someone asks my partner across the dinner table. She points at me and its truth shakes my bones.

Ideas of home and family…these have always been complex ideas; more expansive IRL than in the clean box the dictionary tries to put around them. Mixed up with blood, and marriage, and intimate friendship, the ideas of aunt, and cousin, and brother are fluid titles for those we care about.

In my experience, family is the people you choose to spend your life with - whether connected by ancestry and/or heart, forming a Venn diagram different for each of us. Unconditional love is bullshit. Love is a daily choice that spills outward into our actions, relationships, and communities. It is generous and there is nothing passive about it.

Who do you trust to hold the fullness of your humanity, the finest and worst parts of you? That’s family. Who joyously celebrates your life, without jealousy and comparison? That’s family. Who has permission to call you out when you are your less than best self? That’s family.

And where do you feel safe? That’s home.

Distance on a family tree be damned, right now I’m home with family.

Today, Eilidh takes the lead; taking us from Dundee across the River Tay, to connect her roots to mine in Fife.

We pass through Guardsbridge. Eilidh’s grandfather worked at the pulp mill here. We continue on to Strathkinness, where her grandmother would watch for him driving home from a distance and have dinner ready just-in-time every evening. The wee one plays in the same playground that Eilidh did, back when she was a rambunctious five year old too.

Onward we wind through the Boarhills where our shared ancestors farmed and Andy used to jog to the university. We pass the chapel in which they got married, their stories intermingling.

A quote by Ikkyu floats to mind:

I didn’t see a single thing on my trip, but I breathed and everything I breathed was time.

I build sandcastles in the sand with my cousinfolk, near the homes of our ancestors past. The tide rises to wash away what we’ve built, but we walk on.

Dear reader,

First off: thanks to the many who hit reply on the newsletter I spun out last month (016 — Life and Death and Tomorrow). In my overwhelm I didn’t write back to each of you, but know that I read every word and they were much appreciated.

From all the responses, it is clear that I’m not alone in feeling grief right now. I find a hidden hope in that - because within grief there is always caring, and that’s a good thing. I’ve been signing emails off lately with, “Take care,” and it’s absolutely intentional.

But there is also the tandem task of moving on. Nat’s unexpected passing hit me like a ton of bricks at a strange time. I had just returned from a whirlwind trip to Europe - my first at that. It was a FULL experience, with nigh a chance to write at all between the people and places vying for the limited and nonrenewable resource that is “David”. Upon finding myself a week behind in my journaling, it was clear a new strategy was needed. Cue a pivot to merely jotting a few notes down each evening before passing out…murmuring an exhausted promise to myself, “There will be time aplenty to flush these thoughts out after I return home.”

That didn’t happen for obvious reasons.

Now, I reach for memories, photos, and unpacked gear that were hastily pushed into an underutilized corner of my office.

This is the inside cover of my journal - a mess of ink on old school paper made from TREES (look it up, kids). Notice the marred edges, despite the leather case that was protecting it.

Tramping along the West Highland Way, we got stuck in what the weather forecast dubbed “a deteriorating situation.” This translated to three days of unrelenting rain that found it’s way through all the layers of waterproofing to bone and paper, drip by steady drip. Knowing that this is happening with no shelter whatsoever does make one question the sense of penning something important to a fragile sheet that inherently has no backup, but there’s something about the tactile approach that lets me digest experience at a more human pace. I question this sense once again come evening time, when hanging up the pages to dry.

But I digress.

The inside cover of my journal charts 34 days away from home in Europe (roughly: Winnipeg → London → Scotland → Portugal → Azores → Winnipeg). Each bubble is a place I slept at least one night, and the arrows point the path forward through time.

I flip the page and turn my gaze backward, to that which now feels like a dream.

Ah expectations. Plans naturally beget them. Heck, initial plans flow out of them.

After months of planning, I’m finally sitting in a plane waiting to depart. Of course a spring snowstorm is edging over us, so it is a bleak scene as I stare out the at a crew de-icing our metal wings.

A text comes in from a friend; a jest, “Ask them for an extra blanket. You don’t need to use it, but it’s your right to have it.”

“Already done,” I shoot a message back. “Only replace BLANKET with WHEELCHAIR in that statement.”

My left knee is buggered and walking is…unstable. It’s an issue that has been flaring up for two months and physio has been unable to get at its root. I’m on self-diagnosis #4b and I think the issue is IT Band Syndrome - a painful problem usually reserved for elite athletes, but also prevalent in us normals when bad form gets involved. I walk everywhere and it was an epically icy winter in Winnipeg, so…maybe?

Whatever the case, I cannot currently walk due to a fiery pain lighting up every step. An airport staff member spotted my limp at the check-kiosk and surprised me with a wheelchair after I dropped my bag, going so far as to usher me through security and to the departure gate. An auspicious start alongside what’s proving to be an open-ended question mark.

There is a little girl on board - two rows behind me and across the aisle.

“We’re on a plane!” Little Girl exclaims loudly to everyone.

Her parental guardian swivels to EVERYONE smiling towards them. “I’m so sorry,” they say. “We were hoping she’d sleep.”

The engine begins to roar and I’m pressed into the back of my seat.

“We’re in the air!!” an exclamation comes from behind me with a giggle.

“We’re in the sky!!!” proclaims our self-appointed announcer, reminding the rest of us adults of what we take for granted.

Wisdom from the mouth of babes. Also, screams on the descent.

We touch down at the stroke of noon in London, but my internal clock chimes a discordant 6 AM. It was a long night and my leg has stiffened up sorely.

With hiking poles as my aids, I funnel into the mass of people, through the Tube, and up four flights to our room at the top of a walkup. I drop my bag and seek coffee.

The next four days blur into one another; oriented by coffee and croissants, disoriented by density and history. Rise and mobilize the body…coffee, food, parks…people, museums, landmarks…the city swirls.

What was planned to be space to deal with jet lag has turned into leg rehab with tentative starts and forced halts. London is a wonderful city, but its frenetic pace doesn’t match what I’m capable of right now.

Scotland and an ambitious itinerary looms as I find myself at King’s Cross Station, waiting to board a train to the north.

Note: This is newsletter 1 of 2 that I’m going to be sending out over the next little bit, vignettes to set up a couple dives into deeper ideas that arose in London and Scotland. Good things take time. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy.