Sigh, I have a new love in my life. Like any budding romance it is full of long walks and sweet dates. Everything has a glow about it. Things that were once mundane and ordinary have a brilliance about them. The everyday is filled with beauty.
Moving somewhere that I had once only responded to with 'NEVER' seemed like a surprise to many in my life. Prairie Girl, Mountain Girl, Ocean Girl...in the big city? It seemed impossible if not something out of myth. Who would have ever guessed? Like much in my life in the past 2 years it came from an openness, a giving up of what I thought my life would be like and a pursuit of all that 'feels right'. This has made all the difference.
So Toronto. I am sorry that I am not sorry to say it fills my heart. The light pulls at me like it did on a sunny winter prairie afternoon. The people are friendlier, more open, more polite, and generally easier to be around than their best-coast counterparts. The snowy roads and tiny cafes fill the places where community had been missing for the past 2 years. Even my body is physically reacting to the better fit. Maybe it's the kilometres I've been walking in double digits, maybe the vitamin D I'm getting from someplace other than a capsule, maybe it's having the energy to put love into what I cook, and it probably has to do with living closer to the person who makes it easy to be happy.
I also feel inspired and motivated for the first time in what feels like forever, the numbness melting away, out of my damp bones, healed by the sun and vibrancy of the city. I want to take pictures, I want to write, I want to pursue what I have been putting off.
All this is not to say I will ever forget where I am from. I will never. I am a creature put together with shale and black, rich soil, with ocean smoothed stone and salt spray. I am of the west and will always have a soul that is pulled with the pacific tides, that aches when the avalanches tumble down the Rockies, that knows the sweet smell of a chinook wind across wheat fields. It is history of this place and the communities and the way I just seem to fit here that will keep me rooted east for a while. Maybe it's the contrast that sharpens my love for this place.
So to new beginnings, to new loves.
Moving somewhere that I had once only responded to with 'NEVER' seemed like a surprise to many in my life. Prairie Girl, Mountain Girl, Ocean Girl...in the big city? It seemed impossible if not something out of myth. Who would have ever guessed? Like much in my life in the past 2 years it came from an openness, a giving up of what I thought my life would be like and a pursuit of all that 'feels right'. This has made all the difference.
So Toronto. I am sorry that I am not sorry to say it fills my heart. The light pulls at me like it did on a sunny winter prairie afternoon. The people are friendlier, more open, more polite, and generally easier to be around than their best-coast counterparts. The snowy roads and tiny cafes fill the places where community had been missing for the past 2 years. Even my body is physically reacting to the better fit. Maybe it's the kilometres I've been walking in double digits, maybe the vitamin D I'm getting from someplace other than a capsule, maybe it's having the energy to put love into what I cook, and it probably has to do with living closer to the person who makes it easy to be happy.
I also feel inspired and motivated for the first time in what feels like forever, the numbness melting away, out of my damp bones, healed by the sun and vibrancy of the city. I want to take pictures, I want to write, I want to pursue what I have been putting off.
All this is not to say I will ever forget where I am from. I will never. I am a creature put together with shale and black, rich soil, with ocean smoothed stone and salt spray. I am of the west and will always have a soul that is pulled with the pacific tides, that aches when the avalanches tumble down the Rockies, that knows the sweet smell of a chinook wind across wheat fields. It is history of this place and the communities and the way I just seem to fit here that will keep me rooted east for a while. Maybe it's the contrast that sharpens my love for this place.
So to new beginnings, to new loves.
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