We started going west when I was about ten. We had never taken a road trip, but in the middle of another child custody stalemate, between another move to another school and packing boxes to move to another house my mom thought we could all use a vacation.

“Banf-f!”

She pronounced both F’s clearly and winked at my sister and I. I loved her but Dad’s jokes weren’t as funny when she told them.

Packed into the Jeep we borrowed from my grandpa, we rushed through the prairies like rocks being skipped over wheat fields towards the ocean. I would press my face up against the window in the early summer every year and watch Manitoba melt into Saskatchewan, then into the rolling foothills of Alberta until we finally skyrocketed towards the clouds and passed into British Columbia. We would camp beside lakes that were perfectly clear at your feet and the deepest royal blue where they rested at the feet of mountains, and shriek at how cold they were no matter how inviting they looked.

I didn’t go to B.C. for most of my teenage years, but during my first year of university I had to leave the prairies to clear my head. I had just met Mister, and after a series of very traumatic boy related events I wasn’t quite ready to cope with a relationship. We started dating and I went from “I’m okay” to “OKAY SO I CAN’T DEAL WITH THIS AT ALL” in pretty much one move, but I immediately knew what I had to do. I needed to think, and I needed space- the best place for that is Out West. I packed my things and stayed with a friend in rural BC for a week and then spent days wandering Vancouver without knowing anyone in the city.

While I was in rural BC I met a girl at the rural community centre who would become an extremely close long distance friend in the next years, and in exploring a city that was totally new I made peace with not having my bearings. Somewhere in English Bay I finally calmed down. I went home, let Mister in, and dug in to try and carve out a very new, very different life.

Something about going west has always been healing for me. My over active imagination can’t get over the spectacle of the mountains, the sheer scale of the lives they’ve swallowed up, and how living at the edge of the ocean while being pressed up to the shore changes my perspective.

I went west last weekend looking for peace that I haven’t been able to find in The Little House these past few months, but that’s not exactly what I found…

{image: nosexnobone}