Young man gone west

I've spent the last week in British Columbia and upstate Washington, spending time with family and friends, reading, relaxing, paddling, sleeping more than eight hours a night, and trying to clear my mind.

That's a pretty ordinary list of things to do - so ordinary that most people wouldn't have to remind themselves to do them. But one of my worst faults is that I'm always trying to deal in peak experiences, and I miss a lot of what's great about the ordinary as a result.

But the west coast has always provided me with extraordinary versions of ordinary. I first saw the Pacific Ocean on a family camping trip in 1980, and never forgot the beauty of this rugged, rough, yet somehow youthful coast.

When I was seventeen I hit the west coast again, this time under my own steam, as a new student at Pearson College near Victoria. I'll never forget the solo train trip I took through the Rockies from Edmonton; the 3 days I spent bumming around at Expo 86, or the sunset I watched from the ferry between Vancouver and Victoria with my whole life before me, unwritten, but filled with what I now know was the promise of adventure.

I get that same feeling again every time I'm out here. I only need to look at a map of the coast to get a hint of it. It's not the nostalgic yearning I sometimes get to be back in the bush in Ontario, or the heavy-hearted sentimentality that clouds my memories of the Martimes. It's just a plain good feeling that says, you can have boundless beauty in your life, if only you are brave enough to choose it for yourself. And that's not just about location. It's about attitude.

The question is, am I that brave? I know I was when I was seventeen. I still feel that way, to myself. But the fact that I don't live with boundless beauty today is a sharp reminder that I have to work a lot harder to be as brave as the young man who once went west.