Ontario, Summer 2020.
On the last weekend of June, we packed two coolers, a couple bags, our camping gear and our dog into the back of our car and made our way to Ontario to visit Justin’s family and the farm. We drove over 3,400km through three provinces across four-and-a-half days to get there.
Planning a roadtrip during a pandemic was a strange notion. It certainly wasn’t done without mixed feelings of guilt and anxiety (“other people don’t get to go travelling right now, who are we to be doing this?”, “what if we put our loved ones at risk?”, “are other people going to be as careful as we are?”, “what if we contract coronavirus by doing this trip?”). This roadtrip was not exactly what I would define as a break (for there was not a lot of resting, and quite a lot of driving on J’s part), but nevertheless, it was perhaps one of few opportunities we would get to see family, to take a length of time away from our jobs that would only ramp up in busy-ness from here on out, and a chance to do something we had not yet done before: confine ourselves to a vehicle with our dog during a pandemic and a 35ºC heatwave with no air-conditioning, and hope for the best.
We left the mountains early on a Saturday morning; the grass dewy and the air brisk. It was 7ºC, and the sun had not quite hit the valley yet. Within an hour we would see mountains no more, those familiar peaks soon replaced with the monotony of an urban jungle. A few hours later, the landscape would transform once again, this time into vast plains without an ounce of undulation that the prairies are renowned for, marking our entry towards the middle of Canada. Here we would enter a heatwave that we didn’t have any reprieve from until we returned to the mountains two weeks later.
On our first night, we camped in the small town of Whitewood, Saskatchewan. This trip would be almost identical to the roadtrip Justin took on his motorbike when we first met, traversing 10,000km across Canada. There we were, camping in the same places he did, but together, and with our dog. At around 2:00am that night, I would awaken to ominous booms and constant cracks of lightning signalling a massive thunderstorm would greet us soon. I zipped up the cover of our tent and waited. Freya did pretty well in the storm, save for one particularly Earth-shattering boom, but soon returned to sleep. Storms in the prairies have might; this thunderstorm lingered for two hours, its presence reminding me of summers in Australia.
We left early the next morning, the rain still coming down, making packing down our tent a process. We skipped breakfast and opted to feed and caffeinate ourselves at a drier location. We aimed to get to Ontario later that day, meaning we had another 11 hours of driving ahead of us. Our last two days of driving would be getting through Ontario, illustrating how large a province it really is. Once we were there, we finally had a chance to stop by some lakes and let Freya cool off. She was such a trooper in the car, sleeping for most of the way.
On our last day, we broke up the drive by hopping on the ferry. It would be Freya’s first time on a boat. Everyone was masked up and had to stay distanced from each other, like a scene out of some dystopian novel that we are all playing a familiar part in.
We finally got to the farm a couple hours later, introducing Freya to Smokey the free range horse, all the cows, and Nash, the 10-year-old boxer. We spent a week there; J spent a lot of his time milling lumber from trees either dead or already fallen from around the property, an opportunity to be in his element and work on what he loves to do. I spent some time flexing my how-to-do-nothing muscle, fairly weak and under-developed in me, only exercised if I am forced, or rendered physically incapacitated. In my effort to continue unlearning thriving only on doing; to continue learning what it means to me to live slowly, I often yearn for the space that I find when on vacation at the farm or at any peaceful place. Where the place itself allows me to embody that same peace; to be guided by a different breath and pace of life. Where I can give myself permission to allow the space and the silence to be there—where there is nothing else I “have” to “do”. The farm is distanced away from any hustle and bustle, unless you count the busy-ness of the birds in their singing, the frogs in their croaking, the roosters in their crowing and the cows in their mooing.
We enjoyed a spectacular sunset the night before our departure. On the way back, we camped by Lake Superior; we were assaulted by the resident bug population but had an otherwise pleasant time, swimming at 9pm and washing away the sticky heat of the day. Due to a series of events, we finished our grand roadtrip driving 17 hours from the border of Ontario & Manitoba right back home to Canmore, collapsing in the comfort of our own bed at 11pm that same evening. It was lovely to be away, but boy, it was good to be home.
