A few weeks ago, J, Freya & I spent a weekend off-the-grid at Mt. Engadine. We left the laptops at home, bringing only our books, my camera and our phones. The last time we were here was about a week before the pandemic really “started"—before life in lockdown, in March 2020. Freya was just 6 months old.

I have been pondering on what to write in this post for a while. It’s February now, and the calendar says it’s 2021, but in many ways it doesn’t feel like we have left 2020 behind.

Get yourself friends who will say yes to hiking 80+ kilometres and 2,000+ metres of elevation gain over 4 days with you. In mid-August, Brittany, Sam, Justin & I hiked to Mt. Assiniboine Provincial Park, a world-renowned mountain destination and home to the second tallest peak in the Canadian Rockies.

As I write this, summer is a distant memory. The sun bids us adieu before 6pm; the mountain peaks are snow-covered once again; and the temperature gauge flirts above and below 0ºC.

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.

Halfway through 2020, the summer we spend most of the year waiting for arrives. It brings with it the full weight of joyful promises and optimistic mountain objectives from summers past, and our muscles ache not from bracing ourselves against winter’s bitter chill, but from throwing ourselves wholeheartedly into the warmest days we’ll have all year.

A window into our lives at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Albeit true, it is cliché to say that the world has changed since I initially had this post sitting in my drafts, when January & February passed us by, but March seemed to last forever.

Freya’s first winter hike at 10 weeks old. The temperatures must have been -15ºC or colder, there was wind chill, very little sun and ankle or knee-deep snow (which makes walking a one step forward, slide two steps backwards kind of game) during our 4 hour adventure in the woods.

Being wholehearted and unequivocal dog lovers, we had been waiting for the right time to have a dog. Feeling more settled in our jobs and in our lives, half-joking conversations and casual searches soon turned into more serious and fervent efforts (plus a few rounds of “are we really doing this?”) to find our dog.

The weekend before Christmas we went to cut down our first Christmas tree. When we originally planned this day, we had no idea we would also be joined by our new pup, Freya, and J’s father, who came for an impromptu pre-Christmas visit. It made our day in the woods with friends, coffee and a fire all the more special.

A snowy hike that put smiles on our faces and reminded us that winter, despite its typically early arrival and delayed departure, isn’t always so bad after all. We braved the icy highway and drove 90 minutes from home to a spot I had only ever ventured to in the summertime.

In mid-August, we visited J’s parents’ farm in Ontario. A long-awaited visit, the warmth, humidity, lush green pastures and utter tranquility was a welcome break from the relentless rain, tourist hubbub and parched mountain air.

“Trust the timing of your life”. I had written this as a note to myself in the spring of 2018, feeling trapped in the throes of uncertainty. A little more than a year later, I dance between knowing I have learnt the lesson, and feeling as if I have a long way to go.

A weekend away to mark our first year together; a year that challenged us individually and also as a couple, but brought great joy and growth with it.

Last Saturday consisted of: a sleep-in and a delightfully leisurely breakfast of crepes & “eggy-in-a-basket”; coffee brewed by AeroPress (our usual) and conversation; a nice long stretch on the living room floor (a new wellbeing habit we are trying to incorporate into our ever-changing daily routine); a podcast during our drive to the trail and this—an 11km round-trip jaunt into the woods.

Winter likes to hit us with an icy, teeth-chattering smack in the face in February, right when we think we’ve walked away unscathed and untouched by temperatures below -15ºC. It’s been -30ºC with plenty of snow; a stark contrast to when December & January left us scratching our heads and wondering if we would truly be lucky enough to only see temperatures around 0ºC this season. Alas, how wrong we were.

A long drive a couple of hours north during a rare day off together, listening to podcasts that spark meaningful conversation. We get to the lake we’re looking for and we gaze down, down, down into the depths of its glacier green, its fractal white, its crystallised air. Methane from decaying plant matter froze as it rose to the surface, making art of winter’s fierce, icy grip.

I spent my second Canadian Christmas out on the farm with J and his family; the very place where he grew up and started to become the person I now know. Upon arriving in Ontario on Christmas Eve, we were gifted with a white Christmas after all, a mild start to our winter in the west leaving our town a barren, snow-less place.

I want to tell you about this woman; my aunt Juliet, Julie, or “Bibi” as she was known in our family. I want to tell you what I tried to tell everyone at her memorial, whilst choking back tears, my whole body trying to contain all I was feeling to no avail.