In Deep

Festooned in garland and seasonal apathy, Christmas gifts this past December between I and my dearest went the way of a quid-pro-quo; I can only buy him so many socks.  We’d learn to scuba dive together.  It would be further incentive to design a holiday around the course requirement to dive in open water (in [...]

The City

I’d never been to New York.  It was time. I have some thoughts: 1) If you’re like me, hotel rooms – and hotels in general – are kind of like dorm rooms, with a slightly better mini bar.  Pass.  Try this service.  We stayed here, and it was rad.  Particularly because… 2) Williamsburg, I am [...]

Hardest Part

March brings predictable lassitude to the unpredictable counterpoint of lion, versus lamb.  It’s been said, but any population that can vacillate sixty degrees from end to end in under six months is not a people to be trifled with.  There is no category of footwear we do not already possess.  I have oft bought sandals [...]

Fortune

I don’t ever have ambitious fitness resolutions* at New Year’s; the usual is enough.  So when the ghost of 2012 took me late in its final hours (it’s been going around), I secretly courted a few gratuitous days of down time.  This is a miserable time of year to be in the gym, truly.  Even [...]

Stage Left

Commuter basics 101 said that the majority of the people milling about for the number one/number seven would take the one that came first, no matter how crowded.  The bird in the hand, as they say.  It was never more than a 10-minute wait till the next one – at worst, delaying the minutia of [...]

Revisit

I have never returned to a place I have travelled.  I love the act of travel as much as I love the destinations.  She said. So I was unprepared for the consequences of retracing my steps, even to a city as magnificent as Buenos Aires.  Context is everything, when one wanders.  The inevitable contrast between [...]

The snake

If it started anywhere, it started with Big Wheels; a head-shaking toy in retrospect, made especially so by our favourite employ of the giant, plastic monsters: smashing them into each other. In traffic. The halcyon dream was a marvel of white and pink streamers, seat of banana. Dad never let go before I said he [...]

List(less)

Ten years later, I still confuse the turn signal with the windshield wipers.  My formative driving experience was not 15 and a half, under the tutelage of Sandra, and the influence of Jill, in the back seat (who was always the better driver, unto today.)  No.  It was in Japan, where stop signs are triangular.  [...]

The odds

I am not genetically inclined towards clefting, I just happen to be exceptional.  (This, I learned only recently.)  Premeditated or not (is that you, God, because not funny, man) cleft lip and palate is one of those things a rational adult could probably contextualize at a certain level, only that it happens to babies, who [...]

Freestyle

My doctor says he can barely find a pulse.  Says it might be time to try something less intense.  Yoga, he says.  Which should be fine, since I hate yoga. Plan B: Swimming.  I’m good underwater.  Not fast, but strong and steady.  Lots of muscle memory.  But I’ve tried this before, and the schedule is [...]

Tuff City

Tim at the Whalesbone told us to look up Sean, who owns Ukee Surf School in Ucluelet.  (Not how you think it’s pronounced.)  This led to many wipeouts, but also the best moment ever. First, a tangent. Last time we were in B.C. (on business, which extended handily into a three-day weekend a la Whistler) [...]

Transition

It’s October 23.  The day after my 24th birthday.  The day OF my husband’s birthday.  (Yep.  Really.) The night before, D-man had successfully thrown me a surprise birthday party.  And it was awesome, really awesome, like a homecoming and housewarming all at once. I had just found employment post grad school, though we had been [...]

Nihon

I lived in a remote village set about a clear stream running 50 kilometers tip to tip, and surrounded by forested hills. An old Buddhist pilgrimage. Most weekend mornings at 7:00 am, the village’s ancient warning system roared to life with a few deafening trills. A public announcement would always follow in a sing-song voice [...]

Hanging In

Middle of the summer, on the lawn in front of City Hall, Gord Downie told us not to look for anything deep.  He played “Nautical Disaster” which is where “relishing” is from, (or nearly).  Winter was there, whining about how cute skinny girls looked while pregnant; she has two of her own now.  We went [...]

and thousands

Voortman’s cookies were on sale last year right after Christmas, 2 for 5.  I bought the lot, with a strong bias for the Festive Reds.  They are all kinds of chemicals, and I love them. Imagine my delight to find that it wasn’t so much that they were on sale as that’s just how much [...]

Finch

That scene in To Kill A Mockingbird when Atticus removes his jacket in court, and Scout, our narrator, likens it to being naked, found me in the middle of a daydream, and the mastery of the work hit me squarely. So small a thing, and yet I know from it that he is a man [...]

The mark

It’s about a tattoo. My two best friends are moving away; it’s all happened very suddenly, and we have taken to drinking away the sorrow. It’s not like the tattoo game is new.  We all tease each other, at predictable lulls in conversation, with our future designs, but only Winter ever has the balls to [...]

Last Post

On the train to Agra, we stalled.  A street woman wandered into the train yard and emptied her bowels on the tracks adjacent.  My side of the train drew front row. Before I knew I shouldn’t, I gave a quarter to a little girl on a mountainside in Peru for serving me a cola.  The [...]

Primordial Muck

Cleanliness is a perceptible state of being; anyone who has gone too long without knows this lightening sensation, and maybe even relishes it. But it has to be said, most of my fondest memories have far more to do with muck and grime.  And always stars.

Central America

I assume you all knew where this was going. Returning to travel was the first practice of the season, stale old equipment sitting for so long untouched fit surprisingly well, and the old tricks come back to us without much prompting.  Landing in Guatemala City was not nearly the obstacle we expected, because we expected [...]

Far East

And then there was Japan.  Which I tend to forget. I spent a year and a day in the land of the rising sun, and every single one of those rising suns taught me something I hadn’t bothered learning.  Most importantly, that to truly appreciate the world, you must do more than simply travel through [...]

SEA

On to South-East Asia, and Thailand, which was split evenly into Chiang Mai and Bangkok.  We ate our way through curries and cold fruit shakes, and marvelled at the sky trains in the capital. In Cambodia, it was Ankgor Watt and little else, though the end of monsoon meant feet caked in red clay, and [...]

Central Asia

Three weeks in India provided exactly enough time to oogle the Taj Mahal, then spend 10 days in the Kashmir, acclimatizing.  After Africa, India’s challenges were easily met. Then it was to Nepal, and big hikes beneath the shadows of Annapurna and Everest.  In Kathmandu, we lived two lives; one of luxury, which we embraced [...]

Africa

Ten days in Kenya was just enough time to make us miss it, when, later on, we could not find decent coffee or internet.  The roads only got worse after Kenya. In Tanzania, we split two weeks between the Usumbara mountains and Zanzibar – which might have counted for two countries if they hadn’t merged [...]

Europe

I am not well-traveled in the old world, though it was travel to the old world that would set the foundation.  France for two weeks at fourteen ruined me for life.  My parents can blame themselves for that one:  two-thousand dollars for two weeks of trains, baguettes, and painfully good behaviour.  And no small thanks [...]

North America

I count Canada.  I’ve done the footwork to earn it; Vancouver Island to Cape Breton Island, with a blind spot for the North and the Rock.  Which I aim to resolve. The United States was second: North Dakota for cheap shoes and back to school.  Then to Florida, Washington, a few cities, really, and none [...]

Going Green

It is an injustice to call Canadians rigid.  We are, in fact, some of the most resilient creatures on earth, contented to submit ourselves to conditions that range from deadliest cold to dry, blistering heat.  Forest fires, and whiteouts.  We are creatures of change; it is under our fingernails; embedded in our skin. And I [...]

South America

South America’s Peru was actually a trial of many things, but ended up being a trial mostly of Darcy’s stomach.  (Failed.)  We did well in our first developing country, far too cautious for our own good, and too idealistic, too.  We spent 10 days in Lima and Cusco, hiking the formidable Choquequirao, where we learned [...]

In Balaka

Tamara, the Peace Corps worker, was already drunk.  It was dusk on the corner of dirt road and nowhere. We propped up candles in their own drippings in a mud shelter with a concrete floor, huddled around a sturdy and well-stocked beer crate.  Grown men shooed away clamouring children, claiming they would steal from us.  [...]

Ezra

It was a reason not to study.  The far grounds of campus on a sunny, soggy April evening needed to be seen first-hand before the end of term sent us back to the prairies for four months.  It would be tragic if we had not fully profited from the views.  English exam be damned. There [...]

Invictus

My heart is full of incomplete sentences.  How thoroughly we have come through slaughter.  I love you, Darcy. So it ends. So it begins. December 11, 2008 It is said we leave home in search of something, and that we return home to find it.  What is not given is what, exactly, we are meant [...]

Headstand Rand

I can stand on my head. It’s one of those weird things I didn’t know I could do until I started trying. In fact, I’ve gotten so good, that I can actually do crunches now, impressive, but easily-matched by your average six-year-old. This is the sum-total of my power yoga prowess. Don’t ask about crow [...]

Resplendent

The opportunity for salvation was there; a run, or a quick workout on Argyle would have made up, in part, for birthday festivities gone much too far.  But we opted for champagne, which Jim had brought two nights ago as a birthday gift  If you add orange juice, it’s technically allowed before noon. Darcy offered [...]

Old, New

It bears remembering that a year ago today, Darcy and I were experiencing a culture shock so severe, we actually ate McDonald’s. Arriving in Bangkok after four months of Africa, India and Nepal was like arriving in the future. The jet lag sucked. And there were still no rocket packs. So there’s some stuff, here, [...]

Keg

So, for kicks, D-man and I have decided to throw a keg party.  Keg. Party.  Because we are 19.  For some reason, all I can feel is anxious that people won’t come to my KEG. PARTY.  At which there will be a KEG.  Somehow, I imagine real 19 year olds don’t actually worry about people [...]

Falling

I am falling in love with my Nikon D90, a very big surprise from a very surprising husband.  I have been making progress with the manual, but besides a few snaps in the evenings, I didn’t have much of a chance to test her out. Till today. It is not an exaggeration to say that [...]

Beginning

Reliving a particularly mortifying high school incident on the way home from work a few weeks ago quickly became an out-loud monologue overheard by a few startled Ottawans, trying very hard to avert my gaze. Which, of course, made me mortified. (But less than you’d think.) “Hochelagea!” I cried, unprompted, taking shelter in the shadow [...]

Free fall

It was a year and a day ago that Darcy strapped on a snowboard and dove down the sand dunes just outside of Swakopmund, Namibia.  I loved the drama of the landscape, the crashing Atlantic drawing waters from its very depths to form the spine of the frigid Benguela current.  Trade winds from the Kalahari [...]

Changing Face

The beauty of WordPress is that I can, at the touch of a button (or, several buttons) totally alter the look of Relishing.ca. Not horribly good for maintaining a common look and feel, and usually rife with browser compatibility issues, but PLEASE. This is the manifestation of my WHOLE SELF. A girl’s gotta be allowed [...]