poetry and telephones

i had my first poetry class at camosun last night. it was sweet. a lot of old people but the teacher is youngish and there was one girl my age. i really enjoyed it a lot. i like learning. we did a free form journaling exercise where you have to write without stopping for ten minutes and you're not allowed to second guess or edit your thoughts. it was scary at first and then kind of liberating. i'm going to try and do it every day.

today i did it sitting by the harbour downtown with the sun on my face, which was lovely.

on monday i went to a 90s dance party at a bar downtown with new friend elisa (who i met through rebecca) and about half the first year law class. we didn't manage to drag rebecca out. i lost my phone. i found the situation very interesting because:

1) i wouldn't have brought my phone at all except that elisa mentioned that she wasn't sure if her apartment buzzer works.

2) when transfering valuables from my jacket to my dress pockets so i could leave my jacket in the corner of the bar, i considered putting my cell phone back in the jacket because it was one more thing to carry, and really not all that crucial to my day to day existence. I didn't bother.

3) there were three things in my pocket: my wallet, my keys and my phone. i was so happy to have not lost my wallet or keys that the phone seemed insignificant.

4) i had been thinking, earlier on, about what i might do with my phone. get a new plan and number, keep it as is, or cancel it altogether? maybe this was the gods interceeding on my behalf...

i checked with the bar a few times over the night and no one had found it. the next day, i tried calling the phone as well as the bar, with no luck, but was happy that the phone was ringing. i worried that someone might be making expensive phone calls with it, but didn't to think to call the phone company until the service lines were closed. no luck reaching the bar even after they should have been open, and it was too rainy to bike down, so i waited another night.

called koodo in the morning. no one had made any calls. i suspended the service, anyway. figured it had to be waiting for me at the bar. still not picking up their phone. i was putting my coat on to bike down for a second time today (i tried in the afternoon, but they don't open until late) when my home phone rang. it was some guy who had picked up my phone. he called back the number that had been calling the phone and found me.

so, no gods interceding on my behalf. just, perhaps, reminding me of how little i care about my phone.

oh, hello there!

hi friends,

i suppose i'm due for a post. i've been quite busy the last couple of days with my new blog, where i will be writing about the things that i do and see and hear that are music related. please check it out! my most recent post was a review of a show i saw last night in victoria. i shared it with the artist, and she offered very kind words of thanks and linked to my blog on her website, so i'm very pleased about that.

other news... i have a flight booked to toronto for dec 16th! still looking into alternative transportation arrangements, but it's nice to know that i will make it home for christmas no matter what. don't know how i will get back to victoria (i plan to come back) but i have faith, as always, that things will fall into place.

i have also enrolled in a poetry class at camosun college that starts on tuesday and runs until mid december. i am excited to have some structure and guidance when it comes to thinking about words and lyrics and how to affect people with them.

i will have an orientation session next week to volunteer with CFUV, the UVic campus and community radio station, so that's exciting.

hmm what else? had a lovely brunch this morning with rebecca and her father, who is visiting from toronto, and friends elisa and miriam. we went to a spot called the superior that is excellent and supports local sourcing of their products. yum!

can't think of any other news, though i'm sure there's more.

take care and don't be square

love, jacqueline

kid in a candy store

i got out 20 cds and 5 dvds from the library today.

the country music section is not what it used to be.

most exciting cd finds:

THREE dolly parton albums

old crow medicine show

chatham county line

jenny whiteley (!!!)

rae spoon & rodney decroo

chris thile

a bunch of willie nelson

and much more

bahahahahahaahahah

the only hard part was getting it all home

actually, to be honest, with my speedy new bike and a detour route along the ocean, getting it all home was pure joy, too.

ha.

xox

happy birthday momma!

i wrote a song today. it's about rain. and it's a happy song. almost excessively happy.

all summer i could swear the sun was following me around. everyone around me was whining about the shitty weather but all i can remember is sunny road trips, swimming in clear lakes and browned skin. when i got to bc everyone wanted to warn me about the impending doom of endless rainfall. for the first few weeks it was an unfulfilled prophesy. even the weather people kept pushing back their predictions of when the rain would fall. some days i was convinced it it was a giant hoax and the rain would never come.

but of course it has rained. but even on days when it rains the sun will come out. and the rain is either light or short lived. and the rain is beautiful. because i'm unemployed, it's an excuse to spend a day curled up with a guitar or a book and some tea. and it makes things grow. today i was so happy about the rain that i started singing about it.

rewind to the peterborough folk festival. one of my favourite moments of the weekend was when canadian folk legend penny lang and her grandson jason lang led the crowd in a singalong of 'we shall not be moved'. http://www.xtec.cat/~vfeliu/lyrics/folk.htm#sha2 here's one version of the lyrics, if you are unfamiliar. i had never heard it before, but the simple tune and repetitive lyrics made it easy to catch on to. it was a really beautiful moment. i decided right then that i wanted to write a song like that - dripping with singalongability.

so that's what i was thinking about when i wrote this. here it is, dedicated to my mom, on her birthday.

Rain Dance – Jacqueline Ronson
Oct 23, 2009

G-G-C-G/G-G-C-D/G-G-C-G/G-D-G-G

I don’t need to go outside today
I think I’ll stay inside and play
I don’t need to go outside today
Let rain fall let it fall let it fall

I’m gonna dance round my living room
I’m gonna dance to a brand new tune
I’m gonna dance round my living room
Let rain fall let it fall let it fall

I’m gonna sing at the top of my lungs
And I’ll sing till every song is sung
I’m gonna sing at the top of my lungs
Let rain fall let it fall let it fall

I can hear the rain’s steady beat
It makes me wanna tap my feet
I can hear the rain’s steady beat
Let rain fall let it fall let it fall

In the creek, the pebbles are singing
The crickets hum and the fish are swimming
In the creek, the pebbles are singing
Let rain fall let it fall let it fall

I can hear the thunder boom
It stirs my soul and it shakes the room
I can hear the thunder boom
Let rain fall let it fall let it fall

I can see the lightning strike the earth
With it’s fire there comes rebirth
I can see the lightning strike the earth
Let rain fall let it fall let it fall

The trees are shining right to their roots
Drawing water right up the shoots
The trees are shining right to their roots
Let rain fall let it fall let it fall

And the seeds in the soil will grow
Waking up from beneath the snow
And the seeds in the soil will grow
Let rain fall let it fall let it fall

I can see the farmer smiling now
She knows it’ll work out somehow
I can see the farmer smiling now
Let rain fall let it fall let it fall

I’m gonna run right out into the wind
Let the rain soak right through my skin
I’m gonna run right out into the wind
Let rain fall let it fall let it fall

I’m gonna breathe in the freshest air
And let it carry away all of my cares
I’m gonna breathe in the freshest air
Let rain fall let it fall let it fall

I’ll shout praises to the sky up above
For sending me the rain that I love
I’ll shout praises to the sky up above
Let rain fall let it fall let it fall (x3)

catch up

hey folks,

sorry its been a while. it's been particularly hard to get solid internet times lately. here's the catch up, in no particular order:

dream bike!
been desperate for a bike since i moved away from becca's. walking around the city all day is fun but you can pack way more in when you're traveling at bike-speed. really wanted one of those super light super fast old school 10-speed road bikes with the skinny tires and handlebars that look like ram horns upside down (becca has one. i borrowed it a few times last week. it initially terrified me but i got hooked on the speed). anyways these particular bikes are very popular and very hard to come by - the guy at the used bike store said they rarely get them, and when they do, they go fast. getting to the point now, i went on craigslist yesterday to see if there were any new bikes posted, and there was my baby (see picture). they guy was selling cheap because he is leaving the country tomorrow. the ad said to call or show up at the store downtown where he was working that day. i called right away and told him i was on my way. i got really frustrated with the bus for not moving faster, ran to an atm and ran to the store. just in time! he was getting a flood of phone calls from people equally desperate for such a sweet find. but i won and i took home the prize! today's adventures - finding a helmet and lights. hooray!

dream apartment!
so, i moved on saturday. like the bike, i got really lucky with house hunting. all of my appointments ended up being for tuesday of last week. i saw six places. four of them we're really awesome. two of those emailed me right away and asked if i would live there. so now i live with marg, who is recently empty-nested and renting out her extra room. it's an extra sweet deal because marg is hardly ever around - she goes to her boyfriends on the weekends usually and has 1-2 week trips planned to hawaii and montreal before christmas! and she's really cool and we get along great. monday night we practiced guitar together from dvds that she has. it was a lot of fun. last night was her boyfriends birthday and after they came back from dinner the three of us sat around drinking wine and eating treats and playing guitar and singing songs. sweet.

yoga!
becca goes to the moksha hot yoga studio here in town. they have a $20 unlimited first week special, so i signed up and have been going every day since saturday. taking today off. it's really fun to get all hot and sweaty and i hope to be able to continue going. they have an 'energy share' program where you can exchange a few hours of work a week for unlimited access to the yoga classes, so maybe i'll do that after my week is up!

library!
i discovered the public library here in victoria. they have great cds! i have been pilfering the canadian folk section and taking home bundles of cds at a time. it excellent. perhaps i will start writing up mini-reviews of all my discoveries.

job?
hahah. i worked one day last week. through craigslist i got a job dressed up in a blackberry mascot costume as part of a marketing event called campus chase. it was really silly. the costume was incredibly uncomfortable and impossible to move around in, which was funny because my job description was basically 'move around constantly'. oh well i made some money and met some interesting people. here's a picture of me doing my finest work.

no luck so far with the uvic jobs. enjoying unemployment for the time being and not particularly stressed about getting employed right away.

food!
this one is way out of date but deserves a mention. while living with rebecca pretty much all we did was hang out and make treats. fall bounty included delicious squash butter, pumpkin cranberry loaf, brussel sprouts, soups, lots of things involving fried onion and LOTS of sausage. or as they say in new brunswick, sauseege. oh yeah and bacon. yum yum yum. meant to make a fuller list of our culinary exploits, but too bad for now.

thanksgiving!
spent an incredible tgiving with friends becca, steph and oli. we went to sombrio beach, a surfer's haven. we frolicked, collected firewood, and watched the surfers. as the sun went down, we made a bonfire and cooked a delicious meal of fire roasted sausage and corn. yum. we read stories to each other and had a great campfire singalong, which attracted some neighbours to our fire (or maybe they were just cold - we had the forsight to stop at a different beach on our way to grab fire wood, it was slim pickings at sombrio because of its popularity as a camping spot). great trip with great friends!

that's the scoop.

oh yeah, new address
302-2623 Richmond Road Victoria V8R 4S8
and home number 250 592 7321
cell number is still functional
i like mail!

the job hunt

it's funny how quickly 'i quit my job' becomes 'i want that job'

i guess not really all that quickly, since i've been essentially on vacation since july.

but the job quitting and the adventuring around the country is about more than shirking responsibilities and holding on to the carefree days of youth for as long as possible. and the new job search is about more than finding a way to finance more gallivanting on the west coast. the job quitting, the road trips, the folk festivals, leaving toronto, the west coast adventures, all of it (listen up kids, here it comes) is about building for myself the kind of life that i would like to be living.

so here i am, getting excited about jobs at the university of victoria. good jobs. jobs where i could work part time, cover all of my expenses, and have a zillion hours to pursue my own activities and interests. i could take courses, make music, volunteer with campus radio, volunteer on a farm, take up surfing and a million other things.

i expect intense competition for the jobs, they are after all, really sweet. i imagine i will be up against much more qualified and experienced individuals. But maybe, just maybe, i'll be able to convince them to give me a shot. if i don't get my dream job - a study abroad advisor with the international and exchange student services office -maybe they'll at least let me work in food services. i'm certainly qualified for that, and it would give me status as an internal applicant for future postings, and allow me to apply for the really sweet jobs like working in the library.

browsing craigslist it is apparent that as a young able bodied mobile person with few financial responsibilities or other commitments, i shouldn't ever have too much trouble finding jobs that will keep a roof over my head and food on my plate. but i'm thankful that, at this point, i don't need to wash dishes for $10 an hour and can concentrate on applying for jobs that could go somewhere.

and if nothing works out, i can always be a snowboard bum this winter!

victoria!!!

hello friends,

i am writing now from my dear friend rebecca's pad in beautiful victoria, b.c.

things continue to be really awesome.

hmmm what news?

sue and i drove up to tofino on sunday. it was quite nice and i hope to go again and get some surfing in. sue thinks she can get her kids to take me along for the ride when they go next, which is pretty rad.

monday i took the train to victoria. it's an adorable train ride - just one car, just one track. it goes up the island in the morning and back down each afternoon. we saw ocean and mountains and lush forests. we went on some tiny bridges over vast valleys, and on one we stopped for a few minutes right it the middle. it was beautiful and kind of terrifying. all you could see is the tops of trees hundreds of feet below.

today i did something pretty exciting - i applied for a job at uvic! the job i applied for is in the coop program office, which is pretty rad because coop is a big deal in these parts. also it's only part time which is super rad because i could probably cover expenses and have lots of free time for other assorted projects. there's a few other job listings at the university that i will apply for over the next week. i'm pretty sure that this is a solid plan because i'm pretty sure working at a university is basically my dream job. anyways we'll see what happens. i've been vaguely browsing craigslist for places to live and the like. there's a hostel downtown where i could get a room for a month for $345. pretty solid temporary solution, in all likelihood. but for now i will continue to bum out on rebecca's sweet futon and be a charming and helpful house guest for as long as she'll have me (actually it may come down to how long her upstairs landlord will have me - she's a bit bonkers and makes up crazy rules about no overnight guests for more than 14 cumulative days. she says it's the law but i can't find any reference to it anywhere).

yep, so, that's my life. we're going camping this weekend somewhere awesome that has yet to be determined and it's going to be so awesome.

words of the day:

solid, rad & awesome

peace, love and radical awesomeness

jacqueline

family times

hey all yall

the last couple days i've been spending with family i've never met. i highly recommend this kind of travelling to anyone. family is awesome.

on thursday i got picked up from the bus by trish, who is the lovely wife of my dad's mother's cousin. she took me back to their gorgeous house in horseshoe bay. their daughter janet was in town for a conference - she goes to school in alabama for interior design and basketball.

janet had to go to a doctor's appointment in north van so she took me with so i could explore the town. i spent most of the time in a bookstore, which was an excellent and terrible find because now i have two more books to carry around everywhere i go. but i'm excited about the books - one on guitar techniques which is exciting so i'll have something to work on besides playing songs i already know, the other is about the best farms to visit on vancouver island for great food year round.

when we got back trish had a lovely dinner prepared and bill was home so the four of us had a nice dinner. after dinner i grilled trish and bill for family information so i could gather some data to help kim with her family history project. it was really cool to hear their stories and take a look through their family bible, published in 1818.

the next day i trekked to the ferry to nanaimo, where my dad's cousin sue picked me up. on the way to her place half an hour up the coast we stopped several times to run errands, stops which got increasingly exciting as we got further from nanaimo. in nanaimo we saw fast food joints and big box stores - we stopped at costco. further up the coast we stopped at a farm that makes cheese, another farm / bakery, and a seafood joint where you have to drive right out onto the pier past all the trucks and fishing boats to get fresh, local seafood that is prepared right in the back of the trailer where you buy it. sue likes great food and i have no problem with that. needless to say we get along great.

oh yeah and her place is incredible. she just sold her previous house and moved only a few days ago to where i am know. when looking for new places to live, she had to make a split second decision between a house that was perfect with no view, and a serious fixer-upper overlooking the ocean. ocean view wins every time, obviously. sue has been working so hard to paint and set up the place, and already it's impossible to tell that it was last inhabited by a 95 year old woman who, understandably, hadn't done much upkeep since the 70s.

sue is a writer and has a company with her son where they do writing for different companies and clients. she also has a publisher for a murder mystery she's been working on / thinking about since the year of my birth. it'll be done by the new year. she's way cool.

something i ate over the last couple days didn't sit right with me and i woke up sick this morning. sue was awesome. she even asked if i might be pregnant - beacause if i was this would be the best place for me to be. that would be a great story wouldn't it? got pregnant and ran away to the west coast so i wouldn't have to tell anyone, found an open and accepting cousin who would take me in and get me through it. fortunately i'm not pregnant, and if i was i would never feel like i would have to run away from my family and life because of it.

i'm feeling great now. sue is off with ryder, her almost-5 grandnephew, at hockey practice. i skipped out on that part of the morning's activities to recuperate, but they will pick me up in a few to go for lunch at sue's sister carol's cafe. sue has a great network of family here on the island and in vancouver. they're all really close and i already feel a part of it. sue is hosting a big thanksgiving dinner and everyone's coming and i have already been invited. not sure if i will make it, but it sure sounds nice.

i totally love it here. can you tell?

j

p.s. sue helped shed some light on my schizophrenic relationship to my name. am i jacqueline? am i jackie? jaki? jax? something else? apparently when she last met me, at my christening at age 6 months, i was jackie. jackie and jamie. so apparently, when my mom told me that i they always used jacqueline because 'jackie and jamie' is too cutesy, she meant that we tried 'jackie and jamie', and so many people said 'awwwww jackie and jamie, that's soooooooooo cuuuuuute!' and they got sick of it. hahah now i know.

should have saved this for thanksgiving...

looking back over my previous blog posts, what i notice more than anything is everything that i haven't had a chance to write about. i've been gone 10 days but it feels like forever.

i have a friend who ends travel updates with a list of thank yous. i find this not only a good way to give thanks where it was due, but to summarize key events, which often centre around the people you meet along the way. so here is my own list, from the beginning.

very sincere thanks goes to:
-grandma, for putting me up in anticipation of my trip, and storing all my stuff while i'm away. and for everything.
-mom, for getting me in touch with sue ronson and contacting friends at universities in the area for me.
-kim, for driving me to the airport, and encouraging me to contact relatives in this neck of the woods
-all the other family and friends left behind, for love, encouragement and support.
-kasper, for letting me crash in his basement and feeding me and lending me camping gear and chats and generally being awesome
-vince, chris, carola, eileen and nikki for great company, "things" and the hokey pokey.
-tim, for chats and showing me the UBC farm
-kate, for dinner and long overdue catching up
-farah, for taking me on an early morning bike ride to the UBC farm market
-jamie, for taking me camping and carrying my guitar
-karli, for chats about meaningful life plans and for mushroom spotting abilities
-jay, for sharing music and stories
-andrew, for helping me get to pemberton and asking me to play my guitar
-leah, for delicious moose meat tacos
-brad, for teaching me a few tricks on the guitar and on the coleman stove
-babar, for getting me safely to the bus and for delicious fruits
-trish and bill, for giving me food and a bed and family stories
-janet, for car ride conversations
-sue, for making me feel immediately a part of her (our) family that i have yet to meet

now that i live with a writer and have access to a computer and may be in one place for a day or two i should be well inspired to write thoughtful updates. so, till tomorrow,

jacqueline.

pemberton!

adventures galore!

on tuesday i caught a greyhound out to pemberton (next town up from whistler). i came on a whim - had a couple days to kill and an invitation from my friend brad. heard it was beautiful here.

it is beautiful. maybe the most beautiful place in the world. the town is super super cute.

brad has been working on an organic potato farm and living in a cabin. he called me last week from his manager's house in town, and said i was welcome to come but have absolutely no way of contacting him.

so when i decided to come i called the root house manager, andrew. he was amazingly nice and excited for me to come visit and said he would bring brad into town to meet me at the bus.

brad and andrew did meet me, and took me to andrew's place where andrew and his girlfriend leah made us a delicious supper of moose meat tacos.

i sang for my supper and brought wine and cheese to share. brad and andrew were both super pumped that i brought my guitar - brad in particular as he left his guitar in vancouver thinking he was just going for a short vacation trip up to prince george when he stumbled upon this job and decided to stay.

andrew and leah are wonderful people and wonderful hosts. andrew visited pemberton from australia 6 years ago and just stayed (a story that you hear a lot around here) and leah is the niece of the owner of the farm where andrew and brad work. she works in whistler, in a restaurant i believe. after dinner, andrew gave us a ride back to the farm, about 10 minutes outside of town.

i spent the next two nights with brad in his cabin. it's a cute little space with a wood stove for heat, coleman stove for cooking and not too much of anything else. expect insects and mice. despite the unwanted tenants, the place is really cozy with lots of interesting things passed on from previous visitors.

i was hoping to get a day's work on the farm, but in the end the day i was there was quite frantic at the farm and no one was able to send for me to come help out. it would have been tough for me to jump in with no training and mess with the rhythm of the workers already there. brad gave me a tour a little later on and showed me all the fancy machinery used to harvest and sort and clean and package all the potatoes. this fascinates me. i wish i could have seen it all in action, but oh well, i'll get another chance to get my hands dirty on a farm another day.

so instead i spend my day on the farm around the cabin. it was a beautiful day and i went for a great morning walk in the sun. the mountains in the area are just getting their first snow fall and everyone is really excited about it. here, winter is when work slows down and play happens. i cleaned and tidied the cabin and felt like a good old farmer's wife. i played lots of guitar and sang my heart out and napped and read and all of that great stuff.

when brad came home he was pooped for a hard day of work and we cooked a delicious meal of couscous cooked with lentil soup and fresh carrots and kale from the farm, with grilled sandwiches of cheese, steamed kale and tomatoes. yum.

today i had to figure out how to get back into town to catch a bus back towards the city. it's generally pretty easy to hitch a ride around here and the people are friendly and neighbourly. unfortunately it was raining, but not too hard. in the end i walked to the farm and left my bags in the barn and waited on the road with my umbrella for a ride.

i got a ride from the second car that passed, a super nice guy with a farm just down the road. he knows the owners of the farm where i was staying and was happy to help me get into town, even though he was running late for a meeting. we listened to an audio tape of the bhagavad gita and he pointed out places in town where i could kill time until my bus left. at the end of the ride he handed me handfuls of organic fruits from his farm. what a magical place.

now i'm in the pemberton library and community centre, where people continue to be ridiculously nice and helpful. i'll catch a bus in an hour and a half that will take me to horseshoe bay, just west of west vancouver, where relatives trish and bill mclachlan will meet me and put me up for the night. we've never met but have graciously invited me to stay with them. there daughter will be there for dinner as well. they will help me catch a ferry to nanaimo tomorrow where sue ronson, my dad's cousin who hasn't seen me since i was a baby, will meet me and put me up for a couple days.

wow i feel so fortunate and lucky and well connected and well taken care of.

magic.

will update again soon,

jacqueline.

adventure camping

so aparently i can't update this from my ipod, which is a huge pain but whatever i'll just have to make a better effort to block time for it.

i'm on a computer at the greyhound station - $5 for 30 minutes. expensive, but the same price as locking up my baggage, and it's raining damn hard outside so i'll suck it up.

right, adventure camping.

i went went camping this past weekend with friends jamie, karli and jay. we went to mount seymore provincial park, which is accessible from vancouver's public transit, plus a short hitchhike from the park gate to the ski area at the top of the mountain. we were told that a couple hours hike from the ski area we would find lake elsay, and we would be able to find a place to set up camp.

snafu #1: i wasn't sure how adventurous the hiking would be... i brought my guitar to the departure point in vancouver, thinking i could leave it there if my camping buddies thought it was a bad idea. jay seemed enthused about bringing it and helped my strap it to my pack so it would be easier to carry. he only later admitted that he thought it was a bad idea, but knew that he wouldn't have to carry it and that he would get to play it when we got to camp! anyways my pack was way too heavy and way too big. my tent is not really meant for hiking trips and i brought extra clothes because i knew my sleeping bag wouldn't stand up to the cold. jamie carried my pack the whole way - he wouldn't let me help and was probably right that it was too heavy for me to manage anyways.

snafu #2: we took our sweet time getting out in the morning. my friends all had been to the ben harper / pearl jam concert the night before so it was slow going. by the time we got ourselves and all our stuff over and up the mountain it was maybe 4. we quickly realized that the hike was going to be no walk in the park. we were climbing up boulder mountains and zigzagging down rocky cliffs. to make matters worse we had strapped the guitar upside down so that the neck would be braced by the straps, so jamie couldn't step down big rocks without the guitar getting in the way. he was not having fun and i felt awful for having him carry all my stuff. when we got to the top of a mountain we could see what we thought to be the lake down below, and it did not look close. we didn't have a choice but to keep following the trail down and hope to get there before we lost the light.

snafu #3: after hiking for quite some time down a rocky path into a valley where we hoped to find the lake, it became evident that we had lost the trail. we thought that if we kept going we would for sure find the lake, but when we got to the bottom of the valley there was no sign of the lake and no obvious path onwards. we were losing light and had no choice but to set up camp for the night.

turns out we kind of lucked out on where we ended up - it was a beautiful site with a delicious freash water stream and tons of firewood. the valley was shaded from the sun for all but a couple hours of the day, but we built lots of fires and stayed warm.

day two we woke up and could hear - then see - hikers on the trail which turned out to be high on a ridge above us. we debated packing up and moving on to the lake, but given that we didn't have an easy path out of the valley, and weren't exactly sure where we would find the lake, we packed water and snacks and decided to make it a day trip.

we scrambled up the boulders to where we could see the path above us, only to encouter bushes thick with prickles blocking our path. our progress slowed dramatically. we pushed on through and eventually got up by climbing on trees growing horizontally out of the mountain and monkeying over the bushes.

the hikers we found on the path informed us that we had another TWO HOURS to the lake. we were apparently severly misinformed. we cancelled the day trip to the lake, hiked the path for a few minutes to see what we could see (not much) and found a much better, prickle-free path back down to camp.

again, the campsite itself was really great. we had lots of food, good guitar and song sessions, and lots of laughter. we were happy to stay there for a second night.

the way home was a lot easier - we rearranged the packs so that weight was distributed more evenly, strapped the guitar the other way around and had a relatively easy hike back to base camp. on the way back we noticed a sign warning us of the difficulty of the elsay lake trail. oops. hahah.

i'm out of time. i might add to this story later. all around great trip with great friends.

peace out yo

j

first post!

ahhh so much pressure!

i've been meaning to start writing about my life and life's adventures for some time, and while it's hard to say when exactly my current adventure began, (perhaps as my blog title alludes, it began when i quit my job) now that i am on the other side of the country in beautiful vancouver i'd say it's safe to say that i'm in it.

i could write for days catching you up on the adventures of summer, from winnipeg to sundridge to the haliburton forest to peterborough to ottawa and montreal, but this library computer is going to kick me off in 40 minutes so i'll have to leave that for another day.

well i took off for vancouver monday evening. the flight was filled with marathons of jon and kate plus 8 and ultimate cake-off. i regreted not picking a daytime flight - although the skies were clear, the dark prevented me from seeing the beautiful landscapes that were no doubt below. excitement built as the animated plane on the map on my neighbours screened passed over north dakota, the prairies, alberta and finally b.c. i tried desperately to make out the contours of mountains but the best i could do was imagine them by the valleys lined with the lights of small towns.

getting to my resting place - house of kasper, a friend from highschool - was easy enough on public transportation. i was greeted with open arms. kasper showed me around and made sure i had everything i wanted before i happily went to bed.

i got a good start on the day the next morning. i could see that it was a beautiful day outside, but it wasn't until i saw a photo of vancouver on the wall - beautiful city on the ocean tucked into the mountains - that i thought 'holy crap i'm wasting my life why am i not outside yet'. i hit the road on foot to explore.

as soon as i was out of the house the beauty of the place overwhelmed me - i couldn't believe how much i had missed by arriving in the dark. the mountains! i could see mountains right from outside the door! a few people had told me leading up to the trip that this is a really magical place, and i knew right away that it was true.

my hunch to head in the direction of the university was a good one. it was a longer walk than i expected, but a good one. i passed through the pacific spirit regional park, which has the most spectacular trees and vegetation.

the trees here are like mountains and the mountains are like sky.

i made it to campus, which has a familiar energy of september business. i quickly stumbled on regent college where i found unsecured wireless (which i can access from my ipod) AND free food!!! there was a chapel service going on when i got there, and though i didn't go in i enjoyed the singing from outside, and noticed people setting up to serve bread and soup. of course i waited till the service was let out and helped myself to a hearty bowl of vegetable soup with a crusty bun and extra butter. how i was thankful for this bounty! god bless!

of course i was dying to get to the ocean. after meandering along the top of a cliff for a while i found a long stair path down to the water, and a sign: 'cothing optional beach ahead'. what a serendipitous find! could there be any more romantic, spiritual way to begin my west coast adventure than with a naked swim in the pacific ocean?

in the end the clothing optional beach was a bit of a dissappointment. their was a very subtle creepiness to the beach that was non-threatening but slightly unsettling. walking down the coast i found many many more beaches, beautiful sandy beaches and parks with lots of people enjoying the unseasonally warm september afternoon. in the end i decided that i prefer beaches of the leash optional variety.

day one ended with a lovely campfire with kasper and housemates and friends in their gorgeous back yard. we made smores, sang flight of the conchords and did the hokey pokey. pure joy. times a million.

day two was lazy, and the main activity was a very extended guitar/singing/harmonica-ing session in the backyard, which felt really great. i got to bed early so i can tackle day 3 with all my strength. i plan to go downtown, maybe get my camera fixed and find a harmonica strap/holder. tonight i will have dinner with kate, a former highland dancer who i haven't seen in too long.

kasper and his housemates have been so good to me. They have a beautiful house in a beautiful neighbourhood. they are currently in the process of renting out their basement apartment, which is where i have set up shop for the time being. i have been sleeping on a bed consisting of a bouldering mat, some cushions, some blankets, a pillow and a sleeping bag. it's wonderful. i have been subsisting mainly on pumpkin seed butter and dried apricot sandwiches and other odds and ends picked up from a corner store i stumbled on.

time is running out! i will do my best to update frequently. finding wifi for my ipod has been fairly easy although extended posts are tedious without access to a full computer.

thanks to everyone i've encoutered so far for making my travels so comfortable and enjoyable.

applejax