My Hometown (Tofino)

I didn't know I'd travel all that way - just to land here.

And boy, do I feel like I've travelled a lot lately. Drove to Vancouver, flew to Montreal where I spent a night when the Air Canada strike was being declared, then onto Halifax (no strike), five days there, reconnected with King Arthur, a mermaid, family, friends, then flew to Saskatoon, got the bus into town and did some work at a cafe by the river, my friend Kris Kristofferson picked me up and we drove to his place in Saltcoats, just outside Yorkton, I spent two nights there with him and his family, they dropped me off at the highway where I was almost devoured by rabid coyotes, then West Wind and A-Man picked me up, enroute from Calgary and Sakatoon, we drove to Winnipeg and got in late, stayed at West Wind's Mom's place - got three hours sleep and went fishing the next day, caught a pickerel and a friend, got settled in our hotel downtown and went to a Winnipeg Jets game that night, went to the farm the next night, the next day drove back to Sakatoon with West Wind in the rental, went out for dinner and watched Trailer Park Boyo's, flew to Vancouver the next day, went to the Sunshine Coast for three nights, then back to Vancouver for Jesse James's man-baby-shower, then (finally) - home. Where my music's playin'..

A shocking lack of punctuation.

And where is home in all that?
It's funny, maybe I'm just getting old, I feel like I've travelled this country so much  - when I stood on the side of the road, the Yellowhead at Saltcoats, in the dark, I felt like "I've been here so many times before, this is my place.."
Then the coyotes started...
Perfectly at home in the Montreal airport finding a place to sleep and a beer, and a friend named Pat, not in that order.
Halifax - when I went back to you this time it was the first time since 2007 (or before?) that I felt I could live there again someday. Mostly I just want the license plate (it is the coolest in Canada, esp now that the Yukon has made their polar bear cartoonish) - for an intercontinental road trip. But also (I suppose ;) to spend time with friends and family and to once again have time to wander the woods and forests where I am more at ease (at home?) than probably anywhere else on earth.

Vancouver - to wander the streets of Kitsilano, get my mail, some sushi, an organic, wheat, milk and sugar free cookie. After almost a year there I feel comfortable and confident in the big V.

And then the Sunshine Coast - my community is this country, it's lovely how the last year has tied all my hitchiking and wandering experiences of youth into a tapestry of area-knowledge and freindships that allows me to feel like, even when I manage to find some place in Canada I haven't been before, -  I've been there before.

There was a little town on the prairies, not sure if it was in Manitoba or Sask, but it was an idyllic Stephen-King-esque tiny town where West Wind and I got some lunch on the road. We pulled in because we saw a sign for food, and it was three in the afternoon. The place was SMALL!
A school seemed like the only non-house structure. We drove around the three gridded streets and found a little pub at the back, They were decked out for rough-riders games, and two old farmers sat over coffee.

We got lunch, with the inescapable french-fries, and chatted with the waitress a bit. The town had fallen out of the sky from 1982, and as we left school was getting out - kids ran accross the streets in front of us and you could see seven year olds walking home alone, safe. Paradise.
"Why would anyone want to live here?" one may have thought as they drove in.
There's your answer.

I stood in the woods at the back of West Winds family farm house, just outside Winnipeg, and looked out over the Prairie, felt the cold wind, and the chill of change from the dead coyote shoulder-blade on the ground at my feet.

I just moved to Tofino. I didn't feel like travelling (theres a first for everything!) - I just wanted to stay home and get settled in. But I'm grateful for the travel, and all the clarity it brought about who I am and where I belong. I may think of myself a s a citizen of the world - but Canada is my hometown.

When ever I get a ferry to or from anywhere you can often find me, standing in the cold and not dressed for it, on the front deck, facing into the wind. I think of Tofino that way.
As close as I can get to leaping into the sea and swimming out all my passion until my lover enfolds me in her dark embrace.

O the king's tidy acre is under the sea,
And the royal rose in the bull's belly,
And the bull on the king's highway.

I live in Tofino. Halifax is my hometown, but Canada feels like it now. Home? The place I came from and will go? I'm always there, it's everywhere, in me, and you, the eagles and trees and crimes and saviours.