Simon says

 I'm going to print this last year of blogs into a book, and now seems as good a time as any to draw a line and declare the festivities over.  We are firmly back in our house with a few boxes and the usual array of minor diy tasks that comprise the always-there list.  We have our traditional Crotch Lake canoe trip to look forward to with the Cressmans in a couple of weeks before getting ready for back to school.  And so I think it is safe to say that life has come full circle and returned to normal.     But before moving on too quickly from the year that has just been, here are some final thoughts.  It's almost impossible to make sense of what we have done in one short year.  It's why I want to print the blog. If I scroll through the photos on my phone and land at random, there I find a whole adventure, one of hundreds, but one that hasn't popped into my head in months.  I just did it, Lago Grey in Torres del Paine, a picture of an iridescent blue iceberg, floating agai

  Felicity launching the O'pen Bic for Monday night racing, Nepean Sailing Club Wow!  There's a reason those space capsules burst into a ball of flame when they come hurtling through the atmosphere to return to their home planet.  Yes, I know, it's friction.  Perhaps the subsequent hard landing would be a better metaphor: we forgot to deploy our parachutes.  Either way, mind and body have had a bit of a hard time making sense of it all.  It might not have helped that our easy-peasy direct Swoop flight home turned into a cancelled Swoop flight, a re-booked, re-directed WestJet flight through Toronto, landing at 1am instead of 4pm.  What trip would be complete without a final disrupted air travel anecdote?   Home, almost, late at night. No more plush rental cars Our last few days in Edmonton with the Nameth's was a lovely way to finish the trip.  Playgrounds, leisure centre swimming pools, bowling alleys, communal meals and a splash of diy all adding up to good times, wit

No Africa, no Asia, no Antarctica, but a whole lot of elsewhere.  73,000 km by plane (eek); 7,000 km by car; 1,000 km by train; 300 km by boat; and 200 km by bus; and a not totally insignificant distance by foot, perhaps 3,700 km according to Garmin including runs, hikes and day to day movement.  There's a thought.

 Writing this as we cross the plains of Alberta, I realise now how much I miss the mountains and the ocean.  It is hard to explain why I feel a comfort and a peace in those environments.  I certainly didn't grow up around mountains and my ocean going experience was confined to the Solent and the English Channel.  I don't know if it is the weather or something deeper in the mysticism of those environments that so ostentatiously overwhelm us.  Some people find their peace in the desert landscape or the deep forest.  Suffice to say I have loved spending so much of the year close to seas and mountains but I am only now fully appreciating that. Approaching Revelstoke And so it was that we enjoyed threading our way through the Coast Mountains and into the Rockies.  There is a wildness to the communities dotted through these parts and a sense of living on the edge of the wilderness.  Where Europe's mountains have in many places been tamed and civilised with roads and ski resorts,