Dear Canada, it’s okay to be wild and strange…

I’m in Canada. I know, right? I never saw that coming.

And despite being born just a few blocks from where I’m writing now, I’ve quickly learned that Canada is a whole other country. Okay, that goes without saying, but I never expected unfamiliarity on this scale. Especially when it comes to Canada’s wild spaces. Weren’t these the spaces that shaped my little wanderers soul? So how are they so strange now?

But they’re so strange.

That’s a little hard to take, because nature is the language I speak. I know it. I’m comfortable with it. It’s where I’m ‘me.’ But this place where I came from halfway around the world to to ‘find myself,’ is so unfamiliar. This is nature and it rocks socks, but it isn’t my nature. And that’s okay. Love it anyway. I’m embracing the strange and wonderful. I’ll try and embrace it in myself too…

Smell that tree. You don’t need to know its botanical name . Listen to the birds without trying to fit a name to a song. Dip your feet in a lake and fall in love with the curious fishes, even if you’ll never now what they are.

If you know me, you know that not knowing usually drives me crazy. But this time, instead of obsessively looking up birds in bird books and plucking leaves from trees to identify them, I’m just letting it all be. Out in Quebec’s forests this week, I’ve been saying ‘hi’ to some old friends, and just leaving the strange things to their own wild devices.

Sometimes it’s okay to be strange. Actually, it’s always okay to be strange. We don’t need to know everything.
Love Canada.

pink lake

these tracks are very cool, but I have no idea what they are

sitting in a pile of maple tree

i FREAKED OUT when I saw a chipmunk. you know youre not Canadian anymore if you lose your mind at the sight of a chipmunk. at least i knew what it was…

i didnt know what this was though. something shrewish.

maple leaves!

when youre from africa, even pine cones are exciting…

a piliated woodpecker is roughly the size of an albatross and doesnt hammer dainty little holes into trees like our african woodpeckers do. they decimate them.

I thought I’d feel properly Canadian if I gave myself poison ivy. so i rubbed it all over my legs and nothing happened. maybe im immune. some people are, apparantly…