30 minutes into our journey and we are hoping it doesn’t get much worse than this.

The road (even more) north

Our path has changed. Well, it’s veered about 2000km north west of Edmonton. Our destination is known as the Wilderness City, it’s Canada’s driest city and with a population of 30,000, the largest city in Northern Canada.. Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.

Even though Whitehorse is further north than we were planning to travel, and quite a bit west of home, it feels right. It’s only about three hours from Skagway, one our our favourite and more frequent ports of call from our years working on cruise ships. It’s nestled within forests and mountains on the Yukon River and only hours from the ocean, where we’ve always felt at home. 

We love a good road trip and now it’s time to plan the 60 hour trip of a lifetime. This will be the first excursion with Fi, our new 2007 Toyota 4Runner, soon to be accessorized by a cargo trailer. We are travelling over 5000km to via northern USA to northern Canada, through the mountains, in the middle of winter. Adventures await!

I’m an introvert and I’m okay

This is a blog post I started to write a few days ago…

One of the great things about uprooting your life is the chance to re-invent yourself. I’m going somewhere that no one knows me. There are no pre-conceived notions about Christa Galloway in the far reaches of northern Alberta. I have a chance to be the person I want to be.

Then something happened, I become addicted to TED talks. Specifically the TED app on my iPad. It’s like watching TV but instead of it being a guilty pleasure, it’s just a pleasure. I have become a database of various interesting pieces of information and gleaned some insights that are having a positive influence on my life. One talk in particular made me re-think my post, a TED talk was by Susan Cain called, The Power of Introverts. 

At the beginning of her talk, Cain described an experience at summer camp where she was encouraged to be outgoing.

“I got the message that somehow my quiet and introverted style of being was not necessarily the right way to go, that I should be trying to pass as more of an extrovert. And I always sensed deep down that this was wrong and that introverts were pretty excellent just as they were.” - Susan Cain

Right away, this struck a chord with me and without trying hard I could think of dozens of similar situations I have been in. I remember feeling that being told I was “quiet” had the same sting as if I’d been called a “loser.” My 7 years of 6-month contracts working on cruise ships gave me the opportunity to continually re-invent myself until I’d eliminated “quiet” from the vocabulary of my friends and colleagues when referring to me. On my first contract, a young man nicknamed me “mouse.” By my fourth contract my manager complained that I spoke to much at meetings. He meant it as a put-down, I took it as a triumph.

To that very minute, I was still in the process of my lifelong effort to be a more outgoing extroverted person. Was Cain saying I could be an introvert… and that was okay?

She spoke about the benefits of introverts in leadership roles, and how a third to a half of people are introverts, and how introverts are at their best when they can do their thing.

“…the more freedom that we give introverts to be themselves, the more likely that they are to come up with their own unique solutions to these problems [in fields like science and economics.]”

And boom, duh, it hit me, why is it that I think I have to be an extrovert? I mean, at this point in my life, I really have no idea. I’m a pretty great thinker. I love to read and write. Big groups are not my cup of tea. In fact, I would prefer a cup of tea. I’m not the star of the show. Don’t want to be. And that’s… okay.

I was burning with the urge to write about my revelation when I looked back at the post I had started to write… I have a chance to be the person I want to be. I realized something. The person I wanted to be when I started the post, who I thought I could become (and might have succeeded) was someone who was more of an extrovert. I realise I’ve had a history of doing exactly this. For the first time I don’t feel like trying to be this person anymore. I’m actually quite happy with my introvert-extrovert ratio. I feel like I have permission from myself to be me.

Don’t get me wrong, there are changes I want to make on this road north. I want to be more self-sufficient, I want to be less judgmental of others, I want to have a smaller environmental impact and I want to be an active part of a community (and I want to learn shoot a target with a bow and arrow from horseback). But I don’t need to be a social butterfly and I will give myself guilt-free permission to go off and spend a little me time.

If you’re interested, here is a link to Cain’s TED talk…

The Power of Introverts

Home is the flickering of light and dark through my eyelids, the feel of a plump tomato from the garden, the sounds of birds and insects going about their day, the fresh air in my lungs.

My biggest fear about change I think is not losing something, but forgetting it.

This is the first incarnation of my project to make a video record of my home the way it is now. I will be adding bits and pieces over the next six weeks.

The great truck debate

“I won’t come back with a truck.” That’s what Richard said when he left to get our car serviced. 

He came back with a truck.

To be fair he had not purchased a truck, it was a test drive. But still.

When made the decision to move to Northern Alberta we quickly realized our Toyota Matrix was not going to cut it. There are about three times more new trucks than new passenger cars sold in Alberta, probably more in Northern Alberta. By April 19, 2013 Grande Prairie had 266cm of snow. A friend of ours who used to live in Alberta advised getting windshield insurance and this sentiment has been echoed by other previous Albertans. The reason? Gravel from the dirt roads chipping the windshield.

We’ve been researching and test driving trucks over the last few months. I’ve been interviewing unsuspecting truck owners everywhere. A Dodge Ram driver at my son’s daycare says it sucks gas. The father of the bride at a wedding a few weeks ago is on his second Ford F-150 and loves it. My neighbour with a Hemi swears by it.

I test drove a Dodge Ram last month. As I hoisted myself into massive truck with my British mother-in-law was perched in the back seat I had a strong feeling I had no business driving this monster. As I pulled up to a red light some lady in a small car (all cars look small from the Ram) almost hit me. And then there was the turkey struggling to stay aloft as it flew in front of my windshield. No joke. I’ve never even seen a turkey fly before. I’m not even sure I knew they could. I was slightly less intimidated by the time I got back to the dealership unscathed and when I scooted back into the Matrix the car seemed a bit dinky and fragile.

As of today I am on team Ford F-150 (cheaper, more common, full-size) and Rich is on team Toyota Tacoma (more expensive, better mileage, mid-size). Every F-150 owner I’ve spoken to loves their truck.

So when I test drove the Tacoma I didn’t really want to like it. But I did. A lot. I hardly felt a bump driving over train tracks, I could take corners at more than 1 mile an hour and no turkeys dive bombed me. It was easy to drive, not the monster the Ram was and more like driving a big car. I’m not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I kind of liked the monster.

An idea becomes reality

We accepted an offer on our house yesterday. This was one of many concrete pieces of reality on the way towards our idea, our escape to the north. An idea is a strange thing. It is vague and shifting and powerful. This idea made us send a letter to all of our clients and friends and family telling them we were selling the business and moving to Alberta. That was the first real step. Or the first nail in the coffin depending on what mood I’m in. Accepting an offer on our house is just the latest step but maybe the biggest one. The point of no return. Something very real. As of October 28 we will most likely no longer own this house and we will effectively be homeless, crashing with my parents. It’s terrifying and thrilling. Our vague and shifting idea is becoming more real, more defined.  

While we are closing this door, another door is opening, a sliver at a time. We finally got the letter we’ve been waiting for from Alberta. Predictably the letter listed a mountain of red tape to wade through but Richard has been plugging away. A notarized copy of his Canadian Citizenship, check. Original O-level and A-level certificates, check. University transcripts, check. 

While we were signing our acceptance of the offer with our real estate agent, Richard’s phone rang. The caller ID said “GOVT OF ALBERTA.” We learned that Rich could be teaching in Alberta by April, after a course at the U of A and a 10-week practicum starting in January. The rest of his on-line courses can be done anytime, even after he’s been hired. I can feel our ideas crystallizing as a timeline begins to form.

The life we leave behind

My three-year-old son Oscar pedals his trike up and down the street as fast as his little legs will spin. A couple of older girls join him for a few turns up and down the street. There are no cars on the road, it is a dead end road that ends at the bay. In the mornings the bay is often so calm it looks like liquid glass. You can stare into the bay and be almost hypnotized by the slow motion of the water. The bay is Georgian Bay and on clear days you can see Christian Island on the other side.

Our house is welcoming and bright. In the back are a herb garden and a vegetable garden. Raspberries, blackberries and blueberries grow in abundance. The large yard is surrounded by Maple and Ask trees, shading out the rest of the world.

For someone else, this house could be a little piece of paradise. For us there is an ominous background hum of debts and mortgage to be paid putting a damper on the ambiance. This was our forever house. I fervently hope this house will belong to someone else by the end of the month.

The anti-climax

We were all fired up. We would sell the house, finish up our last few jobs and be off on an adventure. “Adventures, big and small!” we quoted to each other from our wedding vows. Plans were made and we had smiles from ear to ear.

And then came the paperwork. 

Richard has not taught in 14 years and to be certified in Alberta you need currency. A police check. Take an online course. Apply for certification. Ten weeks of teaching practice in Alberta. As my husband doggedly jumped through hoop after hoop the excitement flagged. At a certain point we realised it would likely be a year before we were actually living in Alberta with a job. A year of limbo.

For us, the road north does not start with a foot pressing eagerly on the accelerator. It starts with a slow step.

The road north

Do what you love and love what you do. You’ve maybe heard the phrase. It seems logical. I love photography and I am a professional photographer, so I must be just bouncing with happiness. So why is it that the day my husband said to me that we could leave our photography business and go to Alberta where the jobs are I felt a stirring of of something I have since identified as hope. And for me happiness without hope is something very close to despair.

So we are changing our lives. We’re heading North. We’re leaving the town I grew up in for a remote land I’ve never been to. We’re leaving debt and worry and home ownership for a steady income and and the unknown. Friends and family will carry on their lives without us and we go where we do not know a single person.

This is the road north.