Bittersweet reminders from a familiar forest 🌳
Plus: 3 discoveries from a month of deep reflection 🍃
I grew up in the most remarkable location. 🧡
When I was a toddler, my parents bought a house on the outskirts of Ottawa, in a new suburban development called Kanata. Our house, the first one on our side of the street, was built on the rim of a cul-de-sac, with train tracks on one side and the National Capital Commission Green Belt on the other. Eventually, more houses went in, the railway disappeared, a bike path was developed in its place, and potential plans to extend the street beyond the cul-de-sac were quashed (thank goodness). From that bike path, which turned to cross-country ski tracks in winter, one could veer off into the network of forested trails of the green belt. As kids, we rode our bikes or skied on the trails and ducked into the woods for fort-building and tree-climbing. One time, we found a pond frozen over and ran home to get our skates.
All this was in one of the fastest-growing cities in Canada at the time. That bike path? Still there. The greenbelt? Also miraculously still there. Kanata is now home to over 135,000 people.
There’s a particular route through those woods I’ve taken countless times. Once you leave the house and you’re on the main bike path, you can take a left turn at every junction and it gradually takes you back out into the neighbourhood, and then back home. I’ve done it so many times, I can picture it all in my mind, including the details along the way: a stone full of ripples, a tree whose lower branches were clipped off (probably because we kids climbed on it), and some downhill sections I remember rattling through on my bike.
It’s like that whole trail is baked into my DNA, along with some of my best childhood memories.
Fast-forward to November 2022. I took a short trip back to Ottawa to visit my folks, and one morning my mom and I set off to walk that familiar route. But as we entered the forested path, I immediately noticed a difference.
In May of last year, the city experienced what’s called a derecho — a straight-line wind storm that can cause considerable damage. Four hundred telephone poles went down in the storm. Ottawa recorded wind gusts up to 190 kilometres/hour — equivalent to an EF-2 tornado. As my mom and I walked the trail, I saw stands of trees, sometimes 10 to 20 trees at a time, snapped right in half. They had all been simultaneously blown over in one strong gust.
As we approached one of the final junctions, a sign was pinned to a tree: The trail is blocked beyond this point.
I considered proceeding — How bad can it be? — when someone coming from a different trail said it was truly impassable. My mom and I decided to retrace our steps back to the house. It was the first time in my nearly four decades of exploring those trails that I simply couldn’t get through. I had trail maintenance crews to thank for their work after previous storms. But with damage as extensive as that from the derecho, it could be a year or more before those trails are opened up again.
The image of that closed trail has stuck with me. It has me thinking about the things in life that I take for granted or assume will always be there. As a child, I was fortunate to have a stable home life. I had a narrow view of what it meant to grow older and face real change or uncertainty. I felt safe and secure in that rather padded existence, there in suburbia with a forest in my backyard. Back then, I could enter that trail system and know that if I always turned left I’d find my way home. 🏠
But, with each passing year, I’m coming face-to-face with bittersweet reminders. That this too shall pass. That our loved ones are on loan to us for a finite span of time. That this vacation I’m looking forward to will probably be over before I’m ready to come home. That the forest trail is littered with broken trees and just doesn’t look the same anymore.
I’ve had a month of deep reflection. And in the quiet and mindfulness, I’ve discovered some things that have helped me to navigate the bittersweet:
Connecting with my Self, the only throughline in my existence. Even if we change, our hearts are still beating. I like to put one hand on my chest so that I can feel myself breathing, and then I simply say, Here I am. ✨
Time spent with old friends — the ones you’ve had in your life for a decade or more; the ones who “get” you and let you grow and evolve; the ones for whom you don’t need to provide context or explanations; the ones that make conversations easy. Spending time with these friends is like tapping into a lifeline, which tethers you to something solid and supportive.
A deep connection with Nature. Nature demonstrates how changes are normal and life has its natural seasons. The sunset fades, leaves fall to the ground, and rain turns to snow, which later melts back into puddles. Plugging into Nature at the soul level keeps us in tune with these natural rhythms.
It’s both a blessing and a curse of life that everything comes to an end. But if my story of that forested trail can offer us a reminder, it’s this: whether I continued on my usual route or retraced my steps, I eventually found my way back home.
What’s caught my attention lately… ✨
Good Conversations Have Lots of Doorknobs by
- "There’s some recent evidence that what makes conversations pop off is indeed the social equivalent of doorknobs." This piece offered insights into aspects of conversations I think I'd noticed but never been able to articulate before. I highly recommend you add it to your reading list.
Check these out too… 🙌
Lights to Guide Me Home: A Journey Off the Beaten Track in Life, Love, Adventure and Parenting - my memoir
The Wonders That I Find - my children’s book
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