Running Away to Find Home

I recently returned from a five week trip through Southeast and Central Europe. I flew to London, then to Crete, where I met some friends, and then I caught a bus (alone now) into Albania. I snaked my way through Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Austria, into the Czech Republic, and then flew back to London.

Being a so called "environmentalist," you may already be chastising me in your mind for erasing any positive carbon impacts from my relatively carbon mature life in Canada, and rightfully so. But it has been a long year, and I haven't had a holiday in two years, and I came back a better person for it; however, I am still a hypocrite. But I am a self-analytical hypocrite. And the question I asked myself many times while I was away was this: why do I need to run away from Canada in order to put my life into perspective? I've been doing it for years. I did two months in Europe in 2000. Eighteen months in Asia in 2003. Four months in Africa in 2005. And now two months in the Balkans in 2007.

But the conclusion I came to is:

That I will always require space from my routines at points in my life, and I will always need to find self-awareness, perspective, self-discovery, adventure, disconnection is indisputable.  I would really like, however, to start seeking these fulfillments a little closer to home. I love reading history, but tourism creates a disconnect between the stories and the places, and Canada is so multi-cultural that I can create relationships with any part of the world without even leaving the city. And if it is isolation that I need, and space to reflect on my life then how about these amazing mountain ranges full of temperate rain forests and zero people per square mile that are within sight of my rooftop patio in Kitsilano?