I cannot return to my home on Hammersmith Terrace until early May next year, so this is a half-time report as I wrap up my recent stay in the UK.

Flying into Toronto last evening felt apocalyptic with the setting sun creating a swirling orange glow out the plane's right hand windows, while on the left, the distinct skyline was masked by smoky fog from the widespread forest fires that were already raging when I left seven weeks ago.

Morning view from my mother's balcony. There's a lake in the distance...?

The fires break my heart a little, as do all the extreme weather events that are happening around the globe. Justine is in Rome as I write, where at least the old churches she loves will still be cool(ish).

Always I feel a fierce pride when flying back to Canada, knowing there are vast tracts of forest and lake and rock below. Such space! Such wilderness! There are those that get overwhelmed at this enormity of unpeopled land but it makes my soul sing.

And yet, and yet, I will return to live in the UK next spring. Threads of curiosity have been pulled, there are paths still unexplored, and I am excited at this conclusion, although I loved my time in Montreal. If I do return to Canada, and never say never but could the wildfires please be brought under control first, Montreal is where I would live. But for now, I have unfinished business in London.

In 1927, Gandhi wrote a letter to a British woman who had become like a daughter to him. Or perhaps more like an intimate assistant as she helped him with his teachings, prepared his food and monitored his bowel movements. He always recorded this basic function, seeing it as an accurate way of measuring the health of his whole body. How ahead of his time he was, as more and more people today learn about the role the gut plays in our well-being, from the nervous system and our propensity to obesity, to how well we sleep and any immune system modulation.

In the letter, he wrote, "... the pendulum has swung back and you are again perturbed. This does not surprise me. If our lucid moments were lasting, nothing further will remain to be done (my italics). Unfortunately or fortunately, we have to pass through many an ebb and flow before we settle down to real peace." 

I find this a positive presentation of the ups and downs of life, different from the Catholic or Protestant attitude that 90% of life and work is drudgery and it's best to just get on with it. Gandhi suggests a more gentle undulation of thoughts and ideas, sprinkled with realisations, regrets to learn from and joy in the small things, the connections, our engagements.

Self-awareness creates a more growth-fueled attitude, and I have gained that in spades over the past eleven months of travel. The sidebar in my blog starts with, "I can't be the woman I was in 2019 no matter how hard I try...," and it's true. Like the 'Ship of Theseus Paradox' that questions whether a ship that has had each of its ageing wooden planks replaced as it crosses a body of water is the same ship upon arrival as it was when it left, I am not the same person I was when I began my travels last August. Not only have many of the very cells of my body changed (and even more so if I compare my physiological make-up to what it was in 2019) but my mind, my outlook, my achievements and my relationships have also shifted.

"Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished," says psychologist Dan Gilbert.

I am not the person I was a year ago. When I set up this blog, the pandemic had undermined my confidence and those post-divorce struggles had reared their existential heads. But I'm glad they did, as it made me kick myself out of my comfortable nest. I challenged myself, and I see this resulting shift as an achievement, something to be celebrated.

But not yet. This is only a half-time report.

My next few months, after a spell at my cottage on an island, in a lake, in a patch of hopefully unburned wilderness of Ontario, will be much more peripatetic than this past year. Not that I didn't travel then - I managed to get around Québec, the US, Costa Rica and Mexico - but that was an experiment in creating community, exploring possibilities of stability. Focusing perhaps too hard on my where.

In mid-September I fly on a one-way ticket to Europe and begin a period of wandering, of testing my ability to leave things unplanned, of turning up at a train station and choosing a journey at random. It's definitely out of my comfort zone. So to ease into it, I'll start with an (organised) Camino from Porto to Santiago de Compostela. Two weeks of pilgrimage along the Portuguese coast, walking on average 20 kms each day, with five women I met at my Baja workshop last March. What a life-shifting week that turned out to be.

Here's a photo that I rather like from the wedding 💜