art night. or, map my run.

There are few things as anxiety-producing for me as my friends’ Art Nights, where everybody shows up with all assortment of paints and papers and pastels and pencils and print-making materials, and proceed to play. Stories and ideas and impulses take shape into quirky or dark, fanciful or beautiful forms. If I (somehow or other) get talked or (more likely) tricked into attending, I stare nervously around the room, making demonstrations of testing out colors to disguise my lack of productivity. I bide my time, waiting for everyone else’s work to accumulate so I can fall into my groove of seeing ideas and patterns emerge in their work, asking questions about their pieces – rather than creating something of my own (unless, of course, I’m given free range of a kitchen, where I can ignore most of a recipe to the end of keeping my artsier friends well-fuelled – cookies, anyone?).

I think you get the picture. In the visual realm, I’m not much of a creator. But I do have one or two theoretical pieces of art that exist only in my imagination. Here’s one:

Imagine a map. A trail map of a park, say, Knox Mountain (a local favorite; it could be substituted with Okanagan Mountain Park, Rose Valley, or Myra-Bellevue).

As an aside: I love maps. This is something I get from my dad, who would get so distracted reading maps at gas stations (maps I was certain, as a child, were identical to those we had already scrutinized prior to heading out on the road) that my sister and I could sneak extra bags of Hickory Sticks and Nibs into his purchase while he distractedly route-planned through the backwoods of Montana. Now, much to my chagrin, I buy maps – and Google them – and imagine my own routes, deeper into BC, up-and-over mountains. Only for me, I’m usually checking out where I might explore on foot, while my dad loved to hit the road.

Anyhow, back to the trail map of Knox. This map, preferably topographical, traces all the routes I’ve ever taken on Knox, thicker lines appearing in places I have traced and retraced, thinner lines where I've gone off trail only once, whether to scramble somewhere new or because I’ve lost my way. I imagine pulling from my Suunto data, overlaying every route I’ve taken over the past few years, 45-minute jaunts to five-hour endurance runs. Over the map of Knox, I imagine a web will emerge of all the spaces I’ve traced and found and made, a lattice of routines and explorations, the familiar and the one-offs.

Then, somehow – and please, don’t ask me how, I have no idea how – I would layer images on the map that are representative of moments I’ve had along each of these trails. Because, for all the times I’ve run these trails, no two times have been the same.

Some images could be signposts, like the cairns near Kathleen Lake. I’ve hammered up past these cairns on hard workouts, mouth stuffed with Okanagan dust. I’ve stopped still in the middle of a run and stared at my stone friends after months of work-travel and felt from them a silent welcome home!, as they pointed my way with their off-kilter arms along my most comfortable solo trail. Another time, alone on a five-hour run, I cried among the cairns, when, after months of training, it was uncertain whether my running partner would be able to race in the Alps. The stones hold these moments for me – sometimes reminding me from where I’ve come and other times keeping their peace (thank goodness – I’m not a big public crier, and I wouldn’t want it regularly thrown in my face).

Other images would be signals of the changing seasons, the phases of life passed on the same trails. A ridiculous Instagram of my friend throwing snowballs in the air, goofy smile spread on his face, during his first wintertime run. The balsamroot that signaled my #firstkelownaspring: after five years of regular travel, I took my first April spin on Knox and asked my friends – did the city plant these yellow flowers? Where did they come from? – only to find out they are regulars after the snow melts. Selfies with friends during midsummer runs, when Knox is decorated in dogs and dog-walkers in colored tank-tops. Images of glowing green eyes from autumn nighttime runs when the deer herd up, and we slip by as silently as we can, crossing our fingers that they are (in fact) deer, and not coyotes or lynx or bears.

Not all images need be particular to me. I couldn’t help but pop into my piece of art the view from the gazebo at the top of Apex trail or the bench high above Paul’s Tomb. Runner after runner has taken photo after photo of these locations, but who can blame them? A couple of weeks ago, I took out a new trail runner for his first spin on Knox, and he apologized for taking so many photos of what (he assumed) must be (to me) mundane vistas. I don’t think he believed me when I told him that I have dozens of photos of the same spaces – in different lights, with different people, from silly selfies and artsy snaps, most accompanied (at the time) with some version of: I can’t believe I live here.

There are more – but suffice it to say that this map could have layers and loads of images that snapshot my inhabitance of Knox. An artist could make it look striking, these layers and lines, but for now it is just my own imagining of how my random and resolute ramblings on Knox have rooted me in this place – and how I, somehow, have made Knox: well, Knox – a place to be found and run and explored. Fancier philosophers than I (aka: Certeau) have said before that “space is a practiced place,” and “like cartographers translating physical places into graphic spaces [for my dad to peruse at gas stations], we participate in the human mapping of territories by transforming places into experiences (cred: Busque). Don’t ask me how to do the graphic work of capturing this experience through pastels or paints – I’ll leave that up to my Art Night friends, with all of their ease in the visual territory – but I will continue to build in my imagination the web of my wanderings on Knox as I run and run again. 

Cairns.

Balsamroot in #firstkelownaspring

I hate winter. or, how i found koselig.

I hate winter.

Throughout the fall, my ski friends puff their breath into the cold air, hoping to see wisps of white. They whoop over the first snowy run, prematurely wax their skis (and mine), pull out their woolly layers and dust off their down jackets. They buy early-bird ski passes and new socks, scheduling weekends at wood-fired cabins and in the backcountry with thermoses. Meanwhile, I soak up every active moment outside that I’m not shivering, stuffing my hydration hose down my armpit to thaw, breaking my teeth on frozen granola bars and spending my ice cream money on Hot Shots.

Last winter, over a coffee and perhaps a bit too much Bailey’s, my mom and I made a list of the Top 10 Worst Things About Winter. It included what you’d imagine: cold, darkness, seasonal weight gain, Netflix addition, antisocial behavior, icy streets, slippery sidewalks, car-scraping and block heaters. We got a bit more imaginative, too: no local, seasonal produce (hello, imported grapefruits and watery hot house cucumbers), the inability to sit on a patio, and the high cost of vitamin D supplements. Not wanting to be full-on winter Debbie Downers, we tried to think of some positives (Christmas lights? A new friendship with the local librarian? Extra time to be introverted?), but we didn’t get much past three or four.

I’m not sure when my loathing of winter began. I grew up in Edmonton, not thinking twice about wearing mis-matched mitts and my dad’s old toque from the catch-all in our front entryway, waiting at the bus stop in all get-up just to keep warm, freezing my eyelashes shut on toboggan runs, having extra pairs of Sorels in the car and the house and my locker at school, and saving money on the cheap entertainment of skating in my friends’ frozen backyards. Winter was a way of life, not something to be questioned.

Until I moved to Vancouver. Vancouverites love to address folks from any other part of Canada with exactly this line: “You’re from <<any Canadian city other than Vancouver>>?!? How could you ever live there?!?” It was in Vancouver that I learned that Edmonton was cold. And I grew to hate winter, pretending instead that I loved a soaking run in my Gore-tex jacket (and, for that matter, Gore-tex pants, shoes, gloves, socks, and headband) or that the donning of trendy Hunter gumboots was somehow preferable to tugging on my beefy Sorels.

Brief aside: I’ll save rain and seasonal affective disorder for another blog post about Vancouver.

Now that I live in Kelowna, I live in the in-between-land of winter-but-not-quite-winter, where we have snow and cold days and pervasive cloudiness, but enough warm, melty days that we resent anything below minus two and start crying for spring in early March when it doesn’t come until June. In Kelowna, as the days get shorter throughout the fall, I feel the dread of winter, of the Top Ten.

But this fall, I read an article about the Norwegian word koselig, which is how our friends in Europe's northern climes cope with winter. Koselig (from what I understand, never – lamentably – having ever been to Norway) captures all things cozy, on a much deeper level than we understand coziness here in Canada. It evokes good conversation and candles and home décor, friendship and comfort and fine spirits (in all forms of the word). A Norwegian blogger defined it more as comfort than as coziness: “basically anything can (and should) be koselig: a house, a conversation, a dinner, a person. It defines something/someone /an atmosphere that makes you feel a sense of warmth very deep inside in a way that all things should be: simple and comforting.” Thinking my country was lacking somehow in the winter survival department (how, after all, could I live in Kelowna – much less Edmonton, like my mom), I decided to embrace koselig.

My first fall in Kelowna, in a new job that no longer required I spend October and November gallivanting around Canada, I dove into koselig whole hog. I became obsessed with holiday décor, even Pinteresting candles and pillows and lights for the first time (don’t judge). My obsession even extended to a lengthy saga of getting a black, metal, pointy (read: razor sharp), 4-foot star through the Toronto airport to decorate my home (success!). I’ve experimented with candles and drinking chocolates, raclette cheeses and woollen socks, Goodreads and big batch soups, brought homemade snacks to ski shacks, pretended to love skiing until I truly began to love it, worn earmuffs on the trails, and ooh’d and ahh’d over opening our homemade canned goods from the fall. I’ve had mochas – long, toasty mochas – with friends, shared drinks and shared life, with time to look people in the eye while we chatted. Koselig.

Is it working?

Well, the days are already getting longer (how'd that happen so fast?). I flee my office at 4:30, headlamp in hand, for the running or ski trails, followed by some leftover soup. And we’re planning a trip to Montreal in February.

Montreal? How could anybody ever live there?

Koselig at home... 

a mountain is a mountain

Sometimes I get a kick out of the banality of my Instagram feed. I mean, I click on the thing, and I scroll through the regular mix of artsy angles of alleyways, food sure to put my BBQ’d corn and smokies to shame, and children-children-children – not to mention the peak-of-the-day featured by every mountain-running, outdoor-loving photographer I follow. On Instagram, the masses become mundane: another mountain, then another. Rocks, trees, sky, dirty shoes, outstretched arms, tents, pristine lakes, jagged peaks. Scroll...

But the perspectives make them different from one another. I saw a photo from Ha Ling this week – a Canmore favorite. The caption: “I have conquered my fear of climbing to the top! Survived Ha Ling!” While I have my own shake-in-my-booties peak memories, my own and only Ha Ling experience could instead be captioned: “Maneuvering tourists and beer coolers on Ha Ling, Canmore’s Grouse Grind” or “Ha Ling: Eating dust while my friend eats the mountain for breakfast.” Depending on the person – and the day – dear old Ha Ling may strike fear, breed frustration or put a girl in her place.

Ha Ling becomes the conquered, the pesky, the challenging – not to mention its sketchy (former) identity as “Chinaman’s Peak,” for a young man who bagged it before lunch, impressing (and surprising) the local crowd in 1896. One mountain – much less many – can have many meanings, despite similar representations on social media through fish-eye lenses and Mayfair filters.

Despite this, I once heard a university professor state unequivocally: a mountain is a mountain. She was, of course, referring to the science of the thing. Mesas, buttes, domes, peaks – these are set. They follow patterns, laws, rules of the natural world. Regardless of whether her students are outdoorsy, bookish, urban, literary (making poetic decisions between palisade, precipice or pike), hailing from Saskatchewan or the Himalayas – a mountain is a mountain that can be taught, discussed, analyzed and diagrammed uniformly in a geography classroom.

That being said, I’d love to know a mountain like this girl I once saw skip across a razor’s edge peak while I clung to pebbles and alpine brush for security, stomach in my shoes. Or like my Pops, who’s familiar with every road, range, rock in the Western US and Canada better than Rand McNally. Or like a student I know from Bolivia, who says she’d never heard of hiking until she came to Canada, though she daily walked in the mountains the way I walk from my parking spot to the coffee shop. Or like the Stó:lõ people who keep the jagged Fraser Valley skyline always in sight – not only for geographic orientation, but to connect them to one another and their shared history within that landscape. Pop all four of these in an Alpine hut over a bowl of spaghetti Bolognese, along with my friend the professor (who may quickly find herself being schooled), and now we have a geography class…

Without such a luxury, I’ll continue my perusal of Instagram, where – whether a mountain is a mountain or not – masses of mountains share clips and glimpses of what it means to drive through, camp below, trudge upon, live amidst, scramble up, cling to, sit atop, scurry down, mark, and meander among them.