Heart's Home

I made a comment the other day on Facebook that I now know that Canada is one of the best countries in the world. A friend then asked if I'd found something in my travels that I didn't like.
That's not it; that's not why I'm feeling love for my country while travelling in another place. It is not that there is something I don't like. In fact, there is much Canada can learn from these freer, older and perhaps wiser societies.

Placing a garland offering on Buddha
in Chaig Rai, Thailand.

 It is that I am Canadian.
As David Montgomery points out in his book Dirt, each generation grows up believing that what they see around them is how it has always existed. It takes a geologist or an anthropologist to see the changes that have taken place over time lines longer than a human life.
As a Canadian, I grew up in wide-open spaces, swimming in clear lakes, hiking in vast forests and skiing in blindingly white mountains breathing clean air. I can't recall a time in my life when there were so many people around that I couldn't find a deserted spot to sit.
Last night, we walked to Surin Beach, Phuket Island. The beach was covered from one end to the other with 3 long rows of lounge chairs. There were pathways through to the beach and along between the rows. Umbrellas on stands divided the chairs into pairs. Behind the rows of chairs began the concrete or wooden platforms for the restaurants full of dinning tables.

Taxi boats line the beach on Ko Phi Phi, Thailand.

I think of the deserted beaches of the west coast where I've walked in the sand alone except for the gulls and the odd eagle and don't care that's it was because it was cold and raining. By Phuket standards, it was cold at Surin last night and raining (in a not Phuket way, which is solid sheets of rain). Earlier yesterday I sat in/on a beautiful veranda sipping coffee, reading and watching Phuket rain and feeling every bit the world traveller enjoying something I don't get at home. So, it's a question of what do I love.
I love the sound of silence while skiing in the Jasper Back country. I love sitting on a rock in a ray of sunshine that's found its way through the forest canopy. I love dangling my feet into water so cold it hurts and so you have to dip and jerk a few times before you can sit for even 5 seconds with them actually in the water. But oh, heaven to splash that water on your face when you stop for 10 minutes on your way up to a back country hut!

I love being able to stand on the beach and holler all you want because there is no one around to hear you except the buddy hollering beside you. Finally, it soothes my soul to listen to nothing but the sound of a babbling brook or rushing river knowing that, at that moment, it belongs to you.
In the din of man-made noise, I loose connection with my inner self. I get lost.

Angkor Wat temple monkey

To visit these ancient lands where humanity's mark is far advanced from the one I see in my usual travelling, is to recognize at a deep level of my being that I live in a young, sparsely populated country. I've known this most of my life, but now it is refreshed knowledge. On a visceral level, I see how important environmental protection is for our future generations.

This is a photo of Chaig Mai from up the mountain at Doi Sutep - except you can't see the city because of the smog. This is not a large city.

At some point, life will go on without all the current technologies. It won't go on without drinking water, food production and air to breathe.
This is what I find as the fundamental problem of dragging our feet on alternatives ways of living, transporting and consuming. The chance that a child born today will see the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok run clean with parkland on its banks is probably quite slim.

Will that be true of a future child growing up in Calgary and playing by the Bow River? Will Canadians 3, 4, or 7 generations from now see the forests, rivers and lakes I've seen? Or will they write about visiting the ruins of the ancient city of Bangkok and long to return to cooler metropolis of Calgary?

Rubber trees on Phuket Island. Note the little black collectors.