A Calling......

In 2001 I visited British Columbia for a 2 month winter adventure. I spent most of my time learning to snowboard in the winter playgrounds of Whistler and Blackcomb with my friends Jimi and Nicole. However, during my time there I looked up a distant relative who lives a modest lifestyle with his Welsh partner near the X Files studios in the hills of North Vancouver.

Bill is an ex Royal Marine who settled in Canada when he finished in the armed services. When I met him, he had just turned 70. I couldn't get over how fit he was. He was a great outdoors type; probably a hangover from his time as a Marine. He would go on these huge treks into the wilderness which was basically right outside the main door of his house.

Bill had a retreat on one of the Queen Charlotte islands off the coast between the mainland and Vancouver Island and took the ferry over to the island from Horseshoe Bay or one of the few ferry ports along that part of the coast. In the summer, Bill and his partner would load up the camper van and head south down the Pacific coast through Washington State, Oregon and California to Mexico. It was a relatively simple existence and one that I seem to envy more and more as I get older.

When I met Bill, I had just come out of a lengthy relationship and I was still living in Scotland. The trip to Canada was my way of dealing with the aftermath following the breakup. I was a bit mixed up and didn't know what to do with myself and the Canada trip gave me an opportunity to have some fun and delay any decisions regarding my future. I ran away for a while.

During one of several trips to Bill's home he talked about his plans to canoe north up the Pacific coast to Alaska via the Inside Passage; a long series of deep fjords flanked by snow topped mountains that headed north east into Alaska past towns and villages still inhabited by the ancient First Nations, the original aboriginal tribes that inhabited this part of the world before the white man.

This subject was very interesting to me. I was interested in the history of the displaced natives (maybe due to my Scottish and Irish genes) and their traditional methods of expression through music, dance and various art forms such as the use of totem poles. I was also interested in their current political standing in society and the social and cultural injustices this race of people have had to endure under the white man's rule. I read a lot about this while I was in BC and visited the fine Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver.

Bill was looking for a co-pilot for his canoe trip and thought I might be interested; I was. Unfortunately, as things turned out, I had to return from my trip early due to my spending all my tax money on the 2 month trip and I never got the chance to take Bill up on his amazing offer. I came back to the UK and thrust myself into a job to pay back the money I owed to the taxman. Regrettably, I have never had the chance to return to see Bill and join him on his Great Alaskan Adventure.

Which leads me on to a very moving and profound film I saw again last night - Into the Wild. The real life story of Richard Johnson McCandless (AKA Alexander Supertramp) brilliantly realised by Sean Penn who directed the film and Emile Hirsch who plays Richard with incredible virtuosity from a young Actor. Richard, disgusted by the consumerist society surrounding him, decides to turn his back on all things associated with this way of life and embark on his Great Alaskan Adventure. He would live off the land and exist without reliance on modern comforts and any obsession with possessions.

This film is difficult for me in that it shows how shallow I can be and how reliant I have been on personal possessions to make me happy. I am guilty of living by the ethos that Richard rebelled against. I have analysed this on many occasions and have come up with many causes for this dependency. They don't fix the problem but at least they help me to understand it.

Suffice to say that the film made me think that my unrealised Great Alaskan Adventure could have led to a more spiritually enlightened journey than the one that presents itself to me today.

It's never too late to go on a journey and change an ethos is it?