By Katie Cushing

"People travel because they are searching for something."

It was November of 2006 when someone told me that. We were sitting in the steaming waters of the Banff Hot Springs, our bodies gradually boiling like lobsters and our hair turning to icicles. His name was John Something-Or- Other; an Aussie, who had, he said, been on the road for five years.

“What are you searching for, then?” I asked.
His answer wasn’t very profound, but was (perhaps) profoundly Australian:
“Fun. Good times.”
We had met earlier that day at the hostel where we were both staying, and I haven’t seen or heard from John since. What he said has stuck with me, though. It may have just been a line he gave all the ladies, but for me at least, it rang true.
So what am I searching for?
When the answer came to me, it was simple, and one word: home.
This past spring, I went for a drive with some old, high school buddies.
I was leaving New Brunswick again, and be- fore I did, I needed to make a pilgrimage into Albert County. As we drove along coastal roads, the crisp, spring breeze ruffling our hair, I was filled with a profound sense of joy and belong- ing. Albert County, with its run-down farm- houses, winding roads and brilliant green foliage was the most beautiful place in the world, and I had no doubt that it was my home.
I have so many memories there: camping trips in Fundy National Park, the fishing village adjacent to the Park, sticky buns served hot out of the oven at a little bakery in Alma, helping my cousin buy quilts from little old ladies in houses that smelled heavily of cat pee, rappel- ling, cliff climbing, doing hundreds of push-ups at Cape Enrage (it was a high school boot camp) and of course just driving, as we were now.
It’s easy to forget any time has passed when you’re driving down an Albert County road with some of your oldest friends, but home has changed. Every time I return from my travels, it seems a little less like home.
I had a nightmare as a little girl, which still haunts me to this day: I dreamt I had been away and came home, only to find my house occupied by strangers. I went from house to house, knocking on doors, but every house held a strange face and another person who didn’t recognize me.
In the years since I first left home, it seems like the strange faces have started to outnumber the familiar.
And this past winter, I was dealt a final, crushing blow: my bar closed. It may sound silly, but with the closure of my divey, dark drink- ing hole Moncton no longer felt like home.
I decided to go back to Banff, a place I had lived before, and where I knew I could find a job. First, though, I wanted to see the rest of Canada. I had in my head some half-formed plans to go overseas for a year or two, and I thought seeing more of my own country might not be a bad idea before I went sticking my nose in someone else’s. I also thought it would be a
good chance to revisit some of my old homes. After doing some careful research, which primarily involved looking at my bank account and realizing there was no way I could afford any kind of car, let alone one that actually worked, I decided to take the train. VIA Rail offers a great package: the Canrailpass gives you 12 days of travel within a 30-day span, and (at least in May) is pretty cheap. The Greyhound also offers something similar and cheaper, but spending a day on the bus makes me crazy:
what a month would do defies imagination. On April 29, 2009 I grabbed my huge, unwieldy backpack and my smelly cowboy hat, which has seen better days, and hopped on the train. As the train pulled away, I discovered I had forgotten my cell phone, which I had bought specifically for the trip.
May 1, 8:15 a.m. I pulled into Montreal. My friend Jen was waiting for me at the station.
Montreal is not a place I’ve ever seriously considered living. Don’t get me wrong, as cities go, it’s a lovely one: steeped in history and culture, with lots of pretty buildings. But it is a) a city, and I don’t tend to consider living in cities, and b) a French city, and I’ve always known that when I attempt to make myself understood in French I sound like a moron.
It is, however, the city my high-school friend, Jen, has chosen to call home.
When the animation company she worked for in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia (home of the Bluenose) downsized, Jen was forced to seek greener pastures. She couldn’t have found a place further removed from Lunenburg. Jen used to complain to me that the only men she met were unemployed fishermen. She could no longer complain about that, and of course, being Jen, she was none-to-happy about it. Jen and change are not the best of friends.
I found myself looking at the city through the eyes of a potential resident, rather than a tourist. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to move there as that I wanted Jen to be happy she had moved there.
There is a lot to like about Montreal.
It has quaint, cobbled streets and horse- drawn carriages, buskers, wonderful food and fascinating shops. It also has Cirque Du Soleil: neither of us had seen them perform in person before, and as acrobats dressed as giant bugs (yes, bugs) flew through the air above us, we were both spellbound.“If I lived here, I would go to all their shows,” I told Jen during intermission.
I left Jen’s apartment the morning of May 4, and locked it up tighter than a drum, since she was already at work. Having hauled on my big, green backpack, I started off to find the train station. After a few blocks, though, I got a funny feeling, and not just because my back- pack was way too heavy: I stopped and started rummaging through my belongings. Sure enough, my train ticket wasn’t there. Unfortunately, I had done too good a job locking up Jen’s apartment. Try as I might, I couldn’t get back in. Five hours later, Jen showed up with my tickets and I was on my way again, albeit slightly behind schedule.
One hour and 54 minutes by train from Montreal is Ottawa, where my sister and niece were impatiently waiting for me.
I like Ottawa. But perhaps as a staunchly patriotic Canadian I am predisposed towards lik- ing it. In addition to being our nation’s capitol, Ottawa happens to be my birthplace, although I have never lived there (my parents had a farmhouse outside the city). I can remember my mother pointing out the window of the hospital room where she and I stayed, though. And I can remember looking at the lights of Parliament Hill from the window of a hotel room my dad had rented. I also remember the feather pillows from that hotel room. I loved them, but my dad was allergic. My dad is allergic to everything.
This time, I was in Ottawa to visit my little sister. The wild child of the family is now a Policy Maker for the Department of Disability. I, on the other hand, was always the angelic, responsible one (honest!) Shannon and her four-year-old daughter, Kiara, were waiting for me—and they had a present for me, too: my mother had express-posted my cell phone to Ottawa ahead of me. I had a present for Kiara, also. I had knit her, at my sister’s request, a Bob Marley-style toque which she promptly pulled over her head so the band of the hat was around her neck and then wandered around blind, with arms outstretched to great hilarity.
My sister was living in a very nice duplex, just like an adult. It gave me the nagging feel- ing that I might be getting old.
Shannon, as a mature adult, had work to do and appointments to keep. She dropped me off at the Museum of Civilization, which happens to be my favourite building in Ottawa, in spite of the fact that it is technically speaking in Gatineau, Quebec, not Ottawa. It may not have the old world charm of the copper-tipped Par-
Tiptoe through the tulips: a view of Ottawa’s Parliament Hill Parliament Buildings, but I enjoy its quirky curves. If you look at it from the right angle, the curves of the building form a mask-like face; the build- ing was designed by Native architect Douglas Cardinal, and was built without corners and sharp edges to mimic the natural landscape and because bad things hide in dark corners. I bought a souvenir pin there, which I affixed to my green backpack and which had fallen off, never to be found again, by the next day.
Ottawa was in the midst of its annual tulip festival, and while I didn’t get the chance to participate in the festivities I was able to enjoy the tulips themselves. The tulips were a gift from Holland, who send 10,000 bulbs to Canada every year as a thanks for sheltering the Dutch princess and her children during World War Two.
I love my sister dearly, but we can only cohabit for so long before we turn into snarling beasts and go at one another’s throats. To preclude that situation, on Saturday, May 9, I hopped on the train again, this time bound for the city of Belleville, located in Prince Edward County.
My mother was born and raised in Prince Edward County, Ontario. It has been more than 30 years since she last lived there, but she still calls it home. (I wonder if I will always call New Brunswick home?)
I spent a portion of my summers as a kid at my grandmother’s farmhouse in Prince Edward County. My memories of that time consist primarily of artificial grass, pink flamingos, tire swings, and lots of cows. My grandmother was renowned throughout the county for the superior taste of her cooking, which was due less to her huge vegetable garden and more to her practice of putting a cup of sugar in absolutely everything.
Prince Edward County is mostly populated by farmers and artistic types. Farmers, be- cause the land is fertile, and artists because the land is beautiful.
Although my grandmother has since passed away and the farmhouse has been sold, my aunt, uncle and cousins still live in the area.
My cousin Wendy picked me up at the train station. Wendy, whose husband recently passed away, lives with her two kids, Kyle and Claire, five minutes down the road from my aunt and uncle, and across the road from the lovely Bay of Quinte.
Kyle and Claire know a sucker when they see one. They suggested to their mother that it might be fun to show cousin Katie the new- born rabbits down the road. Also down the road, at the same location, was an ice cream stand. We were going out to supper for my aunt’s birthday, and I told them that we could only have ice cream on the condition that they never tell their mother why they had no appetite at supper time.
To kill time while we ate our ice cream, we did indeed look at the baby rabbits. My cousin Claire, 11, already had a pet rabbit which she had not looked at in several months, but she felt sure that she needed another one. We also looked with interest at a fat pig whose name, a plaque on the fence informed us, was Wilbur.
We returned to the house to discover that Wendy was having difficulties with her new ride-on lawnmower. It had stopped on her third circuit of the grounds, and would not start again. In vain we tried to figure out what was wrong with it. Cars putted by, the occupants, all of whom Wendy knew, looking at us with some interest. Finally a kind fellow pulled over and after some investigation determined what the problem was: the mower was out of gas.
It’s strange that I’ve never considered living in Toronto. So many people I love live there. My best friend since I was two years old used to live there, and I visited her several times. My best friend from college still lives there.
My dad picked me up outside the Toronto train station and took me to stay with him at a friend’s house in High Park, a very nice, up- scale neighbourhood in Toronto‘s West End. That night, a very strange thing happened: he offered me a beer. My father does not drink, but he had been snooping on my Facebook and had deduced from all the pictures of me drinking that I liked beer. Drinking while my father sat and watched me may have been the awkward highlight of my trip.
The next day, I set out to meet my dear friend and former housemate Tosin. It was raining outside, and Dad’s friend offered me an umbrella, to my father’s derision:
“You may as well just give it to a homeless per- son right now,” he said. “Because if you lend Katie that umbrella you’re never going to see it again.”
Tosin and I met up at an independent comic book convention, where we wandered the aisles, and, having decided we weren‘t quite nerdy enough for our surroundings, and didn’t have enough money to buy anything in any case, we retired to a Mexican restaurant. Then, we idly wandered the streets of Toronto until enough time was deemed to have passed and we went to find beer.
There is only so much reminiscing about college you can do, and Tosin and I were reaching the depressing conclusion that we had be- come old, boring, and to make matters worse, drinking lightweights, when Tosin’s girlfriend called. She was unwilling to venture out into the mean, lean streets of Toronto, but she invited the two of us to come back to her place. Marla’s place, though not in the best part of town, was very nice indeed, and after a quick tour we went out to the patio and resumed drinking. We laughed, and picked on Tosin, and threw beer cans at raccoons until we couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer.
The next day, I met up with my father again and we took a walk in High Park. Toronto can indeed be a nice city when it wants to be: it has lovely stretches of water, and nice bits of green, High Park of which is one of the nicest.
Before I left the city, I met up for coffee with my best friend’s younger brother. Will is a good looking fellow of 25, whose chief delight in life is upsetting his mother by being unemployed. Will took the subway in to meet me, and was the only one in the car who was not on his way to the Toronto Blue Jays game. The Blue Jays were on a winning streak, and this was to be a pivotal game against New York. Will told me his subway car exhibited that famous Canadian sportsmanship by yelling ‘New York sucks! New York sucks!’ the entire way to the Rogers Dome where the game was to be held.
I had a wonderful time catching up with Will, who seemed to be chiefly concerned with kiteboarding rather than with finding employment, and then jumped back on the train again, this time for a three-day journey across the prairies.
Initially when I planned my trip across Canada I had wanted to stop somewhere in the prairies. I discovered, however, that due to the vagaries of VIA Rail, if I made a stop anywhere in the prairies I would be there for three days. There was nowhere in the prairies that I wanted to spend three days.
I did get a chance to wander around Winnipeg for awhile: the train stopped there for three hours, and disgorged all us passengers out into the streets. Winnipeg’s motto is City of Opportunity. It is also known as the murder capitol of Canada. Cowboy hat on, I ventured out into the city, discovering within seconds that I was drastically underdressed for the weather. In the past, when frozen and walking down a city street, I have hopped from store to store, pretending to be extremely interested in kitchenware and men’s work pants, or whatever else a random (but heated) storefront may offer. Unfortunately, Winnipeg stores are not open at 9:00 in the morning—at least not in May. After about half an hour of briskly trotting down streets trying to outrun the cold I came to a building that looked promising, the Manitoba Art Gallery. Its doors, however, did not budge. I resumed wandering the streets, heckled by the very best of Winnipeg’s vagrant population, who, due to my cow- boy hat, took me for a Texan.
I had briefly contemplated taking the train from Winnipeg up to Churchill, Manitoba, which my good friend Sarah had once called home for 11⁄2 years. How to put this politely? Sarah questioned my intelligence when I brought the idea up to her. Upon further research I discovered that the trip from Winnipeg to Churchill takes almost three days. This is not due to the distance, but rather to the fact that the track is not well maintained, and in many places the train is forced to crawl along at 5 miles an hour. I also discovered that May is a bad time of the year togo to Churchill. The town, which is only accessible by train and by plane, is know for its polar bears, its birds and its beluga whales, but none of these are present in May.
The train is a very comfortable way to travel. Although it is slow and has definite limitations in terms of time-tables and stops, you can’t beat it for its social air. I treated myself to breakfast and dinner in the train’s dining car, and ate with a VIA rail worker and two retired couples. In the evenings, a rag-tag band of young musicians would take over the sky- line car, where they entertained us while we sat and drank beer. I was very sad to see the musicians decamp in Saskatoon, where it was snowing heavily.
The three days went by quickly, and before I knew it I was getting off the train in Edmonton, where a good friend from college met me and took me back to her condo.
Candice is two years younger than me, but she is a financial advisor and owns a home. She makes me feel old, and not just because she has a condo with art on the walls, a cat, and a spare bedroom. No, Candice makes me feel old because whenever we get together she feels the need to take me out clubbing when I would really rather sit in a dank hole, eating peanuts and drinking beer.
I got my revenge on her however: while she was dragging me through a succession of nightclubs, her car was ticketed.
The next morning, Candice ran into the liv- ing room where I was watching TV:
“I just realized you’re leaving Edmonton tomorrow and we haven’t gone to the mall! We have to go to the mall,” she said.
“We really don’t,” I said. It would not be an understatement to say I hate malls.
Candice was insistent, however, and I’m glad she made me go. The mall was fabulous. Instead of the shopping I had dreaded, we wandered around gawking at fire-breathing dragons and trained sea lions.
Before I had set out on my trip, I had decided I would do something unique at every one of my destinations. In Edmonton, it was to be the West Edmonton Mall rollercoaster. I forked over $15, and after waiting in line for more than half an hour I found myself seated beside a short, fat Asian man. The two of us quickly developed an unspoken bond: every time the rollercoaster slowed down, we would open our eyes and look at one another, then scream as the ride sped up again. At some point during the ride it occurred to me that people die on rollercoaster rides.
From the mall, I went to my cousin Mat- thew’s place, where I met his wife, Krista, and his one-year-old son, Basil. Basil’s favourite activity was bunching up his shoulders like a body-builder and growling. Matthew and I had not seen one another for 15 years, so we had a lot of catching up to do. They escorted me to my first-ever a Russian orthodox church service, where we sang psalms I had never heard before though air thick with incense.
On May 21, 1:00 pm, we rolled into Jasper.
Jasper National Park is always compared to Banff, and in some people’s eyes it is lacking.
“You’re going to find there’s not much there,” Candice warned me, as she put me on the train. On the other hand, I’ve had a number of people tell me, in positive tones of voice, that it’s not nearly as commercial as Banff. I suppose it depends on whether Louis Vuitton stores are something you look for in a National Park. Jasper was one of the few stops on my trip where I didn’t know a soul. I decided to stay at the Hostel International which was located outside of the town and immediately ran into a problem: I couldn’t find my bank card, and had no cash on me, and the only way to the hostel was either by a $5 shuttle or by cab. I went through my pockets and emptied my backpack: no card.
I should probably mention that it was a holiday weekend, and for that reason all the lodgings closer to town were full and none of the banks were open.
The shuttle arrived, just as I had determined that I was not going to be able to access any money. As luck would have it, they did accept credit cards. Even luckier, the shuttle driver wouldn’t hear of taking my money after he heard my hard luck story. I disembarked at the hostel, forgetting my prescription sunglasses on the seat of the shuttle.
A few hours later, I had my sunglasses back and had made some new friends. One of them, a Swiss girl named Nina, lent me some money so we could go out on the town. Nina, myself, a couple of Aussies, and a trio of frenchies explored the Jasper bar scene, and then at the behest of an Australian gent hit the Jasper night club scene for a whole 15 minutes. The next day, I went hiking with my new friend Nina. It was quite cold and I was forced to layer pretty much the entire contents of my backpack on in order to stay warm. Due to our lack of a car, we were forced to stick close to town, but we had no complaints: the scenery was beautiful. That night, we became friends with two Canadian travellers and agreed to split the cost of a rental car for our last day in the Park. The car rental, when split four ways, proved to a very affordable way to see the park, and we managed to see a great deal we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to.
On Tuesday, prior to leaving Jasper, I went to the bank to replace my missing card. They asked me a series of security questions in order to determine whether I was actually the card holder. They were very easy questions: what is your phone number? What is your ad- dress? Unfortunately, I failed these very easy questions due to the fact that I seem to move around a lot and the security questions were about three moves out of date. Fortunately, the very nice lady at the bank took pity on me and gave me a replacement card.
From Jasper, I was off to Smithers, B.C.
In the fall of 2007 I had just returned home —there’s that word again—from Banff and was at loose ends. One night, while online, I came across a job posting for a position as a reporter with The Interior News in Smithers. Two weeks later, I was there.
I had heard a bit about Smithers before arriving there: my friend Shannon had spent some time there while hitchhiking across Canada and had loved it. She told me, and I soon found it was true, that Smithers was an interesting blend of Dutch farmers and hippies. Smithers has tourism aspirations, but to me a large part of its charm is the lack of tourists. It is a beautiful, sleepy mountain town, and a place that will always be dear to my heart.
The first time I arrived in Smithers, it was by bus and just in time for the grey of winter; this time, I disembarked from the train into sunshine and green grass.
My friend Ryan, the illustrious publisher of this very magazine, picked me up at the train station, and took me back to his house. I must say, there are very few things in life that are better than sitting out in the sun with a beer in hand, surrounded by wonderful scenery and in the company of a good friend.
My time in my old home passed quickly and enjoyably. It was also an amazingly economical stop on my journey, due to the wonderful hospitality of Smithereens. In fact, in the two days I spent there, I did not part with a single dime. More than once, I walked into a restaurant intending to sit by myself and have a bite to eat only to be confronted by friends, who of course wouldn’t hear of letting me pay.
It was with a real sense of regret that I left Smithers and boarded the train again, en route to Prince Rupert. In some ways, whenever I go to Smithers I know that I will also be going home.
They say—and by they, I mean meteorologists—that it rains more in Prince Rupert than in any other city in Canada. The meteorologists are full of it. It’s always sunny in Prince Rupert when I am there.
A very obliging train attendant lent me her cell phone and I called ahead to make reservations at a hostel known as The Pioneer which I had stayed at before in Prince Rupert. I love that hostel: not only is it in a very cool, historic house, and decorated in wonderful bright colours with patchwork quilts on all the beds, but the service is wonderful. I paid $50 for a two night stay, and was picked up at the train station by the owner of the establishment. That night, a group of us from the hostel ventured out for a sampling of Prince Rupert’s nightlife, which for such a small city was surprisingly varied in nature. We started our evening in a hotel bar overlooking the water, and ended it eating spicy Thai chicken at a posh, neon-lit bar downtown.
My friend Sean, an editor at a Prince Ru- pert newspaper, and I met up for a kayaking adventure the next morning. A German lawyer named Martine decided to join us, and soon proved to be far, far more athletic than Sean and I combined. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful part of the world, and I thoroughly enjoyed it in spite of the blisters I developed within the first half hour of our three-hour excursion.
Prince Rupert was to be the end of the line as far as my rail travel was concerned. From there, I hopped on a 7:30 a.m. ferry which took me along the coast and down to Vancouver Island. I was accompanied by my new friend, Martine. The weather proved to be dreadful: it rained for the duration of the 15-hour trip. Luckily Martine was there to keep me entertained with his opinions on love, children, exercise and proper dietary habits. In between listening to Martine’s opinions, I managed to lose my jacket (I was paged to the concierge desk to pick it up), take a nap, and see several dolphins as well as a historic cannery.
The ferry dumped us out in Port Hardy, Vancouver Island. Although I stayed there overnight, I can’t tell you much about the town except that I was charged a shocking amount for what appeared to be two eggo waffles with Cool Whip on the top. It looked like a nice little town, albeit one that knows how to gouge us tourists for all we are worth.
From Port Hardy, I took the bus to Nanaimo, where, after hiking across the city with my increasingly heavy backpack, I caught a ferry to Vancouver.
Vancouver was the last city I visited. There was a time when I considered living there. After all, my best friend from Banff (yes, another best friend) lives there, and so does my cousin Kim. This visit, I elected to stay with my friend James Dean (yes, that is really his name), mostly due to the fact that I hadn’t worn out my welcome with him yet. James Dean, who for reasons unclear to me prefers to be called Ira, is a fellow East Coast transplant who I first befriended in Banff.
Ira texted me with the details on how to get to his apartment, which was off of the very artsy Commercial Drive. No doubt they were very clear, but I got terribly lost, mostly due to an inability to determine which way was west. Finally, I sat down on a street corner and waited for him to come and find me.
Ira fed me well. He had a freezer full of ice cream sandwiches, and we ate them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. One night, we ventured out onto Commercial Drive and had sushi. That was nice, too.
Somewhere between Smithers and Vancouver I had once again lost my bank card. Ira seemed to take great pleasure in escorting me to the bank to get a new one.
“Tell them how long you’ve had the card,” he suggested helpfully to me.
“Shut up, Ira,” said I.
I had timed my visit so the second day fell on his day off. We rented scooters and took to the streets. Vancouver in May is lovely, but I am afraid it took me a while before I could appreciate the scenery. I was mostly concentrating on not dying. You do not need any special license or training to drive a scooter, which means any moron with a driver’s license can get on one. This is bad, because it means that people like me can take scooters out into heavily trafficked city streets and endanger not only their own lives, but the lives of all those around them. It took me about half a hour under Ira’s patient guidance, but I finally figured out how not to crash. We scooted all over Vancouver: through parks, over bridges, by beaches and down shady side streets. It was a blissful way to explore the city, and I highly recommend it to everyone.
The day after my scooter adventure, my cousin Kim picked me up in her battered old Volvo and we rattled off to Chilliwack to visit with her parents, my Aunt Helen and Uncle Ted. Chilliwack is a nice little farming community. Although it’s only a hour out of Vancouver, you couldn’t get further from the city’s hustle and bustle. My favourite part of any visit to my aunt and uncle’s is the point at which they have become bored with my company and I am able to curl up in the hammock in their backyard and take a nap amongst the lilac bushes.
Before I could do that, however, I had to go visit Harrison Springs with my aunt. The village around the springs is quite lovely, and the springs themselves, in the grand tradition of hot springs everywhere, were very smelly.
Upon returning from the springs Aunt Helen and I were greeted by the news that her Pink beauty: Vancouver in May friend’s horse had just foaled: the nap in the hammock was postponed. Miniature horses are amazing, and also quite useless. What possible purpose could there be for a horse that you can pick up and cradle in your arms like a human baby? I want one.
The remainder of my Vancouver stay was spent eating ice cream sandwiches and socializing with dear friends.
And then, on the evening of May 29, I hugged my Vancouver friends goodbye and hopped on the Greyhound.
My journey ended where this article began: in Banff. I first arrived in Banff in November 2006. I had been unsuccessfully attempting to live in Calgary— it just didn’t feel like home —and had pretty much decided to go back to New Brunswick. My mother convinced me to go to Banff for a weekend before I bought any plane tickets. As the bus left the grey flatlands of Calgary and ventured into the mountains, closer and closer to Banff, I felt as though a weight was being lifted off my shoulders: I could breath again.
Banff is a funny place. It is the temporary home of many, and the permanent home of few. That, perhaps, is due to the fact that Banff never changes. It is a bit like Never-Never Land. It is a place you go to escape reality; a place where everyone is young, and the cheap beer flows like water. It’s a great place to spend a weekend, or a season—an in-between place where you can lick your wounds and figure out what you want to do next.
Some people never leave: I know a 57-year- old Peter Pan who has been working as a bell- man, and living in staff accommodation in Banff for almost 30 years.
And yet, because it never seems to change it felt like I had never left at all. I disembarked from the Greyhound and walked into town. There had been a massive construction project during the time I had been gone, but I found as I walked down Banff Avenue that the town as it now was quickly replaced the town that had been in my mind’s eye, until I couldn‘t have told you how it had ever been different. On I walked, until finally I reached Warner stables, my past and future employer. There my roommate was waiting with a key to my new apartment. I let myself in and unpacked: I was home, at least for a few months.
So where is home, and how do you find it? Home, for me is where I get that ‘ah’ feeling of bliss and belonging. Home is where my friends and loved ones are. Home is the most beautiful place on earth. Home, it would seem is everywhere.
My next stop is Australia, chasing the sun. Who knows what homes I’ll find there?y Katie Cushing