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My Boundary, my backyard: ‘tis the season to explore where we can

COVID-19 regulations give us the opportunity to learn about our own communities

We were likely somewhere over Baffin Island, half dozed-off, when we realized in a panic that we really didn’t know what we would end up doing once we touched down at the airport in Keflavik, Iceland. Though we’d bought the tickets six months prior, they were one-way and, in our excitement, my brother and I hadn’t bothered to figure out the nitty-gritty of our 2016 Scandinavian tour.

We decided there on the plane that renting a small car would be a good place to start. (Our general ambition before setting off was to camp around the island nation for a few days before jetting off again to visit family in Sweden) The in-flight entertainment was the next step in our plan. Instead of rewatching movies, we watched documentaries about the land we were visiting. Jagged rocks, thundering waterfalls and lots of emptiness. It was everything we could have ever wanted. Now, unfortunately the documentaries were not 4-D, or else we may have planned to stay in real buildings.

First lesson learned: camping with a Canadian Tire tent and a regular sleeping bag is not tremendously comfortable on a landscape so windy that even the lichen lean definitively one way. The 4 a.m. wake-ups from the subarctic sun and the invasive cold were not well-planned for either, nor was the two-hour nap in a hot spring (though it ended up being the best sleep of the Iceland leg of our journey). We hadn’t planned much more than an anchor date about two weeks down the line to meet our cousins in Stockholm.

So we drove up fjords and down fjords and up fjords and […] down fjords, stopping by road-side waterfalls, having not seen another person for a good few hours of driving. We got very little sleep, ate much more herring and didn’t really debrief about our trip until a good year or so afterwards. In the end, as stunning as those landscapes were (now that we’re awake enough to appreciate our photos), we both recognized that it felt odd to have such a wanderlust for another place, even though we’ve lived in a region that is a magnet for so many tourists from around the world.

I think that’s what we can all draw on this summer. As mobility and travel directives loosen slightly (in our province at least), I think we’ll be fortunate to be able to maintain our physical distance by just spreading out into the wealth of trail networks in Boundary Country.

Certainly, in the past couple months I’ve explored new hikes and nooks of the Boundary that had passed me by before. I’ve found several perfect spots to set up a hammock and read a book by a waterfall, and now get to hike and see the wildflowers that just couldn’t wait for the last puddles of slush to melt their way into the earth.

While many of our local businesses rely on travellers and cottagers from further away, this summer is our chance to show them some local love too. It is so exciting to see how eateries have pivoted and are diligently preparing to responsibly re-open, but we’ve also got campgrounds and resorts whose clientele may well be staying further away this year.

Responsibly, we as their neighbours may have the chance to check out what they’ve got to offer, and what has been drawing tourists from further away to this region as well.

It may just be the recent heavy rains, but the grass on the mountainsides through the Kettle Valley is looking fairly green right now. For this summer, maybe let’s not try so hard to see what’s on the other side of the fence.