About

Who We Are

A family of 5:

Myself, Karen, mom of three, 41 years of planetary experience.  From Nova Scotia, Canada.  Citizen of Earth.  Earth Science and Environmental Degree, footsteps all over Canada, esp NS, the Yukon, BC, Alberta.  Footsteps all over NZ and Australia, Venezuela, Asia, now Europe.  Juggler of a family that moves around.  Lover of wild spaces, a reader, a people pleaser, a social introvert who loves company but only after enough time on her own!

Tris: 43 year old dad of 3.  Adventurer, non-conventional experience chaser, entrepreneur, wearer of many hats.  Thinker, explorer, dreamer, forward looker.  Competitive and driven not to settle.  Passionate liver of life, regular jumper into the North Atlantic Ocean (in winter).  Possibly due to British Canadian heritage??  Sort of a cross between E. Hemmingway and Don Starkell.

The Three Ducklings:

Child #1: 10 years of life experience.  We’ll call her Kat on these pages.  Cat lover, book reader: like a plant needs water, she needs books.  All types of books are grist for her mill, from the Economist to Judy Blume.  Creative, crafty, tiny world maker.  Fashionista.  Grade 5 social drama survivor (creator)? Practical joker.  Stubborn, opinionated, fierce.

Child #2: 8 years of life experience, but extra life credits awarded.  We’ll call him Chester.  Lover of chess, soccer fiend, competitive, lover of all sports.  Survivor.  Traveler.  Sensitive soul, but giant tease of his sisters.  Survivor of leukemia, years of hospitals and treatments.  Brave and calm needle or treatment taker, but loud protester of bad treatment by siblings.

Child #3: 6 years of life experience.  We’ll call her Clara.  Kind, loving, affectionate.  Active, social.  Curly haired cuddler.  Adventurous explorer and traveler.  Craft lover, cottage and camping lover.  Sensitive, active, and generous.

Small mention to Indy the Cat (her real name) who may feature: 12 year old stray, star athlete who (could) jump to my shoulders from the floor.  Affectionate, sleeper with Kat.  Adventurous, has spent weeks in the family car traveling and camping.

Stray cat #2: Name of Smoky.  Will she feature again in family annals? Who knows.  Found as a kitten, starved and mewling, in a tree in France.  Nursed to health, through much diarrhea, fixed, to take up her contented place on Kat’s bed, fluffy and gray and leaning to fat.   Stayed in France with french friends when she refused to take the trip to Canada, claws out and hissing and heading for the hills, the last any of us saw of her….

And finally, under the heading TMI, here is some background on Tris and I’s history and maybe our souls…

Once upon a time, Tris and I finished university and had normal jobs (Environmental Tech, Paramedic), but we had always had an itch for travel, to drink the wild air, to write by candlelight, to follow the random. I had lived over a year in a tent, he was an adventurer of the old school.  Think Ernest Hemmingway meets Don Starkell.

Here is a brief summary of our Choose Your Own Adventure twenties:  Within two weeks of meeting at Burning Man in the Nevada desert, we were on the savanna in Venezuela, eating noodles out of a pot and writing journals under the flurries of lightning flashes they get there before the rainy season.  We were there to search a way down river to Angel Falls, purely for adventure, and nearly died in 3 weeks in remote track-less jungle, several days short of food.  After the recovery period, life bounced between jobs to other adventures, another remote rafting journey in Venezuela, then a three month trip from Hong Kong to Istanbul along the Southern Silk Road.  This took us through China’s Taklamakan desert, to buy golden rings in Kashgar before crossing the Karakorum Mountains in to Pakistan, where I tried to hide my almost 6 foot tall frame in a headscarf and lime green pajamas (or salwar kameez).

Then on to dusty roads and ruins in Iran, finishing with the length of Turkey, scribbling quaintly away in notebooks.  But hardships were fun, danger a story to tell.  All with no phone or laptop, on a total round the world budget which we somehow managed to keep to $6000 CAD or $3000 each, including all travel and airfare, which is to say, it was not a luxury trip.  That was less than 15 years ago, when we wide open to adventure, and the internet hadn’t infiltrated our travels beyond emails home from widely spaced internet cafes.

As our twenties ended we got married, with those rings from gold dug out of the mountains in western China.  I’d found a job with Environment Canada,travelling to rivers and lakes in Northern Ontario, while Tris did more expeditions, wrote a book, worked in Sierra Leone for nine months as an aid worker, was a raft guide, and became a paramedic.

Next comes children.  The ducklings.  And the dark time that followed for us.  This blog will describe how we then found another way, and what that looks like.  And if it helps inspires anyone to release their hold on the familiar and trust that a family can head down a different path, where wild winds blow freedom, then I will be grateful.