Beginnings

I grew up an hour from Toronto. In the country. Like really the country. They still don't have high-speed internet or good cell service.

It was about 20 minutes to Cobourg which had around 15000 people and the high schools that everyone from the country attended. Until high school we went to country schools. We were surrounded by farms, streams, lakes and forests. We swam, hunted, fished and built forts anywhere we could find enough materials.

It was pretty cool being so deep in the boonies but so close to the most metropolitan area of our vast country. Just over an hour away was a city with four million people, yet we had around two hundred people in our little village. We all knew each other and watched out for one another. It was a blessing and a curse for us kids because we couldn't get away with anything but it also kept us honest. Well, mostly honest.

That was my life for fourteen years.

The Middle

Then high school came and while it was super cool to party in the country, we all wanted to be worldly and hang out in the city. We would gather up a hundred dollars or whatever we could and take the train to Toronto and just hang out like a bunch of yahoos in our acid wash jeans and mullets. We were super cool and always talked about moving to the city where life was exciting and a bit dangerous.

Sometimes too dangerous. It didn't take many trips for me to realize that leading a city life is not all it was cracked up to be and I sought the solace of the country again. I often lived near cities but far enough away that I wasn't surrounded by crime and that element of never knowing what was going to happen from one day to the next.

The Ending

Now we live in a very remote part of the Canadian wilderness. Off of the Alaska Highway in northern British Columbia.

The following photos are what I am surrounded by on a daily basis and it is my nature experience that I loved so much I moved here.

(The Peace River on a cool, summer morning)

(Our work site for the last year or so.)
Those waterfalls are like that for about a kilometre or so along the banks. That is some of the nicest drinking water around and comes from several hundred springs under the town.

(This is out on Cameron Lake last summer.)

(Dunlevy Inlet in August)

(River down by the river. When we heard his name, we knew he was going to be adopted by us.)

This is just a taste of where we live. I couldn't imagine ever living in a city again. Fighting traffic, fighting for jobs, fighting for clean air? Not for me, thanks.

I want to thank the @ecoTrain community for having this forum to showcase our natural world and hold discussions on what we can do to make it better. If we all stop scrambling for that dollar for a minute, we can see that there is more to our world than mooning and Lambos. Sure, you need money to live but you don't need a lot to live well. I know people around me that are living quite well on minimum wage jobs and are able to own their own home. It's just not a castle.