Winter Fieldview
It's important to run. The people who never go through a phase in life where they run away, and head for the hills, will spend their lives wondering what it's like to set sail. Their windows will always be gazed through, and they will burn with an unfulfilled desire - an unscratchable itch within the soul.
Even if it's only for a short season, it's important to stick your thumb out on the hawk-wind highway of adventure. Everyone needs that adrenaline shot to the central nervous system of putting the chips on the table, and letting it all hang out there. No one knows exactly what they are going to get - or even what they want - but running is part of the process.
"Figure it out as you go along", they say. "You'll get there when ya get there," they'll nudge.
Well in an annoying way, all of those cliched colloquialisms are true.
When I was 19, I knew I needed to get out of Ottawa, but my high school marks weren't the greatest. I decided to go to the furthest school that accepted me - and that was Laurentian in Sudbury. A smelt town of ore and a gigantic nickel, the rocks and trees looked barren. The town was a severed artery from the school campus, and there was no way to walk anywhere. You immediately became a shut-in who drank too much to escape a hellish, dry-cold winter that instantly made your nostrils feel like Hoth.
I had some dark times in my first year of university, but I also learned a lot about myself. I learned that I had a real penchant for writing. I learned that the Smashing Pumpkins could pull me through in a land of Cro Magnon jocks. I played guitar live and sang in front of people for the first time at the pub down under, and it went well.
But I also learned that sometimes the thing or town or person you run away from is that which you love the most.
