untitled

Have you ever wished to live two lifetimes?

 

I’m not suggesting I want to live longer. I’m saying I wish I lived two separate lives.

 

Recently, I spent a week in Fort Fraser, Canada. It’s one of my favorite places (although, the natives would spell that “favourite places”). And while I visited, a part of me longed to stay permanently.

 

I’ve always felt this way about Canada. When I was a teenager, I spent many collective summer months in the southern provinces. During these visits, I would fantasize about someday marrying a Canadian Mounty/Cowboy/Rancher/Farmer.  I even researched becoming a Canadian Citizen.

 

However, my life’s course has taken a far different direction than my adolescent dreams envisioned. My hopes of affordable academic pursuits (Ph D in English) and staying near my family (Millers, Elliotts, and Holladays) are only possible when I am here in my homeland.

 

Therefore, my heart remains split in two.  The greater part is content to stay in the high desert mountain plateaus of Utah and Idaho, or in the deep green rolling woods of Missouri.

 

But the lesser portion longs to be in a snow-bent birch grove on the edge of British Columbia’s Nechako River. There it would patiently stay with the hope of seeing a moose rise from the river.