Growing Up & Going Places

Travel is a beautiful thing that many of us are fortunate enough to do in this World. Lucky for me, I have been very fortunate to have a family that values travel and has encouraged me to travel as much as possible.

While growing up, my family was very busy, so often we would not be able to travel together as a family, but rather with only one parent. Or none at all. The first time I travelled without my parents was when I began to realise that travel is a way for me to reflect on myself, grow as a human, and improve the way I exist and show up in this world.

There isn’t just one travel experience that I could write about that fully encompasses how travel has turned me into the person I am today.

When I look at a map with pins of everywhere I have been, it doesn’t look like a lot of places, yet I know that I am super fortunate to have visited twelve countries and three continents in my short time on this Earth. I’ve road-tripped across Canada, walked through the Mayan Ruins in Mexico, backpacked through Costa Rica, stood atop mountains in Norway thousands of metres in elevation above sea level, swam in natural hot springs in the dead of Icelands winter, and been charged by grizzly bears in Alaska to name a few of my most memorable experiences. Yet when I reflect on these memories I remember the things I learned about myself, the personal growth I experienced in those places, and the life lessons I took home with me.

Independence. One of the things I have been known for all of my life. I got my first glimpse of independence when I was fourteen years old as I left North American soil for the first time in a long-haul overnight flight to Sydney, Australia to visit my extended family. Not only is this still the longest flight I’ve been on to this day, but it was also my first time flying alone. It felt as if it was the first time I had to have a voice for myself and was interacting with big scary adults. Border agents are terrifying when you’re fourteen travelling alone and can’t remember if you have any liquids in your carry-on or not!

Once I arrived in Sydney, it seemed as if my independence and willingness to go out into the world alone was growing. While my cousins were napping and my aunt stayed home watching them, I would take my scooter down to Manly Beach and ride from end to end by myself. I knew that if I got lost I didn’t have a way to get ahold of my aunt since my phone didn’t work in Australia, and I had no clue what her house address was, other than knowing it was one of the red brick apartments on the beach. Yet I felt as if I was growing up and could go anywhere and do anything.

Being able to share experiences with people and creating life-long friendships is another portion of travel that has

drawn me in since my first trip. Growing up, I was never great at talking to new people, let alone making new friends. Today, some of my best friends and closest connections I have come from travel.

In my grade eleven year of school I traveled to Costa Rica with a few classmates on an international trip to complete my Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s award. On this trip with me, was my now best friend, Louis. We became very close on that trip and a lot of my travel in Canada has been done with him. Another person I met on that trip was our group's guide, Zack Kruzins.

Zack is a kayak operator on Lake Superior and he is the one who showed me that travelling can be done as a career. He is one of the people who set me on the path I am on today.

Today, while I am still in school, I am also a freelance photographer and my passion for photography heavily lies in the outdoor, adventure, and travel side of photography. Since my first trip to Australia in 2017, travel has become a way for me to see the world and then share my experiences with people through the lens of my camera.

Flashforward to June 2021 during my gap year, I finally left home for the first time with no solid plans to return. Louis and myself set out on a seven-week road trip across Canada to help Louis move to Nova Scotia to start university. It’s not until you’re spending a thousand dollars a week on food, hotels, gas, and alcohol that you learn how to budget pretty quickly.

On this trip, I also learned the very valuable lesson of learning how to take care of yourself when you get sick. After not feeling one hundred percent driving through Manitoba, my life on the road driving through one-night towns, finally caught up with me and I had a nasty cold for a week while we stayed in Thunder Bay with Zack whom Louis and I had met while in Costa Rica. Unfortunately for me, we opted to camp at a drive-in site rather than getting a hotel. I’m sure the cooler temperatures at night didn’t help my cold, however, I learned quickly how to slow down and relax for that week so my body could heal quickly to get back into the action for the final three weeks of our trip.

Travel and relaxation do not necessarily go hand-in-hand with my traveller type. Since 2020 though I have learned the need to slow down, enjoy time in the moment, and to not take anything for granted.

In March of 2020, my sister and I travelled to St. Kitt’s and Nevis in the Caribbean. Visiting this quaint island town, was one of the first times in a long time that I relaxed on a vacation. While my sister and I were visiting our grandparents for a few days down South, we stayed at a beach resort, sat by the pool, watched grandma win poolside bingo, swam in the ocean, and explored some of the historical attractions that exist on the island. The day after we arrived home, the world closed. Often times when I come home from a trip, I have the travel bug and explore locally. This time I wasn’t able to do that. Not being able to travel for months was one of the worst things I had ever experienced. Looking back it has reminded me not to ever take travel for granted again.

While visiting New York last December with my mom, the constant go-go-go of the city life was interesting to watch and I felt as if I had to slow down to appreciate the smaller things in the big city. I found myself noticing and appreciating architecture, the people, the food, and so much more than I usually would while travelling. It may seem contradictory to say, but I feel as if while I enjoyed and experienced such a big city it felt as if time was passing slowly. It was yet again one of those realisations that I have taken with me into my life now as I remind myself that even when life is moving fast like a Manhattan street, it's still possible to slow down and appreciate the smaller things in life.

While major cities such as New York, Sydney, Oslo, and Montreal are always a pleasure to visit, a lot of my travelling and life experiences have come from remote outdoor trips. In these trips, I have learned perseverance, created long-lasting friendships, and found my passion in life.

In late August 2020 I received a text from my cousin, Blake, a geologist.

The text read “Get ready for the craziest adventure of your life. You’re in. We leave September 4th”.

Blake had received funding from the Northwest Territories government to go on an exploratory mining expedition searching for gold and other rare earth metals. Blake needed a camphand and figured I was the man for the job. While we did not return home with the geological findings we wanted, I walked away feeling tougher, more confident, knowing myself more, and about twenty pounds lighter - which I still haven’t been able to put back on. On September 5th, after spending a night in the territories capital, Yellowknife, we were dropped off by a floatplane approximately 300 kilometres north of Yellowknife on a chain of unnamed lakes. The closest, named Irritation Lake, is about 40 kilometres to the West. During our sixteen-day expedition, we hiked over 100 kilometres, collected about four-hundred pounds of rock samples, experienced the first snowfall of the winter season, and witnessed the Northern Lights almost nightly.

My job was either to stay at camp and cook food, prepare firewood, and complete other necessary tasks, or as a rock sample mule as Blake and his colleague, Collin, loaded my backpack up with tens of pounds of rocks. The weather did not care that we were there. The wind howled, the snow pounded down on us, and we only ever saw the sun on the first and last day.

While packing for this trip, Blake advised me that I should get a different, warmer sleeping bag. I thought he was crazy and that my negative seven-degree rated sleeping bag would be more than warm enough. Was Blake ever right and I ever wrong. The temperatures at night dropped down to negative eighteen and I shivered to my bones every night.

Halfway through the trip, we were supposed to receive a resupply of materials as well as ship the first half of our rock samples back to Yellowknife. In this resupply, I was expecting a brand new North Face sleeping bag rated for negative twenty degrees so I could finally get a good night's sleep that I was able to buy through my satellite phone. Unfortunately, our resupply was days late and I froze my ass off at night. I learned quickly that complaining won’t fix anything and that I needed to find a new way to persevere.

My Dad and I also learned how important perseverance was while we were travelling through the dead of Winter in Iceland in February of 2022, when we got our rental car Stuck in the middle of a snowbank that had blown into the highway in what felt like a blizzard. We called the police in the village that was closest to us, and they said:

“That sucks, good luck getting out!”

Luckily we were able to flag down a city worker who happened to have a tow strap in his truck that he was able to pull us out with. But to this day it's a core memory of perseverance that was shared between my father and myself.

If it wasn’t for travel I would not have discovered who I am today, or be on the life path I am on. The world is a beautiful place and travel has allowed me to not only explore this incredible earth, but also explore myself, who I am as a person, and who I want to be in the future. Each trip is another step towards curating my self-identity, and my self-identity is defined even more with every trip I take.

Until the next blog post, stay wanderlust,

- Riley