“Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.” – Bertoit Brecht

Years and years have passed since I wrote an article for The Vancouver Sun. Eleven years ago in fact. It was published in January 2002 and titled Ode to the Ocean. It was my first ‘payment’ for my writing. I received a golf umbrella festooned with comic strips with prominent advertising for The Vancouver Sun. That should have been a harbinger of the kind of payments travel writing generates. If nothing else I can be fantastically obtuse when presented with the facts, even if they are covered in cartoons.

My article waxed on with my gobsmacked description of our new seaside home on the Sunshine Coast (lovely alliteration non?) It was a heady love affair between us, our little cottage and the Pacific.

We spent over 15 fabulous years living in a wonderful West Coast oceanfront world with the sound of a surf that never stopped. We were charmed, humbled and more than once brought to our knees by Her incredible power.  And yes, there is no doubt in my mind that the ocean is a She; a force both benignly beneficent and murderous – not unlike a woman tangled in the throes of an estrogen rush. More than once I announced that I hadn’t known I needed healing until I came and was baptised by that infinite surf, the glowing arbutus trees and the rocky shore.

But as anyone who has been alive for more than a minute can attest, life is a twisty curving river called Change. And as much as I wanted to cling to how it was, it was not only that tide that shifted. We have been spending more and more time in our apartment in Vancouver’s Yaletown. Our apartment is lovely, though it affords only a partial-view of the marina-tamed ocean. It’s hard to believe those citified waters are from the same fickle Pacific that we have adored at such close-up range.

Although I miss the power of that untamed ocean (and the storage in the basement !!!) we are enjoying our city life right now and looking forward to less house/stuff/maintenance and more travel.

So our lives have switched gears again…and our seaside home is now officially sold. It is the end of another chapter or perhaps it’s the finish of sixth or twenty-fifth chapter (how would we ever know where we are in the book of our lives?)

Stay tuned…the apartment is listed and is likely to sell soon.

Not sure what chapter that would make it in the Book called Life, but it’s turning into one mother of a tome!