Acorns, Part 1: Coho Park and the Smoke Bluffs
“Mighty Oaks from little Acorns grow” I’ve been thinking for a while now about doing a series chronicling our first humble forays into learning to explore the wild. I’ve never really documented them in any way and I think I’ve learned some important lessons from reflecting on them. I’ll get into what I feel those lessons are in the later parts of this series. Something that I feel is unique about myself and Spring is that we have learned almost everything about the activities that we engage in, in the Outdoors, since we moved to Canada a few years ago. Before arriving in Canada I had no idea what Gore-tex was, or Vibram. If you’d uttered the words Gaiter, Crampon or Adze to me while I was living in Ireland I’d have imagined you were speaking a foreign language, don’t get me started on randkluft, krummholz and bergschrund. I’d never owned a tent, sleeping bag or even a pair of hiking boots before coming to Canada in 2010. This may seem odd to many people in Canada, at least in the West, where a connection with nature seems to be a part of the cultural tradition but in the Capital of Ireland, Dublin, where I am from, I was happy to spend all of my time in cities and suburbs, watching movies at the cinemas and meeting friends to chat in coffee shops. Cities do a great job of providing ample amounts of distraction to keep you from leaving their walls and streets behind for the untouched wilds. So what changed? Well when we moved to the town of Squamish, British Columbia, in the Spring of 2010 myself and my wife knew absolutely no one here. We also knew absolutely nothing about the town. Really, our decision to come here was based on the fact that it was north of a large city, Vancouver, and south of a resort town, Whistler. Hiking or climbing near Squamish was not even a consideration. Thinking back I remember imagining that I might just replicate my life from Ireland in Canada. I would meet friends in the city for coffee and take in a film at the cinema. In Ireland I had been meeting up with friends to play a video game called “Street Fighter IV”. I had been taking it quite seriously and actually wanted to start playing in competitions. I imagined starting a “Street Fighter IV” community in Squamish. Amongst my sparse belongings that I brought with me from Ireland was a large, arcade style, gaming joystick along with other gaming controllers and a host of other gaming equipment. I can’t...
