Lose track of time in Nelson, B.C.

“Have you heard of ‘Kootenay Time’?” asks the woman behind the counter of a small artsy boutique on the main street of Nelson, B.C., after learning I’m a first-time visitor to the area.

Kootenay Time, it turns out, is something like “Island Time” in the tropics.

“This place runs on a whole other rhythm,” she says.

Sounds good to me. Considering I’m on an extended escape from my normally hectic schedule, the slower pace is a welcome change.

The power of “if”

Canmore is full of hard-core athletes — world champions and Olympic hopefuls, ultra-marathoners and Ironman veterans, you name it. Even those who just do sports recreationally seem to go hard most nights of the week.

I was talking recently with my friend Dan Roycroft, who spent 15 years training and competing in cross-country skiing, becoming a four-time national champion and eventually competing in the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy. He told me about one of his favourite quotes, posted over the entrance to the Wimbledon stadium. It reads: “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.”

Home is where (and what) you make it

Exactly one month ago, I left Alberta on a flight to Ontario for the holidays — and I’ve been living out of a (rather large) suitcase ever since.

I spent two weeks visiting family and friends before catching a red-eye flight back out West, and stopped in Canmore just long enough to do a load of laundry and re-pack for an extended New Year’s getaway visiting friends in the B.C. interior. This past week, even though I returned to work, I stayed in Nelson to work out of our office there and get a little face-time with some colleagues I rarely see.

As much as I’m feeling ready to go home, unpack and wake up in my own bed for a change, If there’s one thing I’ve discovered in the past month, it’s that “home” can be wherever you chose to make it.

The habit of gratitude

I’ve been thinking (and learning) a lot lately about what it means to be happy, and what kinds of choices I need to make to bring more joy into my own life. It seems to me that one of the secrets of truly happy people — and I count myself in this category, most of the time — is the habit of gratitude.

Living off the land

The stars had just begun blinking away into the dawn as our hunting party pulled off onto the dirt shoulder of a country road, quickly assembled our gear and stepped quietly from the car.

Legal light was coming on fast, and we needed to get into position before the deer came out to graze. Ahead of me, one of my hunting partners army-rolled under the barbed wire fence, avoiding patches of mud and cow patties on the other side, while the other climbed deftly over and quickly disappeared along the downwind side of a dense alder thicket. I hurried along behind their shadows, weaving through the underbrush and holding my breath to avoid making any unnecessary sound that could tip off the wildlife.

Circle of inspiration

In a book club meeting the other night, we got talking about finding one’s purpose in life (and what that looks like) after reading about one man’s journey to understand what drives people to become who we become. His story kicked off a discussion about what it looks like to find your “purpose” and live out your dreams, and it’s something I’ve been thinking about ever since deciding to drop everything this year and move to the mountains.

It’s also something Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder and CEO, put a lot of thought into. In a 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, Jobs spoke about the importance of dedicating yourself to the work you are most passionate about:

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

Lessons in stress management

It’s not even 8 a.m. and I had intended to sleep in, taking a much needed break after a very long and stressful couple of weeks. Instead I’m talking on my cell phone while logging into my computer — still in bed, at least — listening to a colleague explain the need for an urgent intervention to fix an issue on our company’s website.

Of all the days. But it’s a simple fix, and after a few minutes of work, I have the choice to go back to bed or get up and seize the day. Carpe diem, as my dad would say.

The day wins.