How camping screwed me up...

Okay, so not really screwed up per se, but really made me yearn. Yearn for big cedar trees you can barely see the tops of, clean lakes with rocky, weedless bottoms, hills and mountains that take your breath away, amazing fruit you can eat off the tree in your backyard, waterfalls, caverns, oceans, warmth that doesn't bring droughts and tornados...

Things like this:

And this:

With campsites that look like this:

And lakes that look like this:

(Note how you can SEE the bottom!)

I think the longer I live in Alberta, the more I miss BC, and the more I appreciate when I go back for a visit. Kris and I are usually really content people, but since we've been back, we've been feeling like coming home is a bit of a let-down. It's just not like BC here. And sometimes we wonder why we choose to live here, when there are beautiful, stunning places that could be right in our backyard.

But then I look at some of these gorgeous places - cabins right on the shore of Shuswap Lake, yardsights that look like campgrounds, homes that make it available for families to walk a mere 3 minutes to spend an afternoon at the beach - and I think, I might get pretty lonely. Surrounded by the splendor of nature, but lonely. I guess part of what makes little ol' Camrose, AB so great, are the relationships we have made here. I may not have a lakefront property, but I have family close by. I may not have mountains and streams and waterfalls, but I have some really great friends. I guess we would eventually make relationships if we were to ever move somewhere else, but it sure is nice to have people around. To have strong relationships that have moved past the small talk, get-to-know-you phase. And that's really valuable. Probably more-so than a view.

So for now, here we are. And we'll be content here. Still dreaming a bit of a day when we can sea-doo up into our front yard, or have peaches growing in our back yard. Maybe that will happen, and maybe it won't. But my yearning has also made me appreciate what I DO have that other places might not. I like it here, mountains or not.

But it still makes me think... :)