2023 took off with a lot of travel for Krebs. Toronto, New York, Quebec City, Austin, Los Angeles, and a good chunk of the Australian continent. Being cooped up for so long it feels great to finally stretch one’s wings.
Traveling is a gift. Of course, this observation easily reads as cliché, but so do all adages. For it to ring true, like tearing up while watching a 90's rom-com on the plane ride, it takes vulnerability. You are creating space for something new. And this is the heart of why travel is so good at jarring us out of the humdrum ins-n-outs of our daily roost. Travel forces newness. Take a flight and you are faced with new time zones, flora & fauna, and local customs. But if the response is to not make yourself uncomfortable you won’t experience a widened perspective. You might as well not leave the nest.
How To Fly Home
What’s important here is beyond the travel, the plane ride, the nights out, and the weird bird species you catalog. It's how to see your average day at home. Viewing your day of working for eight to ten hours, then completing your million other boring and repetitive tasks with with new eyes.
This isn’t easy. It takes effort, and if you are like me, most of the time you are not going to have the energy to see this way. Many years ago, I took an summer internship in Reykjavik, Iceland. When returning home to Canada, I remember being hyperaware of the number of trees lining the streets and filling the forests along the highways. Iceland is almost void of trees. Over a thousand years ago the early settlers quickly cut down the native tree coverage to build... whatever Vikings were building back then, leaving the stunning, but relatively barren landscape of modern-day Iceland.
Feeling the presence of all the trees in this country only lasted a few days for me. But every now and again that feeling will float through as I walk by the maples outside my studio. If I’m open enough to catch it, these trees I see every day turn into the weird lifeforms they truly are.
This spring I hope to see a Queensland kookaburra in the eyes of my Montreal sparrows, a species local birding blog referred to as "one of the least desirable backyard birds". The guy who wrote that needs to get out more.
