Living in Toronto, in Parkdale (long before it was “cool” and full of hipsters), we lived on the wrong side of the streetcar tracks of High Park. My parents would frequently take us to the Park to skate on Grenadier Pond, and play by the Great Maple Leaf, and visit the zoo. Those trips filled me with such joy, it became my dream to cross those tracks and become a resident of High Park. Though physically not so far away, it remained still a world away. As an adult with a husband and two young children in tow, after our return from South Africa we spent a brief time again in Parkdale, filling me with old horrible memories of violence and poverty. When we were financially able to live in High Park, right across the street from the park itself, it was as though all my dreams had finally come true. Nestled on one of the side streets in a townhouse, this photo was taken late one evening outside my doorstep, with my children soundly safe and asleep, and the streetlights along the wide paved roads, with the maple trees creating a huge canopy above them, the moon glowed, telling me I was finally home.

I sometimes feel like when you enter a new place, it will tell you whether or not you are “home”. I felt it the first time I went to South Africa, when a border guard said to me merrily, “Are you coming home, love?” And I said “yes”, even though I’d never been there before, because the feeling of home was all around me. I quickly fell madly, irrevocably in love with South Africa; a place I’ve never lost the longing for. In the same way, after landing in L.A. for a work conference, as the driver drove away from LAX I felt like I was appraising my new home in California. Less than a year later we had moved to San Francisco. In this photo, my husband had just picked us up from the airport and as we drove across Golden Gate Bridge (which subsequently became a constant marker for me between “The City” and Marin County), I felt as though I was having a spiritual experience. And every time I’ve crossed it since, the same wonder and awe remains. It’s like crossing to the other side, where you pay the blind boatman with your coins and he takes you to paradise. It’s a sign that I’m going home to Marin County, where I always long to be, hiking alone on trails held upright by the beauty of my beloved redwoods.

Rodeo Beach. The beach is not sand, but is covered in tiny pebbles of every hue and colour. It’s impossible not to hold these pebbles in your hand and marvel at them. As an avid hiker I’ve hiked all the trails above the beach, encountered many a coyote and walked in the surf of the ocean numerous times. It feels like the end of the world lives there. And oddly I find it incredibly comforting. I feel like it somehow belongs to me and I to it. Yes, it does remind me of South Africa – it’s especially like “The Southern-Most Point”. But it’s not a weak echo, it is its own place. Stormy winters and “June gloom” often obscure the rocks and sand, but I find even more comfort there than in the sun. I feel like if I asked the beach to marry me, it would say “we already are, my darling”. There are few landscapes in the world that, when you embrace them with your eyes, embrace you back. I am lucky to count Rodeo Beach as one of my many lovers.