Day ten feels like day one hundred

Naltesby Lake

Day 10. 1,634 km travelled.

When you take off on a trip of this size, there's some expectation that the beginning will feel like a whirlwind. A few days of chaos before the rhythm sets in. A shock, perhaps. We spent a year building out Envy, planning rough routes, accounting for recovery, emergencies, work, weather, the ten thousand small things that could go sideways. I believe we did it right. Is that why day ten feels like day one hundred?

It just... fits.

There was no shock to the system, or week of figuring it out. Tom and I left Squamish, turned north, and it was as if some part of us had already been living this way and was simply relieved to remember it.

The days have their own logic. Each morning I open Backroads Map App and trace the spider web of FSRs across the province, looking for ways to get from here to there without touching the pavement. We've been almost entirely on dirt since Jesmond, winding through a landscape I didn't fully expect. Thousands of hectares of previously logged hills, now densely populated with pine trees, exact replicas of one another. Efficient. But eerie. Farms scattered with small remote operations in places I assumed would be wilderness. I keep revising my picture of what BC actually is. The provincial parks start to feel less like preserved nature and more like nature that's been left alone after everything else was touched.

We’ve been pleasantly surprised that every rec site we've stopped at has fresh toilet paper. If you've camped in the Sea to Sky, you understand. It's an anomaly.

We've slept next to a lake every night. I'll tip my hat at myself for that. My dad took my sister and me camping every summer growing up, and somewhere in those years I absorbed his knack for picking a site. Water. Open sky. Wind off the lake to keep the bugs at bay. The mosquito situation further north is something I'm choosing not to think about too hard yet, though the fear has already dug a small trench in my soul.

I'm wearing the same pants I left in. Am I surprised this feels like the most natural thing in the world? Not really. Tom would probably say I'm in my element. I suit being dirty.

We prepared so thoroughly for this to be hard, and it isn't. Not yet, at least. And I'm not sure if that means we did everything right, or if it means the harder parts are still somewhere up the road, waiting. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

For now, I'm just driving north on dirt roads, sleeping next to lakes, and wearing the same pants.

And that feels like plenty.