The seven day countdown till vacation.  Well, not exactly.  I have the slight problem of getting some wisdom teeth removed first, on the 18th.  I am not looking forward to it.  Still, I need to get to Canada to visit my dentist to get them out, which means at least a few days of happy Canada time before the big pull!  It is hard to explain why I am looking forward to my visit back to Halifax so much, I am always surprised that when I am going to Canada I get genuinely excited, whereas in most of the trips that I have taken in my life there has always been a nagging feeling of apprehension mixed with a dash of do I really want to be going?  This apprehension before a trip could be explained by the fact that I would usually be spending the next four weeks camping in the middle of nowhere in Greenland.

Trips to Greenland always messed with my head.  As I said, I never really looked forward to them. I just accepted that I was going.  By the time I got there and settled after a couple of days, I would start to get into the swing of the daily routine and the fieldwork.  By about halfway through the trip I would be very comfortable (especially in my own dirt having not washed for two weeks) and would be enjoying every minute of it.  Not washing yourself gets easier the longer you don’t do it for, if you are wondering.  I did usually brush my teeth but it would depend on the water situation, whether it was frozen or not.  By the last week of any trip to Greenland I would have forgotten about many things that seem so important in life.  Money; you didn’t need it in the middle of nowhere.  TV; you didn’t miss it in the middle of nowhere.  People; you didn’t need or miss them in the middle of nowhere.  In fact, each day revolved around getting breakfast, crossing very cold meltwater rivers so that you could head off and do some fieldwork, get back to camp to cook dinner, collect some wood for the fire before dark, get fire lit and drink some whiskey while waiting on the northern lights (some of this of course is weather dependant).  So by the end of these trips I would be the most relaxed that I will probably ever experience, I had literally stopped worrying about everything and it would be such a good feeling.

I wonder if it is possible to get that same feeling in modern living.  I like to think so.