Day Two: Go West (Still in Ontario)
Day two begins the way most real healing does: not with revelation, but with motion. Water that tastes better than it should. A road that stretches out like it has no expectations of me. Still Ontario (my home province) but suddenly unfamiliar, as if I’ve been living here my whole life and only just bothered to look up.
We head north, deeper into Ontario, and I realize I’m seeing most of Northern Ontario for the first time. Which feels both exciting and vaguely accusatory. How many years did I spend racing through life, convinced I had no time, while entire landscapes waited patiently to be noticed?
The road is long, the trees are endless, and the sky feels bigger than it has any right to be. There’s something about northern roads that invites silence and something about this particular day that refuses it. The Spotify playlist is on full blast, doing what it does best: narrating feelings I’m not quite ready to say out loud.
Somewhere between stretches of forest and lake, “Go West” by the Village People comes on. Which is either perfect or ridiculous, depending on your tolerance for irony. Maybe both. There I am, driving west well, north for now leaving behind my overextended and bad thoughts, soundtracked by one of the most exuberant, unapologetic songs ever made.
It’s impossible not to laugh. Impossible not to sing along. The kind of singing that isn’t good but is sincere. The kind that feels like a small rebellion against the version of me who spent years too tired to enjoy anything without guilt.
Lost in the music, lost in the road, I forget just briefly that I’m supposed to be figuring things out. There’s no grand insight, no voiceover-worthy realization. Just the steady rhythm of driving and the unexpected joy of letting something be simple. If this were a movie, this would be the montage scene: windows down, music up, feelings temporarily suspended while the character moves forward anyway.
Thunder Bay comes into view not as a border, but as a marker. A reminder of how vast this province is, and how far I still have to go before I even leave it. Standing at the edge of what feels like the beginning of the real west, I’m struck by how fitting that feels. I’m not across yet not geographically, not emotionally but I’m close enough to sense the shift.
I still don’t know who I’m becoming on this trip. That part of the script hasn’t been written. But today taught me something small and important: joy doesn’t always arrive quietly. Sometimes it shows up wearing a disco outfit, shouting encouragement, and demanding you turn the volume all the way up.
Tomorrow, we cross another line. And for once, I’m not rushing the scene.