ADVENTURE LAND
trekking through steamy jungles, forging rivers and walking along vertigo-inducing mountain ridges. That’s my idea of adventure. (Surviving Paris Fashion Week also makes the list!) I’ve hiked the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, climbed Mount Olympus in Greece and hiked the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island, but for the past six years I was obsessed with trekking to the Ciudad Perdida, or “Lost City,” in Colombia. (See “Lost & Found,” page 172.) Ironically, I didn’t encounter a single creepy-crawly creature during the hike, but as I was writing this note a peppermint-size cinnamon-coloured spider suddenly appeared beside my computer. I shrieked—even jumped up from my chair. It was an unexpected but timely reminder that just because you’re in the safety of your own home, it doesn’t mean the proverbial bus won’t run you over. That “bus” is different for everyone. Mine just happens to be a mild to severe case of arachnoid anxiety. As the beatnik poet Ambrose Redmoon once said: “Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” For me, what’s important is leading a life embroidered with moments of unexpected adventure—even if that includes almost stepping on a tarantula while hiking Guadalupe Peak in Texas. Although travel is at the heart of these experiences for me, one of the grandest adventures in life for many women is motherhood. That journey— and all the raw fears and anxieties that come with it—is brilliantly captured in three touching essays from new moms. In “A Walk to Remember” (page 96), Laura deCarufel, our fashion features director, recounts a defining moment when she and her son, Charlie, took their first tentative stroll outside, away from the safety of their home. For Kathryn Hudson, our features director, it was about coming to terms with how motherhood would change her life. Her epiphany came before little Oscar arrived, and it happened in the most unlikely of places: a Vegas bathroom. (You’ll have to turn to “End of Days,” also on page 96, to see what happened.) In “False Glow” (page 100), Olivia Stren describes the physical hurdles—an early bleed, gestational diabetes, heart murmurs and arrhythmias—that marked her less-than-idyllic journey to motherhood. Congratulations to the new moms in the ELLE Canada family and to any readers who have embarked (or will be embarking) on new adventures this year.
Noreen Flanagan Editor-in-Chief Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @noreen_flanagan We love hearing from you! Please write to us at editors@ ELLECanada. com.