From the UK to Canada: Growing Confidence in the Wild
I am an entrepreneur, who goes by the name of Georgina. I’m a 26-year-old female who travelled from the southeast of the UK to the Chilcotins, British Columbia roughly about six months ago. I left my lifestyle and my small greeting cards business, to explore the new culture of Canada and grow in confidence.
When I first started writing this, it was just a month or so before I arrived. I wanted to see how my thoughts and reflections would progress throughout my stay. When I arrived, I knew my reflection and self-analysis would be built around writing, because it’s very effective for me. To compare what I wrote previously to my reflection now, most of my writing was based on philosophy, politics and people. It was winter, and I was fairly isolated, because for some reason people don’t like to travel so much when it’s covered in snow. At the time, I enjoyed the opportunity of getting to know the place better and I was open to learning about the philosophy “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”. At the beginning I was a horse with goggles on, skating around on icy frozen water. This time around, my writing is more self-orientated, my own focus on the world and its creations.
Setting the grounds before I leave is something that I decided would be a priority on my list, I was determined to do so, because I feel that ineffective re-integration is one of the reasons why people remain nomads, roaming from place to place. I want to return to the UK, promoting eudemonism, a moral philosophy that doing good creates happiness, to those that surround me. I want to be actively involved in projects in my community, making sure that all my free time, and work time is used efficiently. I want to, as the phrase here goes, “kill five birds with one stone”, instead of just two. I want to promote nature and make sure that my hometown remains a place that I want to live in.
The journey that I took to reach this point was through a load of recreational activities, ones that I truly enjoyed. From the top of my head, I can list just a few, such as: hiking through the mountains and lupine trails, western horse riding on sturdy cayuse horses, fishing in the most relaxing lakes, shoeing horses and learning their personalities, packing, baking delicious meals for great guests, bushcraft and survival from the closest and furthest objects around you, mountain biking in bear city, target shooting and feeling bad-ass, animal tracking whilst stepping through spiderwebs, gold panning for nuggets, wood work and crafting tables, wildlife studies and conserving the land and digging the orchard for more trees.
I also expanded my prospects in life and my skillset. These include guiding people safely through the wilderness, chainsaw usage for firewood and building, tractor operation, fire building, general maintenance, teaching, employment, grant writing, ranch hand, working with horses, marketing, sales, cooking, housekeeping, forestry management, bear safety, firearm training.
I have grown dramatically in self-confidence, and I am proud to admit it, as I sure wouldn’t have been able to six months ago. My self-confidence probably grew through understanding myself better and moving into the next stage that I am at in life and what I need to do next. It makes you as a person feel grounded. The help that I received here, to plan myself more effectively, really gave me more faith in my capabilities. From where I had so many challenges per day, I was able to take them on. If I failed, then I would plan to learn from my mistakes. If I was successful, then I know that I can have more confidence in myself. Understanding where my confidence comes from was a great step for me, as it was the top priority. I enjoyed taking on activities, such as teaching new information and presenting information to guests, as I knew it was my weakness, but I knew that repeating it would only make it get better.
About halfway through my stay, I hit a point of realization that teamwork in a tight knit, family-feel, community is essential for your own and other people’s happiness. It’s not just a case of leaving the office at 5 and returning to your TV or gym. The benefits of living this lifestyle is that you are constantly building friendships with people and accomplishing worthy things alongside them. This is nonexistent in my town, as people usually have a 9-5 job and then go home to watch television. It took me a while to grasp this concept, but over time I saw the benefits of being with my ranch friends and doing activities that would accomplish goals together.
The wilderness taught me many wonderful things. I breathed in the fresh air from the ranch, on my last day here and just thought about all the nature that surrounds me. Deer running around the horse corral and orchard. Snakes sliding under cars. Flowers and plants growing in abundance. I will return home, with so many reflections and life stories that I just cannot wait to share with my family.
My plans now are to go to an alpaca farm close to Everett in the US and then possibly continue to work on stewardship in riparian research. Then eventually, I will return home to Kent, where I will become actively involved in projects and the community and continue with my chainsawing for the coming winter, woodwork for Christmas gifts and hopefully teach my dad how to fish.
by Georgina C., UKthe
