When I moved back to Canada from Scotland the opportunity presented itself to travel. We had no time frame, no agenda. In fact we didn’t even have a final destination. With no firm ideas on where to relocate, my partner (at the time) and I had spent time researching Canada and had joined the Wwoofing family (http://www.wwoof.ca). We were excited at the places we knew about but I was more excited about the places we would discover in between.
That was years ago and I’d forgotten a lot about that trip until I found the journal we had kept on our travels out west from Ottawa, Ontario. I had forgotten how hard learning new (or relearning long forgotten) skills were, how unprepared for some situations we were, how little we knew.
Reading back on that trip reminded me of something that I have seen a lot in my travels: the lack of backyard knowledge. I’ve been pleasantly shocked at some of the unexpected things I’ve seen on my travels but what has shocked me more is the fact that some people don’t know the great things they have in their locality. It was surprising then and it still surprises me now that people don’t know about their area. There are a lot of people that can tell you what to see and where to go in London or Paris but they couldn’t talk about their own backyard. Some people might go so far as to say “there is nothing here” and to that I would say “that’s probably not true”.
I’m talking about all those quirky things that make your area unique: drastically changing landscapes, caves, hidden beaches, great lookouts, little towns with big sculptures (http://www.bigthings.ca), abandoned buildings taken over by artists, small towns that still look like 1950. You can find great things all across Canada. The small towns and big cities and those little places out in the middle of nowhere- every backyard has something to offer.
So if a tourist asked you what there is to see in your area, how would you respond?
Do you know what is in your backyard?
Backyards
