Above: The Jenkinson kids, circa 1991.

A piece originally published in the 2011/2012 edition of the SBC Ski and Snowboard Resort Guide.

As a child, the far reaches of your world were tangible. A plot of lush grass with clearly defined boundaries, the rises and depths of your sandbox were an entire continent, the frenzy of an anthill an empire. The closer you looked the more there was to see, and each season provided a splendour of new experience. To gaze up at the crisp colours of fall was the preview to beloved winters, when mounds of white clay lie waiting to be shaped into kingdom or battlefield.

As you grew older, your world expanded to your neighbourhood, your city and beyond. Initially satisfied by the riverbanks and mountain ranges of your greater backyard, you outgrew these too, in time. You became enthralled with the idea of international offerings, of layer upon layer of culture and scenery. Your youthful ego traveled the world with a checklist of places seen and unseen, an immature imperialist conquering the world with foreign beers on a budget. Travelling ceased to feel like sacrifice as it became increasingly easy to stay in touch with friends and family far away. Time passed with the grain and you managed to find routine within the ever changing.

Yet as you grew older and your checklist grew longer, as you video conferenced loved ones and perused instant messages, the map that once spread out before you began to fold in from the edges. Like a child pulling up and over the fence, your ideology of motion could no longer be sustained. It became clear that the world is not infinite, and what’s more, every place you could go was not necessarily a place that you wanted to be.

You began to recognize the subtle ache once the haze of excitement had settled. The joy derived from anticipation, of holding in your mind every possible landscape, event, personality and interaction, every joyful celebration or testing complication, was gone. You learned that experience is only infinite before hand, when all that could be hasn’t yet been revealed.

You haven’t ceased to explore, but you are altered. You’ve taught yourself not to qualify adventure, believing days of exploration in the Whistler backcountry to be as valuable as sharing a knowing smile with a fellow traveller on the Rome Metro. Every tiny detail polishes you now, like a wet mitten over the face of snowball. This realization sets the surface of your skin on fire as it means that everything you do, everything you see and you feel, has its own inherent value. The steeps of Switzerland or the ski hills of your origin. New York nightlife or a dinner in your backyard with old friends. Comfort or complication. Celebration or solace.

And so you explore and re-explore with an eye for the small and an ear for the quiet. You are intimate enough to see similarities in the places you visit instead of differences. When you look up at the bows of snow weighted tree tops or down from chairlifts to inspect and appreciate the lines of fellow conquerors, when you take the time to speak casually with strangers without stunting your laughter or filling the silences. When you notice something for the first time in a place you think you know by heart, your perception of the world expands once again, and your heart expands along with it. You learn that only through attention to the smallest fractions of the whole can you hold most of the world in your hands. And only then can you accept, and even appreciate, what inevitably slips through your fingers. -Allie Jenkinson

When I close my eyes I dream of surf. A hammock bleached pastel in the sun, hung from a wooden beam by the rough hands of a romantic. An outdoor post spraying water over a slab of cement. Ducking under green brush on a dirt path guide to the sea. Shifting water and rising peaks that create and recreate a liquid landscape. North American holidays simplified. Fish for one friend, a board wax for another. A bittersweet taste, more sweet than bitter, of friends and family far away. With each flash of sunlight that makes the world go white, with each inch of skin submerged in water, with each morning you wake up before anyone else and tiptoe out the door, your life becomes your own. I’ve been to places like these before, felt the cool on my feet and the warmth in my hair. But lately I go there often. I daydream in the dark, with little care about drifting away from consciousness. Meditation or escape, I couldn’t say.

The year of 2010 was difficult. Struggling with down payments on a mortgage that always seemed just inches beyond our grasp while paying inflated ski town rent. A hard year that landed on the shoulders of my husband as I struggled with the realities of finishing six years of post secondary and coming out with nothing more practical than a firm grasp with photography and classic literature. A self-destructive streak of stubbornness and minimal tolerance for the casual rudeness of service industry customers or the misdirected anger of fellow employees. Crippling self-doubt crept in, not limiting itself to my short-term occupation, but effecting long-term goals. Finding its way into the part of me that should be brought to light from the inside but never plucked out. And yet, my day-to-day problems made me terrified to write. Terrified to find out that I can’t do the only pursuit I feel something real for.

And as is life, a hard, rough year is the background to days that shine. Moving into a beautiful new home still small enough to be quaint and cozy, with a view of the mountains in front and a network of year-round trails behind. Finding out that my brother’s one-in-a-million wife is expecting. Spending a weekend in Canmore for a simple family wedding and taking the route home North of Kamloops as the leaves turned color. Starting to find a writing voice again while witnessing an ocean of modern inspiration breathing life into others. Most recently, waking up in the morning and knowing that I will never take my husband for granted.

My life is a good one, and I’ve been fortunate throughout to have many who love and care for me.

I feel in my heart that I’m a writer of fiction, and I feel my family and myself in everything I write. And yet lately I feel some things so deeply that I don’t want to hide them in the conduit of a fictional character. I know that something is turning over as I suddenly refuse to hide my insecurities and shortcomings. I want to expose my heart to open air, and let strangers bear the burden of interpretation. And as I drop the layers of anger and frustration that hide me from the world, the wind makes them stir, and then takes them away.

I’m learning that being happy isn’t being perfect, but being flawed and still having nothing to hide.

So no resolutions this year. No small changes or the tearing off of corners. No sewing small holes only to re-thread the needle and sew another. By the time doubt arrives I’ll be long gone. To the next idea, the next creation. Moving out from under the clouds to find another place in the sun.

In the past few years I’ve been lucky enough to find friends that feel like family, and there’s talk of spending Christmas and New Years Eve in Nicaragua next year. And if they can’t make it happen, I’ll still go. I’ll wake in the morning and tiptoe outside. Slip on my suit and shower outdoors, walk the long path to the beach, and paddle out with a song in my heart for the girl that spent the previous New Year’s with water in her eyes, dreaming up a life of sweet creation and a New Year spent on sparkling surf.

A little bit of ridiculousness: the opening spread of my anniversary article In Search of Utopia about a fictional ski resort for the 2010/2011 edition of the SBC Ski and Snowboard Resort Guide. Thanks to Les Anthony, Mike Douglas, and TJ Schiller for sharing their expertise. The issue also includes an homage to my origins in the form of a piece on Southern Alberta Ski Resorts. -A

B

elow are a couple of articles I compiled and edited for Jay Peak’s custom publication -produced by Origin Design + Communications- as well as the front and back covers. Cool, eh? Mike Berard served as Managing Editor, and all design and illustration was done by Kevin Peacock and Simon Roy. The Magazine features articles by Les Anthony, Dean Seguin, and many more.

To my merriment the table of content includes the following quote from Groucho Marx: “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read”.

With no notice or explanation

We’ve ruthlessly fired our former selves

And have closed the position.

Nudging the sky

Or punching the ground,

We refused to fight the everyday.

We freed our feet from the creek bed,

Touched our toes to our foreheads,

Broke the surface

And violently filled our lungs.

Unbeknownst to us,

Our minds were unmemorizing numbers

Our skin and hair was renouncing its code

Our eyes were sharpening and resharpening

With each flicker of the fire.

On orange strands in darkness

On primitive and peripheral fears

On blue on blue on sparkling blue.

And so we went.

To raise a child under a warmer sun

To watch wind over sand

With a bird in our chest

And sweat over dust on our skin.

A

Vancouver Island town’s unique culture and frigid swell unlock the mysterious draw of the Canadian surf scene. A brief excerpt from a recently completed  article on Tofino, British Columbia.

“Anyone that finds the idea of getting into the water during a Canadian winter out of the question will have an equally hard time with the following phrase, written without a hint of sarcasm: you get used to it. If you don’t love being in the water in the first place, you certainly won’t enjoy it here. But as you might imagine, the climate breeds a surfer of a particular resilience, and the gum boot wearing locals take pride in the fact that though hooded wetsuits, sleet and snow may not be ideal, when you combine a passion for surfing and an appreciation for this unique environment, ideal is irrelevant.”

A piece originally produced as online content for the TELUS World Ski and Snowboard Festival.

W

hile the Whistler Conference Centre ballroom boomed and flashed during the Follow Me Film Premier and the village stroll writhed with movement and color, a focused and carefully formulated grassroots debate was taking place underground. Oversized cue cards were tossed. Panelists sweated and jittered. The audience booed and cheered at their whim, and a controversial winner rose out of the pack.

Put on by the Whistler Museum during the TELUS World Ski and Snowboard Festival, Icon Gone gives local personalities the forum to argue for a Whistler treasure that they deem worthy of iconic status. Each entrant is given a maximum of five minutes to deliver their argument, and the presentation of anyone who goes over the limit is terminated with a cutthroat gong.

The Pique’s Andrew Mitchell borrowed Freddie Mercury’s swaying voice before launching into his argument for bikes in which he declared his love of the Loonie race, described the difficulty in riding the valley trail home from the afterparties, and put forth his incorrect but hilarious French to English translation of vas deferens.

Kevin Demaskie strutted across the stage in retro neon ski gear to argue for the Whistler Answer, and Cathy Jewitt, clad in a mink trimmed coat which she quickly shed under the theatre’s hot lights, made a passionate plea for the now defunct Dave Murray Downhill. Shauna Hardy-Mishaw argued for Hugh Smythe, and Nicole Fitzgerald’s beautiful voice filled the theatre with an impeccably crafted narrative about the life of Florence Peterson. Mike Berard took the podium clad in squeaky yellow and green waterproof apparel to argue hard for Whistler’s most hated four letter word: rain. Stephen Vogler made the final presentation with historic black and white photos to emphasize his argument for squatter’s cabins.

Judged by applause-o-meter,  Berard was in first place going into the finals with Vogler, Jewitt, and Mitchell to defend against. Stating that “I didn’t prepare anything because I didn’t think I’d make it this far and now I’m in trouble,” Berard wasn’t yet aware he had an ingenious Mitchell to contend with.

The champion for bikes invoked Godwin’s law, which states that the longer an argument goes on, the greater the chance that the topic of Nazis will arise. Pointing out that Hitler never rode a bike during World War One, Mitchell summed up his rebuttal with “Hitler bad, bikes good,” and clinched himself the win.

I sat down with Mike Berard to discuss his position after he’d had a few days to nurse his wounds (or more accurately, drown his sorrows).

Allie Jenkinson: I was secretly pleased to see that you lost, as we had planned this interview ahead of time and “Interview with a Loser” is a far better title than “Interview with a Champion,” don’t you think?

Mike Berard: If I wasn’t the loser I would agree with you.

AJ: Tell me a little bit about your experience in preparing for Icon Gone, and about how you chose your argument.

MB: My argument centered on the idea that Whistler’s unique element is the result of rainfall, the defining factor that separates it from other ski areas.

AJ: This is a controversial argument, as rain is the great adversary in these parts.

MB: Exactly. But anyone who chooses to pretend that it doesn’t rain here is a fool.  Rain is central to why we have amazing snow, trees, singletrack, lakes, rivers,  and people. Coastal BC relies on precipitation. When we curse the rain we are actually cursing the fact that we aren’t California, which isn’t our true intent.

Tourists won’t go up when it’s dark and cool and wet, but the locals will. Rain breeds people that appreciate adversity.

AJ: You’re one of a handful of Whistler locals that seems to relish in controversy. Were you looking for a controversial idea, which lead you to rain, or did the idea you had the strongest argument for just happen to be controversial?

MB: A little bit of both.  I do believe that rain is Whistler’s defining factor, and backed away from more controversial ideas because I didn’t find them as convincing.

AJ: What was the greatest challenge going into the debate?

MB: The biggest challenge seemed to be that I had to defend myself as a relatively new resident. I didn’t know how much of the contest would revolve around the ski town’s infamous localism. I thought I might get called out on being a tourist. Everyone was really cool though. In the end my perspiration problem under hot lights in raingear was the real challenge.

AJ: How did you feel about being stripped of the win?

MB: I didn’t mind losing to Andrew Mitchell because his rebuttal was hilarious.

AJ: It’s a very humorous event, but at the same time it has a distinctly bittersweet undertone.  You have a panel of dynamic people living in a place that they are clearly invested in and passionate about, discussing a lack of appreciation for or loss of the elements that they believe make Whistler what it is.

MB: In my eyes that’s the beauty of the event. It doesn’t simply exist for a good time. These people are addressing in their own clever way the changing of the guard in Whistler. It’s a way for the local mouthpieces, outside of their careers, to voice these opinions. Take the Peak 2 Peak Gondola. So many people in the valley make fun of it, but sometimes because of person’s career or political ties it gets complicated when we try to speak publicly about it. It’s a classic ski town dynamic. We’re here because of the tourists, but not for the tourists.

AJ: Would you do Icon Gone again?

MB: It’s tricky to pick that one single element and argue with your heart and soul, and then come back next year and argue for another one. But I’d love to try.

AJ: The panelists weren’t too rough on you, even though you made yourself a bit of an easy target.

MB: Maybe, but I think the most important thing to remember is that without rain the people would be different.

AJ: But for the sake of argument, doesn’t the rain account for some of the elements that the locals view as negative? Isn’t it the rain that keeps tourists out for most of the season, leaving us with a jacked up cost of living that results from communities full of empty mansions?

MB: Those mansions don’t bother me.

AJ: But they bother Stephen Vogler.

MB: Right. Unfortunately they make it hard for the rest of us to afford living here, but those people don’t effect us because they are never here. It’s a sign of indulgence, but I don’t think it changes who we are as Whistlerites.

AJ: Perhaps it ensures that the people who live here are committed,  because they have to make sacrifices.

MB: Maybe that’s my next Icon Gone argument: massive empty mansions.

Mike Berard is a Whistler based writer and editor of The Ski Journal. Read his full Icon Gone argument here.

and

See the original wssf article here.

I

t happens on a day that starts out like any other, most likely one at the end of a week that has dragged on from monotonous tasks and endless to-dos. You may be getting over the flu or have have finally finished a project that’s been hanging over your head for months. It may be a sunny, spring-like day after months of rain. It may be triggered by a joyous conversation with an exceptional person, or a photograph or article found in a travel magazine. It might be the result of reading about the momentum of a person you’ve never met.

Or maybe you can’t say where it came from, this pure and crisp voice that miraculously rises out of your subconscious through layers of negativity, responsibility, cynicism and obligation that can build over time unchecked. It’s that small tickle of nervous excitement that pinches you in the stomach when you realize there is something incredible on the horizon that you could actually make happen of your own volition with a little change,  a little risk and a significant amount of enthusiasm. It’s the sudden and often overwhelming awareness that the only thing keeping you from unqualified joy is, and has always been, you.

The resulting fruition of this moment- the business started or abandoned, the trip taken or not taken, a goal met or altered, is not nearly as important as the seed. Because that light feeling—the feeling that you have more lifting you up than weighting you down—is an assurance that your heart is in tact and that no matter your age or your circumstance, the time you have left carries as much promise and possibility as the life you’ve already lived through.



I

wake in the morning and roll onto my back, gently rubbing my eyes and grasping at the tails of hazy dreams racing from recollection. I try to come to terms with what today means based on what yesterday had been. What is there to do and how urgent is it? Are my obligations many, or have I earned a day of rest? For as long as I can remember I’ve been aware that time limited.

I come across small pieces of paper ripped haphazardly and placed deep into the bindings of my own books. Scanning the marked page, I can’t find the sentiment that once sparkled, yet find a notable sentence a few pages later that somehow escaped detection.  Flipping through papers I wrote a short time ago, I’m unable to follow the logic of my own arguments. For all intents and purposes these pages were constructed by the mind of someone else; someone with a singular, defined focus, living and breathing the context they were written in.

My preferences are dubious at best. Though I left Alberta nearly a decade ago, images of Banff and the foothills of the Rocky Mountains make me long to return as if they no longer exist: a lost Atlantis wiped from the prairies.  The notion of moving to Europe or Central America to embrace a rich and joyful culture provides a rush of excitement. Yet the thought of living out my days in a modern, wide windowed house somewhere along the open stretch of subtle land in the East Kootenays seems to me to be good as anything else.

I’m suspicious of my own ambition— of how much I possess, and what purpose it serves.  Would great success as a writer put me at ease, or make me more restless? Would it liberate me with doors swung open and offers at my feet? Or would I feel shackled by responsibility and a pre-existing standard? I’d like to say that it’s a matter of perspective, but I’m certainly not sure enough to put the weight of my life on it. I’m often reminded of what A.R. Ammons wrote at the age of 63: “who has done, or am I likely to do / anything the world won’t twirl without” but temper his sentiment with the knowledge that the line is part of an award winning poem he still found reason to write.

I feel myself changing by the day, as if my regenerating cells aren’t passing on adequate memory and information, rendering me unrecognizable to myself, over and over again.  Perhaps it’s relative youth that’s responsible. Perhaps I will settle as I get older, and my mind will slow down. This hardly consoles me, and I still feel myself searching for something internally consistent. So I wake in the morning with intention of a different kind. I aspire to elegance and kindness: to handle ambitions, relationships, and the shortcomings of myself and others gracefully. To create a circle of warmth from the love in my life that isn’t diluted by obligation or geographic location. My motivations are precarious, yes. But no more precarious than working towards vague notions of contentment, happiness or success. I feel the support of this effort straighten my spine and guide me through the choices I make and the words that I speak (or more often, choose not to). I Strive to be the woman I would want my own daughter to be: positive, luminous and adventurous, whether she’s 15 or 30, a writer, a wife or a waitress, all of the above or something else entirely.

H

eading into the water, we tossed towels onto the largest rock to be picked up on the wet way back, past tall grasses sometimes stinging salty, sticky legs on a pathway lined with dried seaweed. Each step in the grass produced grasshoppers, sparking off in all directions. Wrapped and dripping, we’d take turns rinsing our feet in the bucket beside the faded deck. Underneath the graying slats lay piles of rounded glass: broken bottles and plates fallen off or thrown over the edge of a fishing boat. Each piece was worn and softened by the ocean’s bottom before an eventual harvesting by little hands. Favourite pieces were pushed into piles of sand and clay, instantly transforming the dark mounds into jeweled castles. Looking back at old photos, my brother commented on how ugly our creations really were. We’ve lost the ability to see in some things what we saw back then.

Days were filled with reading and croquet, swimming and inspecting ill-fated jellyfish, each head of brown hair turned white from the sun. Now and then we would dutifully crouch in the blueberry patches. Plucking each one fat and wild, we’d fill any container we could find that wasn’t yet committed to the cause. We could never pick them all and we could never pick enough. They were passed around by the handful, or shaken onto cereal in the morning. At their best, they would show up in my grandparent’s pies and pancakes.

At dinner we would slide into the corresponding benches of two picnic tables pushed together on the lawn in an attempt to make enough room for all. Dinner was cooked on a green Coleman stove outdoors before an oven attached to a propane tank was installed in the cottage. I recall eating corn on the cob as if we ate little else. On the very best nights we would drive to the Escuminac pier for ice cream, and on the way my Uncle would stop at a tiny store beside the main road. Each cousin would buy a grab bag containing hard candies, small plastic toys, Goonies trading cards and stale gum. My mom remembers a dark and dusty interior, with everything you could ever need stacked somewhere on the shelves. I remember firecrackers.

The time we would head into the cottage or back to our tents was determined by the drop in temperature and the dying down of winds, both factors responsible for the eerie increase in mosquitoes and deer flies. Nights were spent playing cards or Chinese checkers in the faint glow of oil lanterns and applying afterbite to impossibly itchy knees and ankles. Moths bumped the lamps and screens. Metal sailboat and airplane mobiles bounced on a breeze. During thunderstorms we would blow out the lamps and watch lightning touch down across the water.

In 1981 Allison MacDonald built a cottage in Hardwicke, on the East Coast of New Brunswick. A navigation instructor during the war, my grandfather retired from his job as a personnel manager for Air Canada in 1975. He was drawn to the water and chose to buy property on the coast best suited for sailing, returning to the province in which he was born. He based the cottage’s design on the Douglas Fir Chalets of Tunnel Mountain in Banff, which included four large windows purchased second hand that have since framed a view of the Miramachi Bay. The cottage was built completely by hand, with no power tools, and remains without plumbing or electricity. He also built a small sailboat, The Owl and the Pussycat, and a large white Trimaran, The Wichousen, which would carry us across the bay to Fox Island.

I have often marveled at my inability to recall events in any kind of detail, though I remember many of the things that occurred on those acres of property with a clarity my memory doesn’t often allow. It’s a surreal place to visit now that I’ve grown. Family members show up at different times, in smaller numbers. The grocery store is boarded up. My grandfather’s Trimaran no longer breaks the horizon, but I feel him in what remains. A mental adjustment has to take place while driving through the trees and up to the clearing, so I can properly enjoy the things so closely associated with my childhood. And promptly get on with doing childhood things. –Allie Jenkinson