In the beginning…

Sitting at lunch on a 2017 summer day with my friend Bronwen, who knew what I would get myself into?! She gave me a brochure for an expedition to Everest Base Camp in 2018 with The True Patriot Love Foundation, where she was CEO at the time. You should do this, Bronwen said. I should do this, I thought. And I thought it over and over. In the end, it did not happen. For a whole host of reasons.

But when we were again at lunch a year later, and she gave me another brochure – she knew I would be hooked. All the reasons to say no were gone and all that was left was YES! And so began the journey to Baffin Island in April 2019 where twenty women will snowshoe 100 km through the Akshayuk pass through grueling and bitter cold to raise awareness and money for military and veterans families. This type of cold – for the uninitiated – is not experienced as cold; it is experienced as pain. Funnily enough, we are all giddy with excitement. Thus far, the journey has taken me to meet fellow “expeditioners” and share their stories, to train north of Toronto in the cold, to gyms and workouts, to stores for gear I had not previously imagined, and to snow and roads for miles and miles of walking, hiking and snowshoeing in preparation.

It is no longer the beginning, we are almost in the middle. And with everything that I have learned up to now – there is likely not going to be a true end. We will carry this experience with us as learning.

And the gear – the gear will fill our closets.