the end of the beginning.

I don't know why that's the title for this post, but, for just a split second in the random meanderings of my mind, it made sense. I've been back south for about a week now. My brother and I made the drive last Saturday, leaving Nakina around noon and arriving in Hamilton at 3 the next morning. I've been in Hamilton since, hanging out at my bro's place. It's been a semi-relaxing time and I've managed to maintain my Nakina schedule of staying up until the early hours of the morning and waking up in the late hours. There's a little coffee shop around the corner that I have frequented over the past few days, and I have spent some time wandering the streets of Hamilton, observing people, capturing the creativity in the architecture, listening to the chimes of local churches, and remembering what it is like to be bombarded by the constant noise a busy city brings.

Swift (a.k.a. Tigo, as named by some of the Aroland kids) remains in Nakina, getting tuned up for her next road trip. It might be her last. I'll return to her in a month's time, after I fulfill a couple of commitments here. I've been busy working on a bit of a side-blog that will document the stories behind a number of my photos. The idea came to me while up North, but the possibility of doing so there was severely limited by a lack of internet. There's still much to be done on the site, but I have found that, whenever I see an artistic photo, I want to know how the photographer came to be in such a place, or meet such a person, or what the significance of that particular photograph has to the artist. Or, I'm just dreaming that people will be interested =).

I'm not fully convinced yet that my time in Aroland, or with the kids in Aroland is entirely over. I initially went with an understanding that I would be there to see if I could be of service for longer than my commitment of four months. I can see the value of continuing my work there, but find it hard to imagine myself living in Nakina at this point. Time will clear that up, I'm sure. In the meantime, I've got a month at home, enjoying the company of family and friends, with the additional bonus of a canoe trip, planned for a couple weekends from now. I look forward to the peace that only the shores of a small lake in Algonquin can bring.