On my journey to the top of the world, we took an unplanned detour to probably the most remote city in North America. There is a Canadian province called the Northwest Territories that is enormous, yet sparsely populated due to the terrain and how far north it is. I do not know anyone who has ever been there, and hardly anyone who knows where this place is. The item in the photo is of a necklace I brought back from Yellowknife to give to my daughter. Along the final winding gravel highway to the city, there are several large versions of the stone charm on the necklace. They were markers built in ancient times by the natives. They each represent different things, but the ones we kept seeing were markers to show the way to one thing: home. Besides the sense of adventure that came along with just reaching Yellowknife, there is something that happened there that continued to haunt me up until this weekend. It was May 7th, 3 years to the day that I met my wife. I turned on my phone, which I had left off so that I would not speak to anyone, including Samm, during the entire trip. This was a journey to get away from everything in my life, and find some answers to questions about who I was as a person. So to communicate with anyone would have defeated the purpose of that I guess. But perhaps I took it to far on that day. A slew of text messages came pouring in when I turned the phone on. My wife was freaking out, terrified that I had left for good or that something had happened to me. The last one was from that day, and all it said was “I miss you”. I have always thought throughout the bad times and sad times of trying to fix things with her, what if I had responded? What if I said “I miss you too”. What if I said “honey I am ok just give me a week to get back home and we can work this out, I promise”. But I didn’t. I had been driving for over a week with only one night not slept in the car, sometimes in cold conditions. I turned the phone back off, closed the curtains and just collapsed into the hotel bed and passed out for 13 hours. Samm and I talk about that moment a lot, and Yellowknife has become an embodiment of sorts, not just a physical place far at the top of the world.
So there I was last week, late Thursday night, when the text came again, 3 months later. “I miss you”. This time, I replied. And now shes coming home.
