Living in a national park does really weird things to your psyche over time. I've been here long enough that it has started to feel weird when people ask me where "home" is. I know they're asking me where I'm from but home is currently a 3 minute walk down the road. I've put down roots here but being in the service industry was always meant to be a means to an end so this really isn't where I intend to spend the rest of my life. Even so this will always be a home that I picked and it feels weird picking a new home. Especially when the criteria for the new city is which ever one happens to have a University that wants me, but even that might not stay home. Most people I know have one place they consider "home", or the original home that they tend to gravitate towards. It's very weird feeling like that place is a split over about 3 locations across a huge country and none of those places are anywhere I lived before I turned 20. The original home doesn't feel like home at all and I haven't even been gone that long. Got a new housemate and I already don't like him even though I haven't given him a chance at all. That's another thing that is weird about living in a national park, your current situation never last. We have a lot of staff who return to work for their summers during school and every year it will be different for them. This isn't the kind of place where you can ever really just get comfortable with a routine existence like you can in a normal place. The problem is every week the place looks slightly more beautiful than it did last or I look at it from another angle and I decide I'm not done with it yet. This place can really grab hold of you, people return after years of being away because they aren't able to get whatever it is we get from this place anywhere else. I don't even think anybody has successfully described that feeling either. Oh, also I tried my first scotch the other day. It was the Glenlivet that every bar has. It was sweet but so is a lot of alcohol so I don't know about it. I'll probably head over to the fancy bar the next time I get a chance and see what I can get with more flavour.
The one thing that has stuck with me about being "out there" is the quiet. There are noises once you get off the paved roads, in the trees, on a lake, but they are a different sort of caliber than most people in the modern world experience. I've been out at star parties where it has freaked people out and messed with them that they can hear trees rustle in a light breeze from a few hundred feet away. You can hear deer move in the shadows before you see them. You can hear the yips of cyotes in the distance. The ringing in my ears from years of metal concerts goes away after a few days out in the world. I need to plot a return.
I live beside a train, it’s not a very loud train but it’s literally across the road. I’ve heard from a lot of Americans that national parks in Canada are very different. I mean we literally have a whole little community here. Banff has an elementary school, high school, and hospital inside the national park. Here we have a softball league in the summer, hockey league in the winter, and yoga at the community center. From what I’ve been told you guys will have small towns outside of the parks but nothing like this. Granted, it’s still very easy to get some quiet and you’ve still got to watch out for bears.