A far horizon

Lake Winnipeg August 2021

I have spent the last few days with my body on the shores of Lake Winnipeg but with my mind sailing the biggest oceans of the world. I have travelled far in my imagination and I am the better for it. 

Getting ourselves to the cottage is always a bit of an ordeal. Food planning. Clothes for a variety of weather possibilities. Ensuring the cat doesn't go to ground before we can get her into the car. But eventually we're on our way, heading to the little bit of rural wilderness we have come to know and love. 

This past weekend, once settled in, I took myself on an ocean voyage with a group of women who were the first-ever all-female crew to participate in the Whitbread Round the World Race. Back in 1989, they performed what many (men) had said was simply impossible: crew together, work together, succeed together. "Women will never manage it," they said. But manage it they did. 

I was transported into a new and exciting world of yachts, wild ocean storms, sails up and sails down, knots and miles being logged either not fast enough or not far enough. But their courage was steady. Their determination unwavering. Their teamwork seamless. And their success -- not exactly what they had wanted, but success nonetheless -- was theirs to own and celebrate. 

I experienced all this by reading the account of Maiden's voyage, co-written by the skipper Tracy Edwards and a journalist. I had earlier watched the documentary by the same name and found it thrilling, simply thrilling to learn of this remarkable crew of women. They fired my imagination and have re-inspired me to believe that a new horizon can be sighted and arrived at when we want it badly enough and when we work to get ourselves to it: first we must imagine then, then we must find our way towards it. 

the Maiden crew 1989

The Maiden crew had to do significantly more work to get themselves launched than we ever have to do to get ourselves to the cottage. Their horizon across several oceans was far more distant than ours is across Lake Winnipeg, but the point, I have been reminded, is to set your sights on a horizon that takes us beyond the end of our nose and the limits of our current experience.

Imagine it. Aim for it. Arrive at it. Whether or not we break a record getting there is not the point at all. It's in the doing that success is achieved.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.