Urbane Adventurer

I’m passionate about cycling, urban design, Aboriginal issues, Metis history, and the environment.

Recent Blog Posts

little whispers
Posted
little whispers
It peaked out over the baseboards last week. A little flash of green against the white wall. I brushed it off as a hallucination, the plants playing gentle tricks with my mind from all the hours I’ve spent weeding and tilling in the garden throughout the spring. Sometimes I weed for cathars...
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Ghosts
Posted
Ghosts
I live with a ghost. Lately it has been hitting my bed at night, waking me up. I know you can explain away my experience as an hypnagogic jerk. Or the waning remnants of sleep paralysis. Both of which are things I have experienced my whole life and know the contours of intimately. You can… ...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Weaponized Fossil Kin and the Alberta economy
Posted
Weaponized Fossil Kin and the Alberta economy
The following working paper is a piece I have been working on over the last number of years thinking through the concept of ‘weaponized fossil kin’ and the Alberta resource extractive economy. A version of it was submitted to a special issue last fall, however in light of the urgency ...
Published at Urbane Adventurer
Ice/winter
Posted
Ice/winter
Stepping over roots, sliding as my feet struggle to find their grounding over rocks and moss and ice. I pause to steady myself against a tree trunk, pausing for a moment to thank it for holding me, apologizing to the bark and lichen for the pressure of my hands against them. Gratitude for their s...
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ancestors
Posted
I dreamt of my grandma the other night. We were in a cafeteria and she bought me pasta: meatballs, rigatoni, and cheese. She bought herself a similar dish. She insisted on paying for it: $8.00. I have been thinking about my relatives a lot lately, in the aftermath of recovering from COVID. They s...
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torrential
Posted
In November, I spontaneously blurt out to a friend that if I die in Ottawa, they cannot bury me here. “Send me home,” I insist. They seem a bit uncomfortable and confused at this. I am 36 and seemingly healthy. But I insist. “Do not bury me here,” I plead. As the words tum...
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timelines
Posted
It starts the day after my birthday in January. I wake up, queasy. Within days, my world  shrinks from the tender lines of care I have traced across half a continent to the 450 square feet of my attic apartment. I cross a threshold so slowly, so incrementally, with such aching traces, that months...
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Soft
Posted
Soft
Your softness matters so much right now. The soft quiet critters and creatures that forage and breathe and swim and slither around this earth have been sustaining us for so long. And the soft, the loving, the mad dreamers who kept insisting we have other ways of doing things — their worlds are me...
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(Alberta*)
Posted
(Alberta*)
(Alberta*) haunts me. It envelops me. I wake up, feverish, and I pull myself from ancient murky sea worlds that loom large in my dreams. When my grandmother died, I dreamt of her as a fish, gliding through those prairie waters. I am consumed by home, by (Alberta*), the prairies, the boreal forest...
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pressure= force / area
Posted
pressure= force / area
My job is making me go blind. This is not metaphor. This is bleak truth, written in the blind spots encroaching in both eyeballs. I was diagnosed with a chronic condition making me go blind in March 2018. Since then I’ve undergone extensive testing and monitoring of the condition, and it...
Published at Urbane Adventurer