3 Ginger Snaps

As a teacher of young children, and as a father, I am always wondering about the ways in which I can achieve maximum impact on the people in my care.

As far as learning experiences go, I firmly believe that time with family is the most important learning that goes on during childhood and the greatest way to make an impact on the kids (says the dad who is typing this blog post on his phone while his kids swim in the pool… but whatever.).

so therefore the context of a family road trip seems the perfect medium for learning to transpire.

Of course, travel has an impact of its own. I really started thinking about impact on the long stretch of road I drove north of Thunder Bay. It was the insects that prompted me. I’ve always admired insects. They have been a point of fascination for me for as far back as I can remember being curious about nature. So it was with mixed emotions that I routinely scraped them off the windscreen at 110km/hr between Thunder Bay and Kenora. These tiny creatures – out in search of a meal or a mate – distracted by my headlights – and flattened to mush in an instant through the momentary coincidence of us being in the same place at the same time. The same thing happened across the prairies. A solid rain west of Swift Current cleared most of them off the roof box. An 8 year old fascinated by the opportunity to use a new tool cleaned them off the van grill in Red Deer.

And this enterprising pair of crows got the rest of them in the parking lot at the Columbia Ice Field.

As a side note, after our trip through time at the Royal Tyrell Museum,

I confess that I am in no way worried about the insect population of Earth. Of course insects in rain forests and on mountain slopes and in prairie meadows will perish with climate change and other nasty human impacts. But given the context and evidence of geological time, I am confident that they will evolve faster and last longer than our ability to scrape them off the windscreen. Same goes for the crows.

I’m wandering. Impact. On us. By us.

The impact of time together is moments like this one I was lucky enough to eavesdrop on two nights ago. (Turn up your volume Before playing the video).

Or this moment of random goofing off.

And the impact of travel to new places is first hand evidence of things that have happened in the world since you were born. This marker shows the reach of the Columbia glacier in 2006, the year Charlotte was born.

The glacier has receded approximately 65m since then.

And new perspectives on human history.

So… we’ve killed some bugs and spewed some CO2 (just over a ton thus far) and seen our share of road kill to make it happen but now we have firsthand knowledge of global warming and stronger family bonds and maybe, just maybe, a better sense of our privilege that we can even be in a position such as this one where when you don’t quite achieve the impact you were hoping for (I imagine the hikes at Maligne Lake in Jasper will be calling my name for a while yet I’m sure…)

There are always the water slides at the hotel in Kelowna to soothe your sorry soul.