Camille Becoming.

Many of you have followed this blog for its entire existence, which will be coming up on its 10th year now. It has evolved from being a place in which I shared university work and miscellaneous ramblings as a very young adult, to being a place in which I can be expressive and open about some of my deepest thoughts. It has been my safe place and home to many a story. It has seen me through three long-term relationships, my university degree, the start of my creative career, the different choices I've made, the places I've travelled, the parts of me I have worked on, and the parts of me where I have work yet to do. A lot has changed in these 10 years—which is why the time felt right to give my blog a new home.

It is a little nostalgic for my blog to be “moving houses”. Perhaps this move will be more confusing than clarifying and I will undo all of this and come back here; but I had been contemplating moving the blog for some time before I made the leap, and with a plethora of other changes in my life, I felt it was time. It feels as if I'm letting something go, although I will still be writing and sharing on the new space—I have no aims for it other than to share as authentically as I have here, with even more heart and honesty than before, and I hope you can join me there, too.

Part of this move is also due to my frustration with my current blogging platform, which unfortunately has failed to keep up with certain design & functionality standards that should not be such a tough ask in 2018. So, onwards and upwards!

From July/August, this blog will start re-directing to my new home at Camille Becoming. Some of my old posts will be moved to an archive over on the new blog, so if there is a post that you enjoyed in the past that you may one day like to read, it will still be there for you.

Finally—if something on my blog has touched you, resonated with you, or helped you through something you are also going through, I would really love to hear from you. Please do write to me at hello@camillenathania.com and tell me your story.

2017: The year of becoming.

When I sit down to write this post every December, it always takes me some time to collect myself and my memories of the year. When I write, I try to say what I mean, and mean what I say. Some things are often hard to put into words—and to write from a place of authenticity requires pause. Space. Days to mull over exactly what to say. This post usually takes a few days, if not weeks to come together. This year, I had the title for this post long before I knew what I would say. I just knew that this year was about becoming.

I look back and allow memories to come to the fore. I think of the ones that seem to recycle themselves time and time again; the ones that seem particularly glittery and, in turn, the not-so-glittery moments. The memories that stand out for me the most when I think of 2017, are those of the times I spent outdoors. The way I can so clearly remember my heart swelling being in these high and wild places, and how it was almost as if my very cells were carrying euphoria around my body, despite the strenuous effort it took to ascend in the first place. Not just the physical effort of climbing uphill, but the effort of intending to go, planning, packing a bag, preparing food, waking up, driving there—week in, week out. This year I may have worked and earned very little, but what I gained in physical strength and received in emotional remuneration are worth more than what money could ever buy—for these memories are what will stick in my mind when I reach the end of my days. I work just enough to be able to afford to hike, climb, shoot and live, but not so much that I don't have time to enjoy the entire reason I am here in the first place. So often I'd just find myself saying out loud, “we live here”.

Kinney Lake Trail, Mt. Robson Provincial Park.

At the start of October, Martin's mother, uncle and brother visited us and the Rockies. Apart from showing them some of my favourite hikes around Banff & Canmore, we were lucky enough to join them up north in Jasper for a few days. On our last day we visited the Kinney Lake Trail in Mt. Robson Provincial Park, just across the border to British Columbia. It was a totally different world to the hikes I'd been doing further south—full of lush forest, moss, large toadstools and mushrooms and maple leaves growing in wild abandon.

The Kinney Lake trail forms the start of the Berg Lake trail, one of the most iconic multi-day hiking trails in the Canadian Rockies. I look forward to returning to this next summer for my first multi-day adventure.

Celine & Carl in Canada.

Living in this transient mountain town, we are no longer strangers to saying goodbye to friends. In the short time we have been here, nearly every new friend we have made, we have also farewelled. However, having to drop my sister and brother off at the airport a month ago today opened up a well of homesickness that, up until then, I had been good at avoiding. Their departure coincided with the transition between fall and winter; the start of a slower season, of strange grey weather days, of cold and snow. I had the summer to keep busy; hours of daylight to spend outdoors. Sitting here now, as the festive season approaches and people get ready to spend time with their families, I can't help but feel glum at the thought of our first orphan's Christmas, despite the more exciting prospect of our first white Christmas, our first real tree, and perhaps making our first successful gingerbread house where the butter in the dough won't melt from the heat before we even get a chance to put it together.

Let me give you a little background to my siblings' visit. I had always known my sister was coming to see me. She forwarded me her flight details, and I began imagining all the places I'd take her and all that we'd see together. “It's a shame Carl won't get to be here too”, I'd said to my family at the time. The time came and, as planned, I flew to Vancouver to meet my sister as her flight arrived, expecting to wait for her plane to land ten minutes after mine. Checking my messages I saw she arrived early, so I called my aunt, who sent my uncle to find me. We chatted on the way to the international terminal and then I saw my aunt and my sister waving at me at a distance. I tried not to walk too fast. I hugged them, and after a pause, my sister said, “I have another present for you”. Confused, I stared at her hands and down at her suitcase. That's when my brother appeared from the pillar he was hiding behind. I had no words, really—only exclamations of disbelief and the involuntary & unexplained tears that came spilling from my eyes (and perhaps no explanation was required). Everyone had been in on the secret for months, even Martin and his family. I was complete, and happy, but already dreading the goodbye I knew was coming. “This means the goodbye will be twice as hard”, I said.

My brother, 21.

21 years ago I sat with my 3-year-old sister in the waiting room of a hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. I would be late going to school if this was going to take a long time, I thought. I fell asleep. Upon waking I panicked, first checking that my sister was still with me. Not knowing how much time had passed, I thought our father had forgotten about us, abandoned us in the hospital while he and my mother had taken our new baby brother home. I proceeded to knock desperately on every door in the maternity ward looking for my parents (I was 6).

Whatever happened next is no longer clear in my memory, but I do know the next few years involved nappy-changing, being mesmerised by how small you were and how you fell asleep in my lap, learning to tell you off effectively, trying to discourage you from throwing things (the side of my forehead will never unlearn the lesson brought about from flying scissors), laughing hysterically at your wit, bewildered at how such a young boy could already be so intelligent and funny. You’ve grown up to be somehow so exceedingly talented at many random things, from ice skating backwards to learning a song on the piano merely by listening to the sound, to skipping stones and being obsessed with wanting to unicycle (unsure how this project is going).

Growing up with a sister with depression, you would sometimes come into my room on a day you somehow knew was a bad one, lie down and just talk to me even if you didn’t understand. You were only 8. It was often the memory of leaving you behind that would prevent me from doing anything incredibly stupid. Your sweet nature remains, and I am lucky you are still unafraid to kiss and hug your sisters goodnight and tell us that you love us.

Your hilarity never fails to send me into belly laughs so deep, I’m surprised I don’t have an 8 pack of abs. Whenever we are all together everything falls into place; I am three parts made whole; and that is how I know for sure, you were always meant to be the final member of our family—the missing piece to complete us. I wish I was there to celebrate all that you are and all that you will be. Happy birthday, mon frère. Until we are reunited again.

A summer & fall in the mountains.

It's going to be hard for me to put into words the depth of my love for the mountains. The unexplained affinity I have for these tall piles of ancient rock and how it is that I'm drawn to them in the first place, as a woman born in an archipelago of 7,000 islands who spent her entire life in countries surrounded by the ocean (amongst zero mountains). During this first summer in Canada I chased after them like they were going to disappear tomorrow, and so, this is what most weekends looked like.

Tent Ridge, Kananaskis.

Every week in summer had me asking the same question: “which trail should I try this weekend?”. Cue messaging all my friends to see who was free to join, and behold, a plan would emerge. Tent Ridge in Kananaskis Country will forever remain one of the best hikes I've ever done. At first, you're taken through the forest before the trail opens up into a lush valley, where the green contrasts with stone and stubborn patches of remaining snow. Look up and ahead and you're surrounded by what's to come: a wall of rock that is the ridge you'll be traversing.

I love trails that have a variety of scenery, some scrambling, and just enough ascending to make you work for it, but not so much that you are simply miserable. On this hike, there are three “peaks” to ascend and descend, providing you worthy points at which you can stop to enjoy the view, admiring the valley below you before you work to make it to the next peak. It was truly rewarding, and I look forward to doing this again next season.

Annie in Canada.

Summer brought us a string of visitors from Australia; one of whom was my dear friend Annie. An incredibly talented photographer, I'd been quietly following Annie's work since she was 16, and even then she was blowing my mind. We were lucky enough to have her stop by and stay with us during her travels around the U.S. & Canada. Having just returned from my trip to the Maldives, Mauritius & Reunion, I was hungry to get back into Canadian life and make the most of the summer—so we packed in as many adventures as we could, camping for a few nights in Banff National Park with our friends, showing her some of my favourite spots and visiting places I also hadn't been before.

It's hard to believe we only met in person in May last year, but our friendship feels as if it's existed all my life. I cherish deep soul connections, meaningful conversations and the ability to be both whimsical and sincere, heartfelt and boisterous, quiet and loud; to be able to look into another just as you look into yourself and know that they too are seeing you as you are. Annie is truly a light that many of us adore, even those that have only met her briefly, and my life is all the better for knowing her. I hope this is only the start of many years of adventures together.

Photos of me by Anwyn Howarth.

Two days in Paris.

Ordinarily, I like to steer well clear of travelling in big cities. The beeping of car horns and obnoxious blaring of stereos (what do you have to prove?); stressed, tense faces on the sidewalk; shiny shopping centres set against monotonous clumps of office buildings; the smell of rubbish, cigarette smoke and goodness-knows-what-else—if you already live in a city, it makes you wonder why you left the hustle and bustle of your own life simply to contemplate your existence in a similarly drab atmosphere somewhere else.

However—there are some cities in the world I know I definitely want to see before I fall asleep forever, and Paris is one of those. Paris was one of the first cities I had been excited to go to when I was younger, and French is the language I was drawn to learn in high school (for reasons I couldn't and still cannot explain).

So, when I received my original flight itinerary from LUX* Resorts and saw that I was scheduled for a 6 hour layover in Paris (departing Mauritius on the way back to Canada), I couldn't help but ask to be put on a different flight for two days later. I then planned to meet up with my friend Ashleigh, who I hadn't seen in over a year since she moved to Amsterdam from Brisbane. I knew that I wasn't ever going to be able to see all of Paris in two days, so I concentrated simply on doing less with intention. All I wanted was to roam our neighbourhood; sit in the Champs du Mars with a small picnic of croissants or a baguette, strawberries, cheese and a small bottle of wine; visit just one art gallery, and the rest we'd leave to unfold on its own. And unfold it did. We visited a market just down our street and marvelled at old photographs; came across a beautiful and kind stranger who let me take her photograph; spontaneously decided to see the sunrise over the Canal St. Martin; stumbled into a free live music concert in the middle of the street when walking home on our last night. I left Paris tired, but content, knowing there would be plenty left to explore whenever I return.

LUX* Saint Gilles, La Réunion.

My final trip with LUX* Resorts was at LUX* Saint Gilles, Île-de-La-Reunion. Unlike Mauritius, where the official language is English but the locals also speak French and Mauritian Creole, Réunion is one of France's “overseas departments”, therefore making their official language French, with the locals also speaking Réunion Creole. It was the 3 days I spent on this little island where I was able to truly had to exercise what little French I knew/could remember from school.