My boyfriend knows a lot of things that I don’t. He’s expert in digital mapping. These days, his mapping work for Island Trails is making our day trips even more interesting. 

Last week we walked through the demonstration woodlot at Camp Tamawaby, near Richmond in West Prince. Before Peter’s mapping project, we’d never heard of this peaceful trail. To be clear, other people collected all the trail data that Peter is using. We were simply checking out new found paths.  

This is what a mapping expert looks like during “field research”. 

I’m game for more discoveries.  

Adventures

We ran our travels like a giant improv skit by saying “yes/and”.  Here’s a smattering of highlights. 

Roc, our resident horse at our tiny home in Saint-André-en-Royans. 

Getting ready to ride at a stable near our tiny home. 

The trail. 

Houses built into cliffs, Pont-en-Royans.

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Time to sketch on my own at a small café called Rakwé in Lyon.  

Musée de I’illusions, Lyon.

The skinny house we lucked into renting in Bergheim in Alsace.

Vines as far as the eye could see on our 5 km walk from Bergheim to Ribeauvillé.

No caption needed. 

Nighttime in Monmartre.

Pete the Cat on his birthday in Paris. We ate in the back garden at La recyclerie in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine.  

Ribeauvillé gondolas.

Birthday cocktails.

We walked 15 km around Paris on Peter’s birthday.  

A happy me, in Paris. 

Flavours

We were unanimous: our favourite meals were the two prepared by Myriam, the host of the Homnest tiny home accommodation near Pont-en-Royans in south eastern France. The meals were made all the more tasty because Myriam was such a warm host. And because both meals were delivered in the basket of her bike. 

We also loved the morning breakfasts we procured ourselves, often consisting of granola, yogurt, berries, coffee, baguette, croissants and pain au chocolat. That did mean we usually ate a double breakfast. This was only sustainable with lots of daytime walking and because we were away for two weeks.

Peter and I were intrigued by the Homnest concept. Turns out, the concept is in its infancy. Our tiny home was only the forth they'd placed and only a few guests had stayed there before us. Homnest builds and delivers the tiny home; the local host provides the land, rents it out and maintains it.  The hosts don't put any money up front and simply agree to Homnest getting a percentage of all rentals.  Homnest has a goal of placing 1000 of these gorgeous (and very tiny) homes around the world in beautiful locations.

I got really into French home décor magazines while there.  It was so fun to walk around and see Roche Bobois showrooms and many other names I recognized. 

Back to flavours: In Bergheim, Lali impressed us by ordering and eating escargot. I have a photo of it somewhere but escargot are rather ugly so I did not include the evidence here.

That we landed in Bergheim and Pont-en-Royans could not have been predicted. We'd never heard of either village. We give full credit to a book called Des villages pas comme les autres.  Lali was sick with a cold the first few days we were in Paris. While she and I were laying low in our room at MOB Hotel (in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine a.k.a. the flea market district) Peter found at a beautiful bookstore called Storyboard right around the corner. He texted me a photo of a village in the book. When we got bogged down later that day with the "where to from here?" question, we broke our impasse by sending him back to buy the book. And the rest, as they say, was history, or perhaps more accurately, a delightful journey into beautiful adventures. 

The book, and our commitment to make it up as we went along, certainly helped us honour our "no visiting places we'd already been to" agreement.  Paris was the only exception as Lali had visiting the Effiel Tower on the top of her life bucket list. I'm glad she did. I was able to fall in love with it which I had not on previous trips. 

I am very grateful to have flavourful memories and equally grateful to come home to nourishing food on our table, even if it lacks a certain je ne sais pas quoi.

Faces

I took over 600 photos during our two weeks away. From silky smooth coffee at Mokxa in Lyon (recommended by Peter’s friend Dan Misener who spent a year there in 2012)  near the Musée de l'illusion, to food markets and the Effiel Tower, we shared many smiles. We even went to a cat café at Lali's urging. I smilled less there! 

Flowers

Of course I took flower photos. I purposely refrained from taking too many. April was the perfect time to experience France in full spring bloom. On the last morning in Paris, I even saw peonies in bloom, which still seems puzzling since they don't bloom until the end of June in PEI.

Textures

I was equally dawn to textures but I am running out of steam to describe why I captured these. The images can speak for themselves.  I do want to remember that in the week leading up to our departure, I got so worried about our safety that I lobbied for us to go to the US! Go figure.  The strikes and protests were over pension reform. The retirement age increase was pushed through during our time there.  Wdid see lots of "Mort á Macrons" and plenty of broken windows. Thankfully, we did not encounter any trouble. 

Merci

Je me sens tellement chanceux d'avoir voyagé. Peter est un merveilleux vagabond et un partenaire aventureux. Lali est devenu une dame du monde sous nos yeux. Et Olivia, qui n'a pas pu venir cette fois, a fait preuve de grâce et d'une nouvelle indépendance retrouvée.

Merci France. Tu me manques déjà.

We just got back from France. I took photos of Peter in front of green doors. I enjoyed it. He (mostly) seemed to enjoy it also.

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. - E.B. White

I've been hanging out in this liminal space of late, toggling between a life with more leisure and a life of service. It's a privileged space to be in, and one I can feel guilty about- the time to contemplate ideas, the choice to engage or not. It makes me want to chronicle what I have accomplished since announcing my sabbatical. It would help me feel justified in my existence to list all the ways I am not a lady of leisure. But since I'd like to find a new relationship with productivity equaling worthiness, I will resist.

I haven't written a public word since November. To write can be seductively sweet and bitterly challenging. I've usually made it the later though exacting standards and by not having a regular practice. This meant that every time I wrote a blog post, I did so from a standing start. My objectives were to market my business, to inform or to educate, and sometimes enlighten. I am intrigued what writing can become for me if I drop perfection, practice often and write for the sake of capturing and arranging words that tell stories and solidify memories and learning.

That I am writing now is only because Peter created this URL and did all the leg work to set me up. For decades (and way before I knew him) he has beautifully woven his own words together to share his enjoyment of the world while working to improve it all the while. I am grateful he's tenaciously led me here and inspired me to write more too. 

In this space, I want to write for me. I intend to be honest, playful, exploratory, bold and creative. I intend to share beauty and heartache. I am curious who LisaChandler.is becoming as I find my own path, perhaps quite a different path, of world enjoyment and improvement. I relish the idea of creating a body of words that brings me much enjoyment and also helps me improve the world. We'll see. 

For now, I'll press publish on post #1.

I can tell my life story in a series of goals and how I’ve achieved them (or not), moved on from them, how I’ve come up with new goals, and started the pursuit again.  Like interesting music, in reaching my goals I’ve encountered unexpected twists necessitating that I insert pauses in between the notes. Often unwelcome ones. At times, I’ve had to let go of the original “score” and make space for new music to come in. 

• Finding a meaningful career
• Finding a loving, long-term relationship
• Creating a successful business
• Creating a conscious leadership practice for Island leaders
• Trying to have a baby on my own

None of these have been textbook.  

None of them have been achieved in the timeframes I originally had in mind. 

None have come in the order I might have thought they would when I was 30.

Twelve years ago, I wrote a post called She Let Go based on a poem I love. The year previously, I’d had a miscarriage during fertility treatment; at the time I was writing the post I was 29 weeks pregnant with my daughter! The journey to motherhood at times crushed me. It humbled me. It took all my courage. And it took surrender. That there would be an outcome so wonderful was not a given.  

Much like in my fertility journey, I can look back and see that, in romantic relationships and in my professional life, it’s been sometimes only in the letting go that things could flow. Make no mistake: letting go without something else to leap to, to cling on to—a new love, a new job—and the resulting uncertainty, emptiness, has been frightening, destabilizing. 

But it’s only by entering that uncertainty that I’ve been able to find a new path: learning to surrender, to do small experiments, to sometimes be played by life instead of conducting it. It’s been messy as I learned to trust myself.  And while experience has shown me I’m trustworthy, I still have plenty of self-doubt each time I decide to leap.

I’m about to let go again: I’m taking a sabbatical starting in the new year. 

I am going to put down my business for a time and become a curious explorer.  I am very fortunate to be able to do so. I am in search of more creativity, deepening my connections and contribution, and some blank space. 

Will I find what I’m looking for? Is this really what I seek? My intuition tells me that I need to let go and find out.

I’m scared.

Who am I if I’m not coaching? Can I trust our financial planning?

I’m excited.

What if this turns out even better than I imagine? Who will I become?

How all this will unfold is anyone’s guess. I don’t know what I will find. 

I do know that when I have been able to trust life and let go, the music of my life has been a beautiful composition.