Everyone remembers their first big trip. The one that cracks the world open. For me, at eleven years old, it was six weeks in Canada. It was a symphony of firsts, played in a key of wonder, mild peril, and the distinct feeling of being an alien—both figuratively and, on one occasion, officially.
It began with the thunder. Niagara Falls wasn't just a sight; it was a force that vibrated in your chest. The mist on my face felt like the planet breathing. That awe, however, came with its first lesson in international relations. My aunt, in a stroke of holiday genius, said, “We’re so close! Why not pop over to the Detroit Zoo?”
The border guard who stopped our car was the first to ever question our right to simply “pop over.” He peered into our station wagon, a vehicle packed with picnic blankets and wide-eyed curiosity. “Illegal aliens,” he said, not unkindly, but with a bureaucratic finality that made the word “alien” hang in the air. At eleven, the gravity was lost on me; it was just a strange new phrase, less scary than the teacher who kept me in at break. My mother and aunt, with a flawless performance of flustered British tourists, convinced him we were merely geographically ambitious. We were turned back, a minor reverse in our grand expedition.
The adventure recalibrated. My uncle introduced me to velocity in his Ford Mustang, the needle kissing 100 km/h on a straight Ontario highway. I felt the thrill of speed, of a landscape blurring into a green streak. Another first was a Frisbee, a whirling plastic moon I sent on a fateful trajectory that ended with a perfect thwack against my aunt’s temple as she carried a tray of ice pops. The horrified silence was broken only by the clatter of treats on the patio.
Then came Lake Ontario, a deceptively peaceful blue. On my lilo, a humble air-filled raft, I achieved a state of perfect boyhood bliss—until the current decided it wanted me. I didn't so much drift as get politely kidnapped by a rip, paddling furiously toward a horizon that seemed to recede. The rescue was swift, a strong arm hauling me and my deflating dignity back to shore. The lake had shown me its gentle power.
But for every tug from a current, there was a counterweight of pure joy. I learned to swing a baseball bat, the crack of connecting with a ball a satisfaction I’d never known. My hand drowned in the leather of a catcher’s mitt, a smell of oil and promise. Evenings were for spearing marshmallows on sticks, transforming them into bubbling, blackened sugar torches over a fire. I started a collection of felt pennants—Toronto, Niagara, Ontario—each a bright, tactile square of memory to pin to my bedroom wall.
On the final day, at the airport, the trip offered its parting gift: a Mountie in his iconic scarlet serge. He was impossibly tall, a figure from a storybook standing calmly amidst the luggage trolleys. He smiled, and I stared, my collection of pennants safely rolled in my backpack.
I know now that the border guard was wrong. I wasn't an alien. I was a discoverer. The trip wasn't about the single postcard of Niagara Falls, but the whole messy, magnificent album: the fright of the lake, the sweetness of burnt sugar, the sting of a Frisbee, the smell of a leather mitt, and the stern kindness of a man in a red coat. It wasn't all good, and it wasn't all bad. It was real. And I believe, completely, that the longing for that specific, thrilling reality—the desire to collect more of it—is what started every journey I’ve taken since.
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