It is a rainy Saturday morning in early June, and I am catching up on weeks of unlistened to CBC Radio 3 podcasts, backing up a few thousand images from my recent travels. My coffee is now lukewarm, and the raging thunderstorm outside is threatening my electrical collection. The shutters are trembling from the latest clap of thunder, and despite having a perfectly good laptop at my disposal to write this, I’ve decided to boot up my dying iMac to compose my thoughts.

There’s something soothing about sitting in my home office, an affair of canary yellow walls with exposed brick on one wall, whitewashed to make it seem indoors. If this addition to the house were visible from street level, I would loathe its aluminum siding. Instead, all I can see is the rain drenched deck, and my unkept hydrangea plant. Fine, it was a hydrangea plant, but only the stem from last year remains – weeds have over-grown the rest of the soil. I briefly entertained the possibility of replanting something, but my pet What? is buried in the soil, and I think she would like the weeds growing above her. She was always a diamond in the rough, and I’m glad something is flourishing because of her.

This too shall pass. I remind myself of this, an almost constant mantra to help me get through the day. I am luckier than most. My heart was cushioned against a recent crushing experience by the safety of a few thousand kilometres, the azure calm of the Pacific during the day, the heat of my sunburn in the evening, and the rocking of a small yacht alone in the waves at night. This too shall pass. A good friend of mine has that tattooed on her arm, under a map of Iceland. There’s more to the tattoo then that, but my memory is failing me right now. Tattoos are an intensely personal thing, so the meaning she derives from her body art is certainly different from the meaning I pull from it today, but I draw strength from this simple phrase, and I am on my way to healing.

I strolled along the main shopping avenue in Puerto Ayora a couple of weeks ago, enjoying my ice cream in the cool evening breeze coming in off the sea. Charles Darwin Avenue was lined with other happy travellers, basking in the radiance of their sun-drenched shoulders. The ridiculous scene stopped me in my tracks.

I am shopping for t-shirts in the Galapagos. Repeat that sentence a few times, and it becomes absurd. Puerto Ayora is the largest town in the Galapagos archipelago, home to more than half of the human residents of the region. And instead of relishing the area, I was ambling around looking for kitshy I heart boobies t-shirts and a fresh bottle of sunscreen. It was too ridiculous to consider.

I have a lot more to say about my time in the Galapagos Islands, and now that I have a reliable Internet connection again, I can actually take the time to compose my thoughts.

Coming soon: more on the Galapagos, and possibly my own domain name.

In the meantime – I know I have been quiet lately. I’m fine, but I’m going through a lot of introspection as I attempt to heal my heart.