Becoming a vacation rental host was a sweet, unplanned surprise… just like most of my other favourite things in life! It shouldn’t have been, really, as I enjoyed the first ten years of my adulthood working in hospitality across Canada. I originally saw hospitality as a fun but temporary means to an end. It paid my way through my post-secondary studies until I arrived in what I saw at the time to be my ‘true’ purpose as a peacebuilder, co-creating equity and healing together in community.
But the real truth? Purpose isn’t a job title or a set of accomplishments. Purpose shows up in everything we do.
My return to hospitality snuck up on me as I followed a trail of delight, one delicious step at a time. Delight in the woods & water, delight in a community I didn’t think could be home for me again. Delight in the creative act of building something out of things I loved that could provide nourishment and connection for total strangers.
Hosting has clarified and expanded my understanding of purpose. It loosened my attachment to the intensity that could so easily become unbalanced in my community work. It has helped me to play more, be immersed in more discovery and wonder. And isn’t that what we all need more of, especially when life gets intense?
Where It Began
I lived and worked in west central Winnipeg with my family for a decade. I poured everything I had into my family, community and my peacebuilding work.
I was home. I loved every minute, every connection.
I always carried a blue bag full of research and reports and a travel mug of black tea with honey, my inspiration & fuel.
Me in my program office around 2012
The Missing Piece
I felt purposeful and motivated, but I had little time for my own transformation and truth.
I knew if I was to stay well I needed more balance, more nature, more spiritual space, more wonder. We decided to move to the country to find the renewal we craved.
We had the opportunity to move back to my family’s property near Steinbach – the painted turtle place, my children called it when they were young, because of the turtles who sun themselves on the docks in the summer.
I was hesitant to move back. I grew up between the Steinbach area and the rural savannah of Burkina Faso, West Africa. Everyone knew my ancestral family in Steinbach, but I had found my belonging with others who lived on the edges too.
The Choice
We tried purchasing elsewhere, but it always fell through. We spent more time at the homestead that summer. I remembered how much I love the woods, the water, the aspens.
This unique, in-between aspen parkland ecosystem feels liminal and grounded at the same time. It sits outside all the towns on this southeastern map, on the edge like me. I began to feel like it fits.
We made the move in 2016. We rented the place from my parents for the first few years while we waited for the municipality to approve a subdiviision. But that is another story for another day.
The Delight
Soon my workdays ended with me arriving home, forgetting my blue bag and travel mug in the car and heading straight into the woods with my dog, without even stopping in at the house.
The whispering aspens and jubilant birds pulled me into conversation.
Toffee and me having a post-walk nuzzle.
I felt the energy of the roots under my feet, sorting and sifting my thoughts and cares and questions through the force of their slow connection.
I learned that the whole aspen woods is the outer expression of one single, ancient root organism. She supports a thick neighbourhood of flora and fauna anchoring on her root system, bursting out like hair too wild and wayward to tie back.
I delighted in the changing seasons with my children, timeless moments in the sand and water. My days ended watching the sunset with a fire by the lake, quiet and joyful and full.
These are gifts to be shared. I felt giddy every time I got to host anyone at our place for any reason. The magic of the woods & our little lake is contagious, even if all we do is sit inside and have tea. The dream of Painted Turtle Lake Retreat sprouted and took root.
The In-Between
This parkland is an in-between. Between the prairies and the Canadian Shield, at the shoreline of what was Lake Agassiz long ago. An ancient transition space. As far as I have found, it was a seasonal migration space for Indigenous communities before colonization too.
Familiar, rooted, yet always tending space for the traveler to return. Ready to make that magic in the sifting and sorting – what am I travelling towards? what am I shedding and leaving to compost behind me? what is constant within?
I felt the life-force of this transition every day, in the commute from the land to my other home in the inner city. My two favourite opposites co-existing magically together.
Growing up, we called it ‘the bush’. When my Grandpa Eidse got the title for this land in a trade back in the 70’s, some folks told him he was foolish to take a throwaway plot that wasn’t useful for farming, too dense and tangled for anything practical. But somehow he knew; it is a gem. A little out of the way surprise in a landscape you thought you had all figured out.
I vowed never to call it ‘the bush’. I began to learn the language of the wild roses, the red willow, the high bush cranberry, the saskatoon and chokecherry, the poison ivy. I have many more neighbours to meet in these woods.
It is a fitting space to share with guests. A place that can be new and fresh, yet grounding and clarifying all at the same time. I know this well, as a third culture kid who grew up between worlds: Staying for a time between destinations can create surprising, spacious discovery.
My dad’s former pottery studio in the guesthouse he built years ago was just waiting to be molded into a sweet spot for guests, pulled together by the inspiration of the woods & water around us. My parents, John & Charity, still owned the place at the time and they immediately caught the vision along with me. We welcomed our first guests in December 2018.
The Next Surprise
The land called me back just in time, before I knew how much I needed to be here. My family was to face years of struggle through several difficulties, culminating in my sudden and severe disability from the onset of chronic myalgic encephalomyelitis at the end of 2019. Waves of loss and recalibration followed. My home in the city now exists in our memories… I love you, I love you, I love you. My blue bag now carries medical information and my disabled parking tag, and I’m allergic to both black tea and honey.
My generational history sustains me. My Mennonite relatives and a patchwork of local friends care for me while I’m bedbound. The income from the guest house my dad built supports my family’s housing security and channels a joyful stream of guests who bring the world to my bedside.
I am achingly aware that we all deserve such a home during life’s trials, even while many are denied access to one. I trust that as I accept these blessings with gratitude and love, they flow through and multiply. I take my small opportunities to live in reciprocity with what I’ve been given, trusting more opportunities to give will come in time.
My new command central, where all our vacation magic is cooked up.
🌱 Through all the struggle, spending time with the aspen root drew out my questions and kept me open, learning to live in love without rushing to an answer; an ancient practice that requires living in slow time.
🍃 The wind blew away the dried leaves of what I needed to shed, leaving me lighter and ready to receive the next season.
💦 The water soothed and guided me to flow in harmony with change. It nourishes the unknown seeds of what is yet to come.
Seeds of discovery wait underground for us in every season of life, ready to surprise us when the time is right. Each one requires a unique energy to germinate. Sometimes they require solemn attention, sometimes joyful abandon or curious participation, or even just dutiful concentration as we move from one task to the next. This land has room for it all.
There’s a space for you here when you need an in-between, waiting for you in that perfectly slow aspen time.
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