Location

My partner and I left Vancouver at the end of May and have been traveling across Canada for the past two months. Everything we own is in the car. We’re staying in Airbnbs along the way, finding our rhythm as we go.

We’ve zigzagged across BC and Alberta, chasing weather and whims. The Sea to Sky corridor through Squamish and Whistler to Lillooet. Wine country in the Okanagan—Vernon, Kelowna, Summerland for my partner’s birthday. Nelson and the Kootenays with their endless mountain roads. Revelstoke and Glacier National Park were personal highlights. The touristy trio of Jasper, Banff, and the Icefields Parkway. Calgary for supplies. Dinosaur country in Drumheller and the badlands.

Currently writing from Medicine Hat. Next: Saskatoon and Regina, then the long prairie stretches to Toronto or Montreal.

The mountains have been everything I imagined as a teenager scrolling tumblr—low clouds catching on peaks, impossible highways carved through wilderness, lakes that don’t look real.

Photography

The hard drives are filling up, almost too many photos to process. Mostly mountains, which is becoming a problem. Every view feels worth capturing but they all start looking the same. I keep reminding myself to shoot the small things: the things I’m eating, motel signs, the incidentals that make a place real. The small towns coming up should help break the pattern. The prairies have already been a bit of novelty.

Work

Still freelancing, mostly when I get time. Working from our Airbnbs when we stop for a few days, or when the weather turns and being inside feels less like waste. The “mountains over money” philosophy is holding, though I’ll need to hunker down soon to afford the next stretch of gas and motels.

Projects

I’m thinking of winding down Refrakt. Haven’t touched the code in about a year. Built it solo without VC or a team, working on it in spare moments. Despite its brief life, I’m proud it became a home for photographers I admire. Without intentional dopamine loops, it’s hard to grow platforms. People come, post, then drift back to the big ones.

So I’m building akkeri instead. A digital mailroom for creative work. You don’t post to feeds, you send mail. Small bundles of words and images, delivered the next day. Everything’s slower, more intentional. It’s not a performance but a conversation. A quiet space for artists, photographers, and writers to share what they’re making, privately or publicly, always with care.

What’s next

Still figuring it out. Rough plan: finish crossing Canada, maybe fly back to the UK in October to meet my nephew (with another on the way). After that, who knows? A year in a van back in BC, or a year back in the UK. The recent state of things there makes me want to stay away, but family pulls.

For now, it’s just the road ahead. Saskatoon, then the long prairie stretches, then whatever comes next.