In the fall I got a call from Terra Gaddes – she was starting a food magazine and someone she knows in the Meadows suggested I might be able to recommend some contributors. She’s worked for 27 years as a child and youth care counsellor. Buying into the Edible magazine franchise, to launch Edible Sea to Sky, is a passion project.

How do she connect these seemingly disparate paths? She wrote in her debut letter from the publisher: “I recall my first mentor at the group home where I worked saying ‘Share a meal with the kids. Food connects people and brings them together.’ Those words resonated deeply with me. Indeed, food has an incredible power to unite us all. Over the past two decades, I’ve immersed myself in my community, witnessing its food culture evolve, sharing countless meals and connecting with remarkable individuals. With this magazine, my aim is to invite our readers to explore the vibrant community behind our food, discover new places, support local endeavours and foster connections over shared meals.”

I loved the idea of what she wanted to do. Bring people throughout the Sea to Sky corridor closer together through food? There’s so much that’s more humbling, grounding and inspiring in this corridor, than just the multi course meals at high-end award-winning restaurants – which is what many people might default to mentally when they think “food culture.”

I suggested Terra could look at Traced Elements, where I’d cajoled 40 local creatives, farmers and foodie types, to share stories about the joy of the earth and the table. That project launched in March 2019 and had been imagined as ” a place to map food stories, from the heart of the Pemberton Valley, in order to turn consumers on to the idea of being growers, creators, culture-shapers and restorers of the planet. Without guilt. Without pressure. With joyful messy experimentation, scrappy gardens, candour and dirt.” Maybe Terra would find future correspondents there.

Then I got excited, about stories that started falling in my lap, that hadn’t previously had an obvious home. During a weekly post-yoga walk with my friend Brenda Bakker, she began telling me about a project that was sustaining her – a creative venture with her friend Kerry McCann, to document Kerry’s farm unfolding, week by week. I loved hearing the way Brenda spoke of the creative project, the commitment she’d made, the way the promise pulled her forward. We talked about momentum and work and deadlines and how we show up for our creative selves and I loved the way her collaboration with Kerry was helping her show up for herself, as a photographer, amidst a busy life chock-full of other identities and obligations.

So, Kerry, Brenda and I went for a walk, and I heard what it meant for them, to have collaborated in this way… what it’s like to have your efforts witnessed, to open yourself to being seen.

It reinforced how deep a need it is for us, all, to be witnessed, to feel seen. Social media has capitalized on this and distorted it, I think, into something performative and terrifying and unsatisfying… When I’ve seen it or felt it happen, in a way that feels “above-the-line”, the person being witnessed doesn’t have to perform, or achieve, or be made-up, or deserve it… it’s very spare and simple, as simple and powerful as being regarded… an “I see you” that carries deep medicine. On the occasions I’ve experienced in – often in sharing circles and buddy groups, always when I least expected it – it has been so profoundly warming, I can feel all my craving for admiration and acknowledgement dissipate. I can just rest in my own self. I wish it for everyone – to know that feeling. Of someone showing up for you, and listening, and witnessing you in a moment, without needing to offer advice, suggestions, cures or alterations. Kerry and Brenda didn’t embark on their project with the intention of securing media attention, or validating anything – it was a creative project between two friends, and what emerged was, as it turned out, some validation, some media attention – but more sustainably, I think, it was the feeling of being witnessed. By one another.

Food culture can be performative too. I’ve been at winemaker’s dinners deep in conversation with special guest media influencers talking about cosmetic surgery, as we ate dish after dish of immaculate prepared and plated food… and our wine glasses were kept filled. And I felt underdressed, unfiltered and a bit homesick for dirt. I’m sure those polished events and tales will be part of the unfolding Edible Sea to Sky, but I’m glad the magazine has provided a home for some of the more humble food adventures, too.