I had a flash of cold clarity: is this the phone call that changes the rest of my life?
Category: lisa richardson
The Luck Factor of Tonje Kvivik
Tonje has recently signed with Arc’teryx, so I was asked to interview her for a “Welcome to the team” profile. I have never failed to be impressed with the athletes who join this brand’s roster – and Tonje is just as personable and engaging. We bonded so hard over a mutual appreciation for Katie Burrell,…
Is the City Dreaming You or Are You Dreaming the City? Meeting my 20 year old self in New York City
One of my oldest friends was laid off last May from a firm she’d been working with since we graduated in the late 90s. She decided, after securing commitments from friends to join, to use her severance to splurge on a month-long sabbatical in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood. I was one of the friends. COVID-19…
Lift and drag: on being voted Pemberton’s Favourite Writer
The Best of Pemberton issue that Pique newsmagazine puts out, landed a month ago. Everything is moving slowly in me these days, so it took a while to formulate a response to being anointed Pemberton’s Favourite Writer. As a friend recently shared, compliments tend to make one’s mind explode. Well, specifically the phrase that The…
How do we grow our tolerance for discomfort? Keep asking how.
I read recently that if you want to get to the heart of something, ask the question “why?” five times. (So, parenthood has been preparing me for something!) “I worked in group dialogue for years: often in dialogue to do with conflict and peace,” wrote Pádraig Ó Tuama, poet, theologian and host of the Poetry Unbound…
Beyond Treeline – nominated for a Canadian National Magazine Award for Art Direction
I have just received a copy of Dr Suzanne Simard’s much-anticipated book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. She was deep into the writing of the book when I had the chance to speak with her in 2019, about her work, and the way it had been incorporated into Jordan Manley’s…
Speak the Wild Words
Use your words to conjure the more beautiful world your heart knows is possible. Her name was Brooke. It had been a name chosen carefully for her by her father, so when she read that the word “brook” was being struck from the dictionary, along with a host of other words “redundantly” featuring nature, it…
Piece by Piece: Finding Outer Peace with Mountain Guides Julia Niles and Christine Feleki
The path to inner, or outer, peace, isn’t one-sized fits all, as I learned in some illuminating conversations with mountain guides Julia Niles and Christine Feleki, for this post for Arc’teryx. Photos By: Robin O’Neill Julia Niles has never been one to shirk from struggle – you don’t pursue a career in mountain guiding unless type…
The Language Your Body Speaks
Befriending your self starts with making small talk with your body My father was a pharmacist, my mother a nurse. In my household, we took stale-dated medicine (because it was still good even if it was illegal for him to sell so why waste it) and we were never indulged a day off school unless…
Garlic Planting as Prayer
The fall garlic planting mission has always been accompanied by a prayer, of sorts. An atheistic kind, largely faithless: “Okay then, do your thing.” I’d brush my hands clean of the moist black soil and feel again the improbability of all this growing business – stick clove in soil, anticipate its budding five or six…
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