It’s strange how I feel about this city. I’ve got an address on the north side, one I’ve held for nearly sixteen years—but I’d hesitate to call Edmonton my home. I was born here, raised here—I’ve lived here my entire life—but I didn’t grow up in Edmonton. Much of my family, most of my friends: nearly all the people I truly know live in Edmonton—but most of the strongest bonds were not forged in city limits. Edmonton is where I live, but Edmonton it is not where I am.
For when my mind wanders it does not come to rest on images of large malls, potholes and urban sprawl. In the stressful days and long, sleepless nights of the academic year I do not wish for a trip to Whyte Avenue or a gander around the art gallery. No, I speak truly when I say that my yearning for something conjures not images of passing cars and city lights. I daydream of smiling as I look over my left shoulder to see the “Welcome to Edmonton, the City of Champions” sign greeting the oncoming traffic as I bear west on the Yellowhead or south on the QEII.
You see, for I am home—really at home—not as I collapse into bed after a dozen hours of studying, nor as I look down my block and smile on a beautiful spring morning. I am home as I tap tent stakes into the soil of a high alpine cirque, as I watch the sun set across the lake from a remote fly-in cabin or gaze at the stars—unobstructed and unpolluted—from a makeshift camp on some long forgotten logging road.
I grew, and I grow not as elementary faded into junior and senior high schools, nor as my doctor marked my height and weight each year. Rather, I grew as I watched trout emerge from cover in a clear foothill stream to examine and strike my fly. I grew as my photography matured and improved, and I composed art through my viewfinder in all corners of this province. I grew when I surmounted some barren crag of a ridge, alone—silent, save the sound gusting wind and my beating heart—to catch first light on a frosty August morning.
The strongest bonds were formed—with friends and family alike—not when I celebrated the championship with the school team, or united with students who also call my faculty theirs. Instead, they were formed when two of us had fish on the line, and there was only one net in the boat. They were formed arriving at a high alpine lake so stunningly beautiful that the blisters, bruises, pains and sprains faded away in that moment of elation. Bonds were forged when I sacrificed the solitude of a place I called my own such that I could share the beauty with another.
At a superficial glance it might appear as if Edmonton means little to me, but that would be untrue. This city has done much to shape me—for better or worse—that is certain. It offers me stability, an education and the prospect of growth and development. I eat, sleep and breathe here. It offers me a foundation, a springboard from which I can leap forth and explore the world to my heart’s content. Every expedition needs a base camp, and if Edmonton can be the base camp to them all that’s good enough for me. 
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