I remember this place

In tenth grade, my French class took a trip to Quebec. We were meant to practice the language, but the twenty-somethings who staffed the camp asked us to speak in English. The real purpose of the trip was skiing. The class participated in downhill ski lessons each day, and people skated and tobogganed in the evenings.  

For most of my teens, I wore a rigid back brace and an arm sling for 23 hours a day. This meant that I could participate in a short spurt of activities each day, but had to find something to do the rest of the trip. My teacher gave me some French worksheets and a paper map. She outlined a four-block area, and instructed me to stay inside it. 

In my memory, the main street is lined with sparse brown trees with crimped branches. The buildings crouch against the cold. Every morning I go to the same café for breakfast, and buy a slice of apple pie. After a few minutes, I give up on trying to do school work. I walk up and down the street, going into shops full of snowglobes and colorful scarves and candies shaped like maple leaves. 

Looking back, I realize that my memory of this place has expanded to take a supersized space in my mind; I could not have spent more than four or five days in that town. I remember that I was lonely. 

At age 15, I was familiar with the typical sort of teenage loneliness – feeling hemmed in or left out. This was something different. It reminded me of the slippery boredom of late summer, spending hours in the ravine with my sister as a kid, scrambling over rocks and staring at the shadows until something magical appeared. 

I think this was the first time I realized the exciting potential of being completely alone. I was unsupervised, yet I confined myself to the borders of the paper map. I did not want to go too far. Within this space, I felt bigger. The world felt bigger. 

One day, when my friends’ skiing lessons wrapped up early, I loved showing them around and sharing this place with them. We bought souvenirs for our parents, and smuggled a pie back to camp. 

After dark, I took off my brace and put on a helmet. The counsellors led us into the forest behind the cabins. They had packed the snow to make a narrow chute. I stood at the top of the hill, watching my classmates careen through the trees on plastic sleds. I closed my eyes and fell.