Off to the great white north!

I leave this morning for Lake Temagami. It is in Canada, six hour drive north of Toronto. For a while I was telling people that I was going to northern Ontario until someone showed me a map of Canada.

I don't know what I will be doing there. It is a week-long workshop that is run by a facilitator I very much respect and it is billed as "an opportunity to laugh loudly and long – a chance to play while getting in touch with who you really are and who you want to become" but the exact agenda is, how you say, opaque.

This is what I do know:

• It is drug, alcohol and meat-free.


• We will be staying on an island in said lake.


• As far as I know, no one will be voted off.


• If it turns out that people are getting voted off you better believe I will be the last person standing, unless it sucks on the island and I would really rather come home early.


• Items on the packing list include a bathing suit and cotton nightgown for doing a "sweat lodge" and a regular-sized pouch of loose tobacco for "offerings." (I got "Bali Shag." Yup I did.)


• I will be driving up from Toronto with a seemingly lovely Canadian woman named Jane who wrote this to me in an email: "Getting excited about the week? I'm hearing that the bugs are particuarly bad so am off today to buy a bug jacket if I can."


• There is a high probability of being peer-pressured into awkward "native"-style dancing with the group at some point.


• Um, a bug jacket?

I come home on July 20th and I am not anticipating having any interweb access before that.

It is possible that the next time I post to this blog I will have a whole new understanding of what it really means to be "off-piste."