These things that remain

One must have known the strength of a group that care for each other so much to understand this sentence: farewells were quite moving.

What participants lived today—aside from the unleashed lipsync performance of the popular song “Don’t stop believing” in the bus—may at first be interpreted as a tearing apart feeling during the farewells. They possibly feel emptiness after being filled with so much love, so much fun … and maybe they are also feeling a little lack of sleep after the short night at the lodge! Perhaps they simply feel happy to see their families, their friends and their beds.

There’s perhaps a touch of sadness to be leaving each other, but what remains once everything past, is mostly all that is rooted in our hearts.

There are the pictures thatwe took that we can look at nostalgically, but there’s nothing like the authenticity of what we felt.

It is the intangible memories of being part of and contributing to a group that has made this expedition a total success. It was to have met extraordinary people with whom one canshare the same nostalgia for this important moment in our lives and who will also probably be present in the important coming moments and future adventures. This is also what has changed in the inside, in the ease facing the unknown, in the capacity in self-transcendence or in the acquisition of independence. There are these things remaining in us that make us carry this particular desire to move forward.

In short, what the participants have experienced in the last days, it’s quite indescribable. And my words are certainly too weak to express the power of the emotions within us.

They have all returned home now.

There is now, all across Canada, 14 young adventurers with, inside them, a new and powerful energy.

Isabelle Robinson, Blogger and Photographer for the On the Tip of the Toes Foundation