When I first encountered Squamish, I was barely tall enough to see it out of the back-seat window of our family's Volkswagen Beetle. To be honest, I don't remember much of that day, other than the bears we stopped to watch as they combed through garbage at Whistler's dump.
My next memory of the community came on a grey, windy day, racing in the Squamish Yacht Club's open annual regatta. It was one of the few times my father and I have spent on a sailboat without arguing about sail trim - we were simply too cold to talk. But I also recall the beauty; the icy turquoise colour of the sea and the dominant granite monolith guarding Squamish's entry.
Before I could reconnect with Squamish, I had reached an age where everything outside of the country I was born in seemed far more alluring. Waving goodbye to Bowen Island - the community I called home during my high school years - I hopped on a plane for a year's worth of travel.
Seven years later I returned and the communities I grew up in were dramatically changing. Bowen Island, a community in which marijuana gardens were as plentiful as veggie patches, had a golf course, Whistler's garbage dump was about to host the Winter Olympics and Squamish had transitioned into a multifaceted community.
There were still proud remnants of its lumberjack past - a past I only superficially dabbled in when my family would trundle up the single-lane highway for Squamish Days Loggers Sports Festival - but there was also a lot more.
The community's arts and theatre cultural was mainstream. A mountain bike trail system had grown to contend with the North Shore's system, and sailors and windsurfers were no longer the only water sports enthusiasts enjoying Squamish's thermal winds.
I had friends moving from Vancouver to the Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada.
"Squamish," they would boastfully tell me, "has the youngest population per capita in Canada." And as if that wasn't shiny enough they would continue, "It also has the second largest per capita population of artists in Canada."
Soon I became a weekend warrior. Then I fell in love - with a boy, yes, but also with Squamish itself. My body seemed to react to it. Once I pass through Murrin Provincial Park on the highway and reach the hump that overlooks Squamish, my shoulders drop and neck muscles loosen.
I am excited to be given the opportunity to step into the shoes of former Chief reporter Meagan Robertson, who is on her own adventure in New Zealand. I hope to get to know the community's many facets and I can already see Squamish creeping into my house - my dining area is taken over by mountain bikes and the upstairs closet is full of kites.
Maybe one day I'll join the ranks of the true Squamish crew and get a dog.
