Hi,
As I’ve been exploring what it means to live fully in this age of acceleration and AI, I keep coming back to a few conditions that feel directionally right to me.
Pace.
Attention.
Relationships.
Place.
That last one may seem a little less obvious.
But the more I think about it, the more I believe place is one of the most powerful and under-appreciated conditions of a good life.
For me, it has certainly been one of the most important.
Lately I’ve been planning the next summer adventure for Penelope and me, which is its own funny contradiction. I’m trying to get out of the screens, and there I am with a dozen tabs open, using AI, researching how to get back into the world.
But that planning has reminded me of something.
The places we return to are not accidental.
When I was coming out of burnout, or whenever I feel low, overwhelmed, disconnected, or just too deep in my own head, getting back to nature is one of the fastest ways I know to turn that around.
Not instantly. Not magically.
But reliably.
Place changes me.
It changes my pace.
It changes my attention.
It gets me back in my body.
It reminds me that life is bigger than whatever loop I’ve been caught in.
And over time, I’ve realised the places I keep returning to have a lot in common.
Tofino is one of them. We’ve been going to Ocean Village Resort on Mackenzie Beach for over 20 years. Indian Arm is another. For a number of years we rented an off-grid cabin there. The North Shore of Oahu became another through a friend who had a place there, in a stretch that felt much wilder and less touristy than the Hawaii most people imagine. More recently, San Pancho in Mexico has joined that list. And so has San Josef Bay on the northern tip of Vancouver Island.
I’m a little reluctant to even write some of those names down because I have a habit of guarding the places I love. Tofino has been swallowed by its own popularity. Some of the others still feel a bit half-secret. I’ve seen what happens when places get flattened into Instagram fame. They change.
But I trust you.
Because the point isn’t really the specific places anyway.
It’s what they have in common.
They all sit on the edge of the Pacific.
They all carry that same feeling of scale and contrast. Mountains or jungle or huge dark trees right up against the water. White sand or black rock. Calm bays and sudden weather. Tides that rearrange the day. Sunsets that stop people in their tracks. Marine life everywhere if you pay attention. Orcas popping up beside your kayak. Herring moving through Indian Arm. Baby turtles making their first run to the ocean at dusk in San Pancho. Bioluminescence in the water at night. Crab pulled out of the ocean and eaten a few hours later.
These places feel alive in a way that is hard to fake.
And I think that aliveness is part of why I keep going back.
They don’t just offer beauty.
They offer perspective.
The Pacific has a certain energy. I know that sounds a little woo-woo, but I believe it. It is dramatic, unpredictable, deep, and very much not under your control. You feel that in Tofino. You feel it in Oahu. You feel it in Indian Arm. You feel it up at San Josef Bay. You even feel it from the top of Cypress when you’re snowboarding and looking out at the ocean, that sea-to-sky contrast that sums up so much of what I love about living here.
Wherever I seem to feel most alive, I usually have one eye on the ocean.
That probably says something.
I also think one of the reasons place matters so much is that it helps restore many of the other conditions too.
It changes pace. Nature has its own rhythm, and if you spend enough time in it, your system starts to follow.
It changes attention. When you’re paddling, hiking, surfing, or standing in the ocean, your mind has something real to attend to. Weather. Tide. Terrain. Your footing. The next wave. The changing light. A lot of the noise just drops away.
It changes perspective. Places with real scale remind you how small you are, and I mean that in the best possible way.
It can deepen relationship too. Many of the places we love become containers for memory, ritual, and family life. You return to them and the place is familiar, but you are not the same. Kids grow up. Relationships deepen. Friends come and go. The place becomes a witness.
And sometimes place brings in another ingredient I’ve been writing about lately: good friction.
Surfing is a good example. Every time I dabble in it, I’m reminded how humbling it is. Hard. Unpredictable. A little scary. Very far from frictionless. But also alive. Snowboarding has some of that too. Hiking definitely does. These aren’t just restorative experiences. They are demanding in the right way. They ask you to be present. They remind you that not all friction is bad. Some of it is what brings you back to life.
I think that’s part of what so many people are hungry for right now, whether they’d use that language or not.
A lot of us are living inside systems that are too fast, too abstract, too screen-based, too optimized, and too detached from the physical world. We spend our days inside feeds, tabs, alerts, meetings, metrics, and low-grade urgency. It’s no wonder so many people feel ungrounded.
Place can help counter that.
Not as an escape hatch.
As a reset.
As a teacher.
As a reminder of what a human nervous system actually needs.
That doesn’t mean you need an epic destination to feel some of this.
Part of the power of some of the places I named is that they are harder to get to. That effort creates privacy, contrast, and a feeling of having arrived somewhere real. But you do not need to release baby turtles in Mexico or paddle into an off-grid inlet to get the underlying benefit.
I try to get some version of this much closer to home too. A walk in the forest. A cycle up Seymour Valley Trail. Time by the ocean. A regular moment outdoors that helps me reset and come back to myself.
That matters because place is not only about adventure.
It is about practice.
If I were trying to make this more practical, I’d say a few things.
First, pay attention to the places you keep returning to. The places you miss. The places that settle you, wake you up, or make time feel different. They are probably telling you something.
Second, don’t only ask what places are beautiful. Ask what places make you feel more like yourself.
Third, create rituals around place if you can. A beach you return to. A trail you know well. A lookout at sunset. A winter mountain. A cabin. A lake. Even a corner of your city where your body seems to exhale a little.
And fourth, protect those places from becoming pure content. Let some places stay sacred. Let them work on you privately. Not every meaningful experience needs to be turned into proof that it happened.
That may be one of the reasons I’m writing about place now.
The more I think about it, the more I believe place is not scenery.
It is one of the conditions of living fully.
Some places don’t just offer escape.
They offer instruction.
They teach rhythm.
They teach humility.
They teach attention.
They teach wonder.
They teach relationship.
They teach us how to be a little less in control and a little more alive.
I’m starting to think the places we return to over and over again are worth listening to.
They may be clues about the life we actually want.
I trust you know some version of this place already.
Maybe that’s my small encouragement to you this summer: make time for the places that make you feel more like yourself. Protect them. Return to them. Get outside. Get into nature. Put your feet in the North Pacific Ocean if you can.
Let a place you love remind you what matters.
I’d be curious:
What are the places you keep returning to, and what do they seem to give you?
More soon,
Cameron