Someone once said, “Life is short, and the world is wide.” And travel can take you far from your everyday life or bring you home. I’ve been lucky enough to travel to many corners of the world—from Hong Kong to Beijing to Tokyo; from Paris to Monaco to Monte Negro; from London to Venice to Istanbul; from Santiago to Rio, and the list goes on. But last summer, a spur-of-the-moment decision brought a CFA to Newfoundland, and she was home. For almost four decades, I’ve been married to a Newfoundlander who left the island when he was seventeen years old to go to university and never moved back, returning over the years only to visit his parents. I had visited St. John’s with him several times and loved the place, but last year, something magical happened. My husband and I took a ten-day trip back to Newfoundland to do a cross-island tour, something he had never experienced. Being a city boy from St. John’s on the east coast of the island, he had never travelled the Viking Trail or hiked in Gros Morne National Park on the Great Northern Peninsula. He had never been to see the Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows or sailed a land-locked fjord. On a whim, we searched for a guide and bought our tickets. We landed in Deer Lake and met our guide, cross-island guide and Newfoundland storyteller, Carl Hutton, with a fancy SUV. We let him take us to see his Newfoundland. From Corner Brook to Western Brook Pond, where we stood in awe of the majestic and mystical mountains; from hiking the Tablelands to breathing in the Viking history, we made our way up and down the Great Northern Peninsula, across the island, into the Bonavista peninsula and then onto St. John’s. In between, we saw caribou and puffins, ate cod au gratin and blueberry duff, and fell in love with the land and the people. By the time I returned home to Toronto, I felt I had changed in some strange, magical way. I was inspired—so inspired that I wrote a book about the experience. We Came From Away: That Summer on “The Rock” turned out to be my love letter to Newfoundland. And I think only a CFA could write this story. My wish for fellow travellers is this: remember that going away can take you home.