04/19/2026
"You're kidding."
That's what Steve said on one of our early video calls, when I mentioned I had Canadian friends who lived on a tiny lake in a place called Barriere.
I met Paula in a courtyard in Cancun in February 2021. She told me about her cabin on a lake up a gravel road in interior British Columbia, and I told her I'd love to come visit — while quietly filing it under someday. It sounded logistically impossible from Utah.
Then, in October 2023, a war canceled my cruise out of Tel Aviv. I switched last-minute to an Istanbul-to-Rome route. Steve had also jumped on that cruise at the last minute. Neither of us was supposed to be there... and we ended up married.
Turns out he'd lived a short drive from Paula's cabin. Turns out Paula and her husband had lived near Steve's town of Abbotsford for years before they moved up to the lake. The four of us have now been in both places together — Cancun and Barriere — and I still don't quite know what to call it.
My latest piece, published in Globetrotters, is the whole story.
https://medium.com/globetrotters/the-road-to-barriere-ran-through-a-cruise-ship-7a08e3a552db?source=friends_link&sk=431fc66de36fcf71bcd080b8c4285a38
