By MARGRIET RUURS
for SS Trail and Nature Club
The Salt Spring Trail and Nature Club will host a free presentation by Maria Coffey and Dag Goering on Saturday, May 25 at 2 p.m. at the Salt Spring Public Library program room, celebrating adventures in nature as well as the launch of a new book.
Many people around the Salish Sea know the writer/photographer couple.
“Salt Spring has a special place in our hearts,” Coffey admitted, and the couple keeps their boat here.
Many years ago, the couple chose travelling over starting a family, a decision that has led to a lifetime of adventures. They have cycled across Vietnam, kayaked Lake Malawi in Africa and explored many unusual places around the world.
When asked which of their adventures was their favourite, Coffey smiled. “It’s hard to say, because all the experiences were so different. But the one that stands out is our six-week kayak trip on India’s River Ganges in 1992. That trip was life-changing. It turned us inside out, it challenged us on every level, and it became, quite unexpectedly, and especially for me, a spiritual odyssey.” She wrote several popular books about each of these trips.
Even though many of her books focus on travel adventures, Coffey said, “All my books have also been very personal stories. My first book, Fragile Edge, was a memoir about my relationship with a high-altitude n who died on Everest. I went on to write a succession of travel narratives about my adventures with Dag, and then turned back to the subject of extreme risk in Where the Mountain Casts its Shadow and Explorers of the Infinite. These were both more journalistic in style, but with my own story wound through them. Finally, many years after Fragile Edge was first published, I returned to memoir with my newest book Instead. The original theme was aging, something I’d been in denial about, but, at 66, suddenly could no longer ignore. I wanted to look at challenges I’d faced in my past, to see if the lessons I’d learned then could help me navigate this new and rather frightening terrain ahead. But as I started writing about these challenges, the decision to be child-free kept cropping up. A few chapters in, I realized that this was the big story I needed to examine — with aging just one part of that.”
And, as if their world travels, writing and photography aren’t enough, the couple runs Hidden Places, a small travel company offering small group trips to places they love and know well. The trips can range from kayaking on the Turkish coast and living aboard a gulet, to walking across the high savannah of Kenya supported by Samburu tribesmen and their camels.
But her newest book, Instead: Navigating the Adventures of a Childfree Life – A Memoir, is more than a personal account of a life full of adventure without children or grandchildren. It is also a look at growing older and adapting, learning to go with the flow of life.
“How would our lives have been different,” Coffey muses throughout the final chapters, “if we had opted for children?” And when her husband has a major accident, and no children are able to support them, the couple realizes that friends and family are already the support network needed.
Salt Spring Books will offer books for sale at the library event.