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Every morning on my way to work, I cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge on the train, and watch in awe as the glistening expanse of water stretches out before me. And every day, it astounds me that my fellow commuters barely spare a glance up from their phones. It fascinates me that our surroundings, no matter how spectacular, can easily become bland with normality and routine. Reflecting on when this changed for me, I thought back to one adventure from my university exchange to Montreal, Quebec. *** As many good trips do, ours started as the spontaneous idea for a road trip. I wanted to see more of Quebec’s natural beauty, so suggested to a group of university friends that we head somewhere remote. We finally landed on Saguenay – about a 6-hour drive from Montreal. We were a quirky and diverse crew – Reza from Iran, Qin from China, Hanna from Poland, Gialdo from Aruba, and me, from Australia. The five of us crammed into a small sedan, sharing stories of our home countries, our experiences of Montreal and embarrassing French blunders. Despite our diversity in language, backgrounds and age, we had a lot in common. We soon arrived at our cosy hostel in the middle of the woods, wrapped in snow. *** The next morning, we rented out some snowshoes and started the trek down to the fjord. Until then, I never knew that the sound of silence existed. Somehow the landscape sucked noise up like a vacuum, and while our group was used to cacophonous chatter, we all fell silent. Even the animals somehow knew to be quiet, like humans might discover their secret up there. It was beautiful. After a few hours of trekking, we noticed the sun slowly creeping down the horizon, and the already freezing temperature getting lower (-15 C by my last check). We still hadn’t reached the lookout point. Suddenly, we heard engines motoring from a distance and saw two men appearing on skidoos. They could see we were struggling and slowed beside us. “Want a lift?” one called out in French. Hanna looked at me hesitantly, but I had already hopped on. She grabbed my waist and before we knew it, we were flying through the snow. We zoomed down one hill which took me so by surprise that I let out a “WAHOOOOOOOOOOO” that echoed through the clearing, rudely breaking the silence. I was so exhilarated - it was the fastest I’d ever gone before in my life. We reached the fjord lookout view, which was well worth it – an icy lake stretched out and curved through mountains, with little gingerbread-like houses hidden in the hills. The men asked us if we were interested in going back to their chalet to warm up. In another world, this could have been a horror movie – a pair of middle-aged men taking a group of travellers to their chalet as an ‘escape from the cold’ could easily have ended up on the news. But this was Canada (one of the politest countries in the world!) – so we took the leap. *** The chalet was much smaller than I expected – and freezing. The men threw some firewood on and we started to chat in our broken French. They were Jean-Claude and Marc, two men from Quebec City who shared the chalet on the weekends. When Gialdo commented that none of us had ever seen a landscape so stunning, Jean-Claude looked out the window, and smiled to himself. “We always like bumping into tourists at the fjord,” he said. “Because it reminds us of how beautiful this area is, through new eyes.” It was hard to imagine how the forest, snow, and northern lights could ever lose its charm to me. But I reflected on my own behaviour in Sydney, and what I took for granted when I saw stunning beaches every other weekend. *** Two years later, I took an American friend on the Bronte to Bondi beach walk. When he exclaimed that he’d never seen anything so beautiful, I smiled to myself and looked out at the water, thinking it looked more turquoise than ever. But then again, maybe that was just my imagination.