I remember the blueberry. That tiny, tart burst of flavor on a summer afternoon in northern Alberta is one of my earliest memories. It's a strange thing to hold onto, but I think it's because it represents something fundamental: the simple, grounded beginning of a life that would become anything but.

I grew up on a farm in Alberta, learning lessons that would stick with me forever. I learned that hard work wasn't optional; it was survival. I learned that wanting something meant working for it, often alone, often without recognition. I learned to be a loner, not out of sadness, but out of necessity and a growing curiosity about what lay beyond the fence line. The farm taught me how to get off the farm.

And I did. I found my way into the sky.

Years later, I was flying helicopters over the South Pacific, hunting for tuna. The contrast was staggering. The kid who once picked wild blueberries now scanned the vast, turquoise expanse of the Pacific for the telltale signs of a tuna school. The atolls and deserted islands below me were remnants of a different kind of time, and as I flew over them, I thought about Amelia Earhart. She had disappeared in the very regions I was flying over, and for a moment, alone in the cockpit with the endless ocean beneath me, I understood the pull of the unknown.

I could have been another Earhart, I thought. I could have simply vanished into the vastness. But I had a job to do. The tuna didn't care about my philosophical musings. And perhaps that's the real difference between the farm and the sky: the farm taught me that work comes first, and the sky taught me that the work can take you to places you never imagined.

The South Pacific was one of my most cherished adventures. I flew over atolls and deserted islands, considered the possibility of disappearing, and then, like so many times before and after, I said goodbye to the people I had met and moved on. I was much of a loner while exploring, enjoying short friendships and then moving forward. It's a lonely way to live, but it's also a free one. And it all started with a blueberry on a farm in Alberta.