Have you ever been lost in a forest? Lost so that you know where you're going, but just can't seem to find the way to get there? Lost so that you know there's an end but not sure how to find it?

It sounds like I'm talking euphemistically, doesn't it? I'm not.

Twice this week, I've gotten lost in the forest between my apartment in Porter Creek and the Arts Centre in Takhini. It's hemmed in by the Alaska Highway on one side and Mountainview Road on the other, but there is a vast, incredibly wild acreage of boreal forest in between. In which I have now gotten lost twice. The first time involved a gully and my fall into it. This time involved my boyfriend and his irritation at my incredible lack of direction sense. It didn't help that I consistantly viewed it as a merry adventure and he kept thinking he was being made late for his volunteer work at the Film Festival. And fair enough, but he didn't even want to be going in the first place. At any rate, we did eventually make our way out of the woods and to the Arts Centre, quite a bit later than we'd anticipated.

Anyway, we've both been volunteering for the Yukon International Film Festival (or YIFF -ewwww), which has been both pleasant and painful. Firstly, it was the worst organised event I have ever participated in. From symphony galas, to museum fundraisers, to science fiction conventions, this was absolutely the worst run festival ever. And they held it in June. Who the hell runs a film festival at the end of June? Right when school is out and everyone leaves town. Did they think they were going to pack the seats with German tourists?! Crikey. Anyway, I did enjoy some of the films I saw.

In particular, my three favourites, in order, have been: The End of Silence, One of Many and, These Girls. The first was a foreign film set in Toronto about a Russian dancer and the man she falls in love with and the struggle she faces in a new place, filled with passion, and the pull of home, family and the ballet. God, it was lovely, and just brimming with the most beautiful imagery of Toronto as a romantic and mysterious city. The second was a documentary about a woman from Winnipeg (now Whitehorse) and her search for her roots as the child of one of the Lost Generation of Native people. The children of those who's lives were uprooted for residential school and their confusion about who they are and where they belong. The third was just light comedy about three teenaged girls who woo and use a married man in his thirties. It has a strange premise and it should have failed, but it was honest, funny and terribly weird. In a good way.

Anyway, I'm off to the closing party of the festival now. So I'll write more another time. My leg seems to no longer be cramping up and that's good, but better yet, the shuttle will be arriving soon to take me downtown.