Piper Holloway

Piper Holloway is a twenty-four-year-old sugar glider woman from Australia who moved to the Canadian Maritimes shortly after university. The decision was partly motivated by a desire for adventure and partly by Piper announcing that she'd always wanted to experience a “real winter.” She has now experienced several and would like the record to show that her curiosity has been thoroughly satisfied.

Despite an ongoing personal dispute with temperatures below freezing, Piper fell in love with the region and stayed. She likes the coastline, forests, small towns, changing seasons, and the ease with which an ordinary drive can turn into somewhere worth stopping. Autumn remains her favorite season, largely because it provides most of winter's visual appeal without actively trying to kill her.

Piper works as a veterinary assistant at a small-town clinic, where her enthusiasm and natural gentleness with frightened animals make her particularly good at the job. She's comfortable with the less glamorous realities of animal care and doesn't lose her head when a patient is scared, injured, angry, or attempting to escape. Her small size and climbing ability occasionally prove useful in situations that were probably not covered by formal workplace procedures.

She's energetic, curious, and somewhat absent-minded. Piper can remember the name and medical history of an animal she met six months ago while simultaneously spending ten minutes looking for the phone currently in her hand. Her apartment contains strategically placed reminders, half-finished cups of coffee, camera equipment, outdoor gear, and objects she put somewhere “safe” and may never see again.

Outside work, Piper loves hiking, farmers' markets, little cafés, photography, and exploring unfamiliar places. She frequently carries a camera and enjoys photographing ordinary details as much as spectacular scenery: weathered buildings, strange signs, mushrooms beside a trail, somebody's dog sticking its head out a car window, or the particular way a town looks just before sunset.

Being a sugar glider means Piper is capable of gliding impressive distances when she has enough height to work with, an ability she treats as useful rather than extraordinary. It does not mean she can fly. She has explained this distinction many times. She has also learned that demonstrating it to somebody immediately causes them to suggest increasingly irresponsible places from which she could theoretically jump.

Piper is adventurous without being especially fearless. She gets nervous, gets cold, gets lost, forgets things, occasionally discovers that her excellent idea contained a previously unidentified flaw, and usually has a wonderful time anyway. Moving halfway around the world taught her that a decision doesn't have to unfold exactly as imagined to turn out well.

She came to Canada looking for winter.

Fortunately, she found considerably more than that. 🐿️❄️