My Watermark is Georgian Bay, Ontario.

I was born in Serbia and spent my summers on the Adriatic Sea in Croatia, where my grandfather was from. The Adriatic is where I first learned to swim and where my love for water essentially developed. My family moved to Canada in 1993 (I was 7 years old at the time), and the first time I went back to the Adriatic was at the age of 11. I remember that summer very clearly - the natural rock beaches, the taste of saltwater, boating on calm waters.

Part of the reason that this memory stands out so much is because it contrasted the freshwater I had encountered in Canada. The first place I swam was at Awenda in Georgian Bay. At the time, I wasn't used to sand or to being able to open my eyes underwater. Several years later, when I did my first internship out of University, I ended up working in Georgian Bay, studying migratory waterbirds, and really becoming aware of sharing the water with so many other creatures.

While they are thousands of kilometers apart, the Adriatic and Georgian Bay represent all that is beautiful about water to me: nature, swimming, summer, freedom, and the two continents on which I share my life.