YouTube / iTunes / Spotify / Radio Public / Pocket Casts / Google Podcasts / Breaker / Overcast
Listen to ArtisanEnglish.jp posts & lesson intros here.
Phrase: In the back of beyond
Have you ever been there or wanted to go there?
Have you wanted to get away from it all, to disappear for a while in the back of beyond?
I know you have.
You’ve done what everyone else has done.
You’ve looked at pictures of Iceland, Greenland, the Amazon rainforest or Nunavut, Canada and thought that place is really in the middle of nowhere.
It was a nice thought because the picture looked serene.
Eh? What? Oh, you’ve never heard of Nunavut, Canada.
What about Labrador?
Or the Northwest territories?
Oh, come on, you must have heard of the Yukon!
OK, so you’ve heard of the Yukon, and you think it is a remote place far away from everything.
Well, if you think the Yukon is in the back of beyond, you should check out Nunavut.
Nunavut is behind and to the right of in the back of beyond.
Now, I’ve never been to Nunavut myself, but I have been to and worked in Labrador.
I worked up there with my dad for a few months when I was much younger.
I turned 19 and had my first beer with my father up there, actually.
Anyways, it’s the mainland part of my province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
It’s a place where you can hike out into the woods, pick up a rock and know that you are the first human being ever in the history of the world to touch that rock.
It has never been moved or disturbed in any way by human action.
That’s remote.
That’s cool.
That’s serenity.
That’s in the back of beyond.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 6th-grade education (age 11).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 82.
The higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100, the easier the passage is to read.