I got up early to catch the ferry. With the wait in the terminal it took half a day to get across to mainland Canada. I spent the actual two hour crossing in my own dark, cool, comfy bed in my trailer. I have my own bathroom so there was no need to go to the upper decks for anything. What they don’t know won’t hurt them or me. The drive eastward was hell. With clear blue sky above It was hot and smoggy. The traffic was horrific as I drove through the murk. There is random construction. The roads were clogged both ways. Nearly everyone is a road warrior and recent gruesome fatalities on this highway slowed no-one.
So, finally I made it to Hope. Now all fuelled and grocery-ed up I’m parked in the bushes beneath the Hope slide. Odds are, all those car- sized boulders perched thousands of feet above me will stay put for one more night. If not, well it is meant to be and it probably won’t hurt a bit. I am just off the highway but well hidden. The flies are bitey friendly and it’s toasty warm (31C) but once it cools down I’ll go to bed in hope of an early start. My little truck clearly does not like dragging the trailer up long steep grades on a summer afternoon. Even the front fenders were too hot to touch.
My early start shuffles past eight o’clock. Rain spattered sweetly on the roof through the night. Now thunder rumbles and echoes between the towering cliffs above me. The purpose of this frivolous trip is to visit a dear old aunt in Manitoba. I am doing this on the generous means of my dear wife. I have to remind myself that I am to meander, there are no deadlines and I need to restore my soul which has suffered after two dreary years of death, illness, surgery and poverty. Just be, old man, just be and remember, how you once travelled with a backpack and your thumb. Best years ever. As for Jill, getting me the hell out of her face must be a reward on its own.
Yesterday’s inferno has passed for the moment. There were spatters of rain through the night and at the break of day it was gloriously chilly. I ( had hoped to drone the Hope Slide but the wind was gusting and there were squalls of rain, neither are good for the drone, especially at the hands of a rookie. I headed east and groaned up one long, steep grade after another. The engine wanted to overheat on each one and I stopped more than once to cool things down. The worst was the zigzag crawl up to Anarchist Summit from Osoyoos. All the day long the temperature was as hot as yesterday and thunder rumbled overhead. Finally, nearing Greenwood the truck began to steer oddly and once in town I discovered a nearly flat rear tire. I changed it myself as thunder-rain spat down. A lady stopped, but not to offer help. Her dog was missing. Gabby the collie had run off. I hope that girl is home safe and healthy.
Now in Grand Forks, I am parked in a large feral field beside a fleet of logging trucks. A young boy is riding his tiny motorbike, with training wheels, round and round in a cloud of dust. A friend tries to follow on a small electric John Deere tractor. I’ve been told that I can stay here by the folks at KAL Tire. I wheeled in there with my sick tire just before closing time and wholly expected to be told I’d need a new one. They could have, I wouldn’t have known. It was simply a bad valve stem. They refused to charge me. It follows that I inspected the other three tires and they need the same treatment. I’ll go back in there asking about the problem with being nice to a pain in the ass. Of course the answer is: they come back! I have a friend here whom I’ve known for fifty years. A visit is due. I already like this town and mucho kudos to the tire shop boys.
The next night finds me parked in a gravel pit beyond Yahk, which is not at all romantic as it sounds. My poor little truck staggered up the numerous long steep grades. If it were a mule it would be on its knees with tongue over shoulder. It is frustrating when you cannot go over 50kph whenever and wherever you’d like just like all the folks passing you at 140 kph. I just don’t want to cook my motor. There was a car and then a motor-home burned to a crisp along the roadside. I got the warning. Haste makes waste. In days past, even at my trundling speed it might have taken two weeks instead of two hours. From the top of the passes you can see valleys and mountains stretching into apparent infinity. The smoke adds a mystic touch to the scenes. It is still hard to grasp how big our single province is. There are all those others beyond. The grand thing was being able to smell the fragrance of the sub-alpine forest at the summits, those indelible aromas of balsam and spruce and buck brush that waft out into the summer air. There must be an air freshener called ‘Alpine.’ What memories those aromas bring!
In the morning it turns out I’ve backed into a spot on the edge of an impromptu fire-fighting depot. A helicopter comes and goes and I remember my heli-days so long ago. One whiff of jet exhaust and the clap of rotors brings so many recollections. That was me? In a single life?
The day wears on. Leaving Cranbrook, a lovely spotted fawn suddenly appears in front and there’s no chance to stop. There is the expected sickening crunch and I bound out to have a look. The fawn has disappeared and truck in not damaged. It is not my fault but I feel sick for the rest of the day. I wonder what happening to this once great white hunter.
Finally at the Frank Slide, just into Alberta, I stop and get out the drone. This is where an entire half-mountain crumbled and buried the town of Frank. Itis horrific. I’d promised myself to make this my first good drone footage, so first a test scan. Out a hundred metres, up fifty then I press a wrong button. The drone lands instead of returning home. The last image I receive is a bleary view between rocks. I activate the “Find My Drone” and go hobbling down between the treacherous rocks with my cane. I slip and fall, loose my glasses, manage to retrieve them from a narrow crevice. By the time I clamber over to where I think my drone is, my controller has a message that says a rotor was jammed so the drone has shut off its power to prevent overheating. No more homing signal. Then came the return clamber, empty handed and feeling like a very stupid old man.
Fortunately I’ve bought some insurance for just such an event but I do not feel any better. I was not employing my own advice about caution and certainly feel the diminished rookie.
Drive on old man, drive. Eastbound was a spectacular show of wondrous clouds, rainbursts, lightening, brilliant ladders of light between the clouds onto the foothills. They were all juxtaposed over columns of massive whirling windmills. I could not photograph any of it. The rocketing traffic made stopping too dangerous. Tonight I am parked on the side of the road at the former townsite of Whiskey Gap. It was a smuggler’s town in the 1930s. Now there are only cows bellowing from the ridge at the top of the coulee. A few miles back was a signboard noting the location of Aetna. But it’s not on the map either. This will be the norm I think.
Downtown Fort McLeod on a Sunday evening. “Git his boots.”
And so I progress into the prairies. I will meander along the southern roads and explore the beauty of this vast and windy land. It’s a long way from the sea.
” A ship is safe in the harbour, but that’s not what ships are built for.”
Gael Attal
