Canada, Solo 1978

Fading Light. Embers of a dying fire. I am a long time from Vancouver: a long distance from this morning...now in Manning Park, drinking tea by a little fire of wet wood.  I have a spot by a full-bodied stream that sings with the power and beauty of flowing water over a rocky bed.  There are plenty of oversize mosquitoes, persistent in their search for an unprotected bit of skin, their probiscii at the ready, hovering, hovering.  The smoke helps keep them at bay; I move closer to the fire.  My little, but “two-man”, orange nylon tent-with-no-ground-sheet is up, a cheery anomaly in this otherwise dim and grey-green forest.  It’s reassuring to know that my air mattress pumped, and sleeping bag unrolled, ready for me to snuggle into when the night’s cool and my tired eyes suggest it’s time to ‘hit the sack’.     After an initial walkabout to explore my immediate surroundings and gather a bit of firewood, I played some flute....

'Twas bitter cold last night.     And I with no ground sheet, no fly sheet. I think it was the damp that really got to me.     So, not the best of sleeps.     Still, I woke up – several times in fact – smiling. My chipmunk friend came round for breakfast, little beggar.    Sure he’d eat the lot if I gave it to him – or store them away in his secret cache.   Manning Park was too high and therefore too cold for a long stay, so I packed up after breakfast and hit the road.  By coffee time, as I entered the Okanagan valley, it was clear that it was going to be another warm day.  In fact, it was already hot.  The colours of the landscape – packed red-clay earth coated in a grey-green fuzz, and dotted with tufts of dry-looking sagebrush – intensified the sensation of heat.   I rolled the windows down (no AC, and no power windows, so ‘rolling the windows down’ requires a stop…).  And breathed in the ...

Hot soup with chunks of charcoal. That's what’s on the menu when you make soup in a pot with no lid over an open fire.  Tonight I’m just north of New Denver in the Slocan Valley. I thought this might be a quiet, out­of-the-way camping spot, but it’s the week-end, and the weather is fine, so the place is packed.  Lots of families with young kids.  And just as Mary and Gerry had warned, everyone’s building ‘fires too big’, making ‘too much noise’, and ‘letting their kids run amok‘.  I may not be here long… .   It was another scorcher today. I left Midway fairly early and drove straight through to Grand Forks. Rural, Doukhobor country.  Garlic and potatoes.  Houses still covered in tar-paper, apparently a tax-avoidance strategy.  A pleasant, sleepy, 'we's jes' folks' kind of place with a river running through it.  Could be a good location for a movie…. .   Drove on up through rolling light conifer for...

Slocan to Kootenay Lake   the road following the creek I let it carry me along   another branch or twig enjoying a free ride  smiling, and glad glad glad to be here feeling so very alive blossoming out like the lupins, the thimbleberries the yellow yellow daisies the known and unknown roadside beauties  that greet me on my way the valley celebrates its fecundity and life  in every little bud, leaf, flower, tree in every shade of green and brown and grey and yellow but mostly green, so richly truly deeply green a family of deer browsing by the road near the creek where the grass is most green most tender I stop to watch them; they stop to watch me watch 'hello there dear deer'  they make a slow retreat picking their way carefully, daintily up the cliffside  a graceful little family of deer the road changes from paving to rough dirt and I the only traveler somewhere between New Denver and Kaslo  turn an old abandoned mine derelict buildings magnific...

on my way again this morning, heading east  stopped for a coffee 'hello there!' a blue pick-up truck with woodland-bob inside  we’re going to Coffee Creek you wanna come? hey thanks, I'll have a day-full with cream and sugar sounds like fun   rub a dub dub, three men in a tub  riding on logs in a pollen filled bay  smiling, laughing  I could do this  could I do this? my inner voice sounds a warning: it’s too beautiful, too easy I choose to ignore it for now for now, I'll have some more    later of course the ‘voice of reason’  (who is that?) Invades – and pops – my little bubble so after another fruit smoothie  we say another good-bye and then alone again – but not lonely (I have ‘the voice’ to keep me company)  I venture into a new valley  In the warm glow of evening sun    turn a long narrow lake fills a slice between mountains road and lake lined with tall coniferous trees a darker valley and much more rural s...

today on a rocky mountain road Fodor's Paganini on for the trip   I stop to gaze up at the jagged peaks and wonder do they actually come to a point? a knife edge cutting into the sky? or is it a function of my perspective only regarding them from so far below? I prefer to believe they are sharp like teeth and drive on through these giant molars  flashing them my most toothy Cheshire cat grin  and wonder which jaw I'm driving up – or down?   then up pops a fang – a pointy menacing fang clouds push up against it, trying to smooth it off but it stands its ground, cold and solid it will not be filed or defiled by a mere whisp of a cloud  and yet, and yet they have been known to shake, rattle and roll to send rocks and trees tumbling down into the valleys below they are not as solid as they look but such good imposters… illusion, reality My drive finishes up on a four-lane expressway about 100 km from Calgary, on the lee-side of the Rockies, where you can feel and ta...