Hitchhiking North, 2006: Geology, Literature & Bears, Racist Lunatics & Revolutionaries: A symphony in four parts

Hitchhiking North, 2006:
Geology, Literature & Bears,
Racist Lunatics & Revolutionaries:
A symphony in four parts

Part I

Well, in late March I made a weekend trip to Mission, nothing interesting in particular about that except that I hitchhiked on the way back from the visit to my uncle—marking my first successful hitching in my thirties. Seems silly now to be concerned about a non-tangible number, but it felt better to have that at least “under my belt” before beginning the trip this summer, one both a return home after a difficult year involving the illness of my mother and a chance to go and work. A chance to do some political work, even if it is vastly smaller than last summer, would make a trip based on simply working all that much better. More than anything, to find myself, I needed to get lost on the road.
Leaving on Thursday from my uncles, my first ride was after shopping to have the usual water-add-only food and a few granola bars—something I buy as much out of habit as anything. The first three rides were all good people, enjoyable, and they got me to Hope up the highway 7, the slower route but the one I usually take because it is so much more relaxing than the freeway. After my ride into Kamloops dropped me in the area near the turnoff to Calgary (I was headed to clear the other side of town, the exit to Highway five), I discovered what it was that I had forgotten this time (I can’t relax until I discover what I had forgotten). Turns out it was my “across town” sign, but that’s easy enough to replace—at a drop where there is actually cardboard, that is. Here, I’m in prime “across town” turf with no sign. That’s okay-- it leads to me doing my crazy dance, hopping up and down until I got my ride…
“I saw you jumping up and down there,”
“Yeah, I could have been stuck there for way too long, since I’m on the wrong side of town,”
“Well, I’m only going to McClure,” He replied. Nice guy, mid forties, apparently originally from the Prince George area but I won’t hold that against him.
“That’s absolutely great, actually,” I replied. I’d say that if it wasn’t really that true, but in this case it was, I knew the coffee shop restaurant he’d end up dropping me by, and I wanted to be there. He drove me along, telling me a story of his friend and he finding a drunk woman stuck in the ditch, passed out and thinking (upon being prodded awake) that she was going the other way. They split up, so he told the story, and one drove her home for which she slurringly thanked them. After telling the story he pointed to where the car had been ditched when they found her down the road.
I waited here less than half an hour, a place where I was given the familiar “I am going to stop in X to do Y, but I have to keep going, so if you are still here I’ll pick you up again when I come back.” No problem, thank you, and then I got the ride out anyhow. Michael was 22 years old and had just moved to the area from Alberta, to work in natural gas pipeline construction. Nice working class kid, he and I were almost at Little Fort when a massive, you-can’t see-through-your-windshield rainblast dropped from the clouds. He tried to pull over to avoid the rain, when a semi came up from behind slamming on his horn. We were on the shoulder, so no harm done. A few minutes later, after the rain had stopped, our car caught back up to the semi, so Michael tried to pass. Nope, as we were cut off from one passing lane, so Michael tried to go over one more and the truck took over the oncoming lane just to stop him. We hit the brakes (obviously, since I’m typing this…) and then he started to swear. We talked about how crazy this was for quite sometime, in total agreement. It was probably half an hour before either of us calmed down fully, and then passed the truck. Well, no matter. I had made excellent time for the day so asking to be left out on the other side of Clearwater, despite the rainstorm, was an easy choice. Putting up my little tent in the massive downpour also really drove home the point that I had, indeed, made it back to the road and was now living this way.

Well, when I woke up it wasn’t that wet anymore, though it continued to rain through the night. I assumed it was something like 9 or 10, but I didn’t know (thank goodness!), so I packed up and headed onto the road. After less than a half an hour, I saw a semi truck pull over into the ditch as it headed towards me. Lenny was the driver, the kid was his nephew. I was quickly alert, he was very animated. Turned out he was also full of shit, sadly, because I recall him saying all sorts of “facts” that made no sense (why you should fear a wolf, for example—despite that there has never been a wolf attack on a human being on all of Turtle Island). Whatever, he was perfectly nice and drove me all the way to the highway 40 turnoff I needed to catch a half-mile before Hinton, AB. It turned out he had picked me up at about 7am and now it was only 10: 30 and I was already almost on the Alaska Highway. I could tell I was going to make great time today. I picked up my things and decided I would walk across the road and the few hundred meters to the first bridge, where I wanted to smoke a bowl before continuing on my way. Well, scratch that plan: Two women, a mother daughter combo, were driving their minivan from Vancouver to Yellowknife, trying to take the scenic route. No grass smoking for me, gosh darn it. Maybe in Grande Cache…

When we got to Grande Cache about two hours later, I got the same “Going to X to do Y” speech, so I thought “perfect, I’ll smoke that bowl and hopefully get my ride fairly quickly…” but the wind wouldn’t let up. I contemplated whether or not I wanted to try and go smoke in the bushes where there was no wind, but everytime I thought about it I saw a vehicle coming that I wanted to hitch from, until the two women came back after I had gone over to the edge of the woods but didn’t find a sufficiently calm area. Well, dang it, no pot for me. Just a ride to Grande Prairie. After a couple of more hours, these two women were kind enough to take me that last little bit past Grande Prairie so that I didn’t get stuck there, walking across town. Where they dropped me the wind was literally ripping my SNC Lavalin hat off my head, leaving it to dangle from my tail several times. Then, perhaps 8 minutes after getting dropped on the edge of the road I was picked up by James. He was cool, taking me to the cutoff to the little town whose name I forgot and where he lived. Didn’t smoke grass though, so my desire to have a bowl continued to nag. Before I could even put my pack down, Chris took me and drove me to Hythe. From Hythe, I seriously thought I could get a smoke on, but here it was, again, too windy for my bic lighter. I gave up and ate a sandwich from the gas station, and relaxed a couple of minutes before sticking out my thumb, when I was to meet Alex. Before he got me, my longest wait of the day—about a half hour—had passed. Alex was a nice guy, he worked in forest fire fighting and in doing seismic exploration. The good and the bad, together at last! He was a regular working man type, and he took me to the junction on the way out of Dawson Creek, past the “mile 0” post at the roundabout.

Part II

Well, it was time for me to smoke, but… nope. I was just walking along it seemed, and couldn't avoid getting rides on this day. This time, it was another guy, a middle aged white guy who picked me up. He seemed nice enough, and we talked about this and that for a few minutes. His ride was only about 20 minutes long, but that was plenty long for him to make a stark impression. His was clearly educated from the start of the ride, articulate and well-spoken. Before long, banal conversation changed. I asked him about life living near Dawson Creek.
“Do you like living around here?”
“Oh, yes. It is one of the most interesting places in the world, in some ways.”
“Oh, yeah? How’s that?”
“Well, it is absolutely fascinating in terms of geology.”
Really?”
“Yes, for instance, take an archaeological study of this area. It is kind of funny how people are looking to discover who was here first, when in fact no one that lives here now was.”
I paused before deciding to conduct my own dig into this a little deeper.
“Who was here first, then?” I asked. He explained some mountainous patterns, an arrowhead found that “conclusively” had to be from the Clovis people (due to a variation in design that he tells me could not be from any of the Dene, Beaver or Cree near to the area). Then he explained some other aspects. One of those was that scientists had examined fossilized human stool that had been found. Apparently in the rock feces was a parasite that had a life cycle of living in the human body, more or less harmlessly, until it was expelled. Then it would get onto the food of another person and be re-absorbed. This parasite apparently could only live in tropical climates; if this parasite were to come out of a body on landscape around the Dawson Creek area—a cycle it goes through over and over— it would die off quickly in any colder weather, weather that would take place annually.
“So that means it’s impossible that the feces they found, dated back some thousands of years before anything that exists as evidence for the so-called first nations of the area, comes from any of the local tribes.”
“Uh huh,” I replied. I felt I could smell where his feces was going.
“Why does this matter?” I innocently asked.
“Well, with all these land settlements that the government is handing away, they are going to bankrupt the country!”
“Oh.”
“Don’t you get it? If these ‘First Nations’ aren’t even really first, then aren’t all of these land claims just basically looking for a handout and ruining the country?”
Ahh, just as I figured. His argument was nothing but a pile of petrified shit.

He let me out at Fort St John.

Being dropped basically in town and remembering it was this town that helped me create the “Across Town” sign in the first place three years ago, I was certain that this time I would have time to smoke my bowl. I even packed it, and hunched over, almost onto my knees in order to smoke without the wind using my pack as a wind-breaker. I was squatting very low into the pack when, while crouched over and hunched into my backpack holding my pipe and having only seconds before pulled the smoke of my product into my lungs… a tire was approximately at the viewing level of my eyebrows. “Oh, shit” I thought, “How can I possibly finish this toke and not blow the ride?”
Well, I looked up slowly and let smoke dribble from my lips as I lifted my head.
*cough, cough*, “ahem”, “Hey! Where are you headed?” *cough*… was all I could manage. This obvious farmer, replete with coveralls and a sideways glance was looking at me, wondering who exactly he had pulled up beside.
“I’m not going far,” he said.
“Oh, well are you going as far as the turnoff junction?” I asked.
“You mean Charlie Lake? Yeah, that’s where I’m going.” It all sounded familiar enough that I knew he was going where I currently desperately wanted to get to. Wicked! Smoke exhaled, somewhat stoned, I was in his truck and my stuff in the back. It made me feel better, having had to listen to geological ass-hole last ride. Though, come to think of it, I appreciated the experience immensely. Science, so the modern peddlers of a faith without a faith tell us, is “neutral”, its results cannot be distorted to pursue a particular ideological bent they say, because that would not be “scientific”. What I was presented with was a scientific, academic, neutral barrage of nonsense. Why was he so fascinated by this? By his own admission it was the possible political outcomes he could see as a white Canadian—and all the results being completely beyond his comprehension.

So my new ride was a nice guy with a hat, a receding hairline and not too much to say. He seemed like a simple guy, one I was glad to deal with while riding after having to try and surf through the last ride. I asked him about what he thought of how people around here were dealing with the change in the economy of the area because of the natural gas drilling and piping that is going on. Without a blink, he told me that people were getting “spoiled, they don’t know it’s going to end someday”, a sentiment I could easily concur with. He told me, when asked, that he had never lived anywhere but in Dawson Creek, Charlie Lake or surrounding communities. He asked me to wait while he stopped to make certain an earth-mover from the local “I don’t always live here” workers would help him move large chunks of the earth the next day. No Prob. Then, after getting his labourers straight, we went to the place he was to drop me. I was getting ready and he stopped me while unpacking everything from his truck—asking me “Do you read?” Feeling like I was in a Bill Hicks sketch where the question ought to be “what do you read” but was shortened, I answered “yes”, to which he replied “Well, I wrote this book.”
“Really? I’d like to see it,” I replied. He fished it out of a box full of the book from behind his seat.
“If you like it and finish it, maybe you can sell it when you get to Dawson City.” Cool, I thought.
“Thank you!” I said, certain this was a good thing. He handed it to me. I smiled, and asked him how long he worked on the book. He replied “many years”, before driving away. I looked down at the book I was given.
“Gold Age to the Stone Age” and some really comic looking image of what I’m guessing were supposed to be tipis. I thought to myself: “This can’t be what I’m thinking it is, can it...?” and I leafed through the book. Looking on the back cover would have saved me time:
“What race of people in Canada commit crimes many times the national average?”
“Who in Canada are addicted to bingo and gambling of all sorts and yield to the temptation of fast foods, alcohol and drugs far above the national average?” These and other points are followed by an assurance that the answers to “these important questions” had been written out by my last ride, apparently named Gordon Meek. The book illustrated so much to me about the nature of the mindset of people who live in an on-going settler state. The phrase ‘ongoing’ is important: Though the devastation of industrialization and residential schools began many years ago now, the destruction of the land and the reduction of nations to smaller and smaller parcels of land are very much current issues and realities, particularly in the north. Subconsciously, the southern liberal mind thinks of it as “then” not “now”. If everything you have, everything you do in life is predicated on absolutely destroying whole peoples—you simply must harbour some racist ideals. In Canada, that is and always has been white supremacy. The content of this book never gets away from direct racist rants, not even for a full page. I illustrate this by asking people to pick a number from 1-214, and a friend gave me 177. Okay, observe:
“Special rights based on race are incompatible with our national commitment to equal treatment of all Canadians.
If it doesn’t work now, it certainly won’t work in the 21st Century when populations and economic pressures will grow.”
The above clip is actually not from the author, but is a reprint of a letter to the editor from the local MP, Jay Hill. Thought maybe this was “over the top?” This kind of ‘thinking’ is mainstream.
So yes, Mr Meek, I am glad you gave me the book and I will not be selling it in Dawson but instead using it to illustrate to others what kind of opposition indigenous societies face. People will learn something quite different than you intended from your book—but it will indeed provide wisdom.
The place he left me at was pretty good, and I got one more ride to about 73 mile up the Alaska Highway that night. After I gave up and had put up my tent in this somewhat hidden clearing, I went to use the phone. While walking down a side road off the highway a car completely full came back to me and offered me a ride down to “this little reserve up ahead”.
“We saw you coming down, so on the way back…”
“Oh, goodness, I’ve already put up my tent and things down that way…I’m sorry,” was all I could apologetically say.
“Okay then, good luck!”
“Thanks…. Thanks so much for stopping,” I stood there a moment, smiled a bit to myself and was in my sleeping bag shortly after I found out that my phone card was useless while I was here. Guess I should move on in the morn.

Part III

When I awoke I was happy to not know what time it was. I thought to myself that this place was worth remembering as a place to stop on the way up, it seemed convenient and somewhat likely as a place that would be good to aim for traveling on my thumb in the future. After a quick picture, the usual boiled mud coffee and a large helping of oatmeal later the tent came down and I was on the road. It was most of an hour waiting for this ride, but it came easily enough. He was a heavy machine operator from Alberta. I had no remaining energy from yesterday, so we only talked about his job, the land and some trivial things. Mostly in silence, he got me well started, taking me to Fort Nelson. I was in the industrial district of a town that stretches a long ways, pointless to walk it. However, the amount of local traffic and limited highway traffic frustrated me quickly. After about a half an hour I wandered along the ditches and found a Styrofoam take out lid, and wrote “across town” on that stupid thing. It worked immediately, as it often does. This guy was good, driving me about ten minutes to a place he said was the “last property anyone lived on” in Fort Nelson’s stretch of the Alaska Highway.
I sang, threw rocks and took pictures of the spot I was staring at, I even found a creek that was unfortunately foul. My guess? The foulness is from development of some sort in the area. I don’t know from what obviously, but Fort Nelson is an energy—in particular gas—town. I did wait quite awhile here. Then Andy showed up.
Andy had been living out this way much of a decade, he was never from a big town anyway. He was instantly noticeable as a nice guy, telling stories of the area and how he made good money.
“I don’t even get out of bed for less than $28 an hour,” was how he introduced his job helping survey the ground for where to insert a pipeline. We didn’t talk a lot, but I was worried about the time. He said he was going to Liard Hot Springs, about four hours down the road. I wanted to have camp set by 9 for a chance to build up a really good fire and relax, so I figured it would be better to get him to drop me somewhere between Summit Lake and Toad River. I had always noted how easy it would be to camp along the highway, get away from it by a beautiful river here. Tons of little side roads along waterways— and I could just walk.
Andy would have none of it.
“I’m going to my friends just over here,” was how he replied when I told him
“I’m going to start watching for a good place to camp and when I see one, I’ll let you know, so could you let me out then?” It was a standard statement I use often on the road. But the friends place, well… he did mention it about an hour ago, too. “Where is it roughly?”
“Mile [xx], just before The Toad.” I thought a second, but this guy was totally harmless.
“Yeah, okay, sure…. Do you think he would mind if I camped on his land?”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t.”
We got there and there was a loud barking dog that met us as we pulled into the closed up abandoned old lodge, situated here on the banks of what I was to learn is the MacDonald River. It’s one lowercase d away from an inheritance, I guess. I suppose it has a proper name as well, along with true inheritors. Sure is beautiful by any label.
The dog was really cool, a lab-pit cross and a sweetheart. The owner didn’t bark, and it would turn out, didn’t have a bite either. Stewie, who had lived here since the 70’s. He was now a fur trapper and lived here with propane and firewood, no services. I asked if I could camp here and he said certainly. Then Andy offered me a beer and took out rolling papers, so I offered to pitch into the joint before pitching my tent on the edge of this cliffbank that overlooked the valley around the river. Damn, this was a sweet spot!

I went back to where Stewie and Andy were and asked Stewie if I could make a fire later,
“Sure but why bother? We got a fire here,” A couple of beers, conversation and good grass later, Stewie wanted to play cards. I did my traveling duty and taught them “Shithead”—quite simply the greatest card game in history (since I get my gambling rush from hitchhiking and not poker or blackjack). A couple hours of this goofy game in his cabin later and I was ready for bed. I crashed and slept soundly down by the river.

I was awakened by Andy asking me if I would be ready to go soon.
“Okay, sure… is it late?”
“It’s almost Ten O’clock,” he answered. That’s very late on the road. I got out of the tent, and was packing up a minute later. I walked to his truck, saw Stewie up and thanked him and said bye, before being told to stop in on my way through anytime. I will keep it in mind as a possibility any time I’m on this road, that’s for sure. Andy and I stopped at the Toad River Lodge to get coffees and go. Little conversation later and I was already in Liard Hotsprings just before noon, and saw that the World Cup was on the TV. I thanked Andy profusely and then ordered my meal in the lobby and went to watch.
Those I watched with were an Aussie couple and a German family. I was supporting Italy, so I made no friends here (what with Italy ripping off both of their teams prior). Considering it was the biggest news before Israel started to mass slaughter children in Lebanon, I was glad to have seen the Zindane-ity happen live, if for no other reason but to have that to speak of with other rides thereafter.
When I left, the sun was beating hard but I got my ride to Whitehorse pretty quick. Larry, a lifelong Yukoner from Mayo picked me up in his truck. Before we got very far we saw some grizzly cubs on the side of the highway, and the obligatory pulled-over RV. He leaned on his horn.
“God damnit, your are blocking traffic and are a hazard!” He leaned on his horn again. We pulled off to speak to a guy about his work before we ate in Watson Lake. Funny guy, or rather a character who let his real self shine through as well, he was the sort I like stopping places with because he knew everybody and that gives me a bit of a window into local life in all the places he stops in I couldn’t get on my own or with another traveler. After dinner and his chats with the locals, we headed to Whitehorse, or rather, for me near it. I asked to be let out near the Marsh Lake Dam, which wasn’t that bad a spot but I won’t go back there—I’ve since found better places closer to Whitehorse with still being able to avoid going into that “northern suburb of Ottawa”.

In the morning I got two short rides across the Whitehorse by-pass before getting to the turnoff to the Klondike Highway, where I was picked up by a man named Dennis who just did the Yukon Quest and finished second. The Yukon Quest is a canoe race from Whitehorse to Dawson City on The Yukon River. He did the whole thing faster— much faster— than when I did less than half the distance (to Carmacks) with two others three years ago. I think I’d rather stick to my lollygagging pace. He let me out by the turnoff to Lake Laberge, where I would wait maybe a half an hour.

Part IV

When my next ride pulled over I was pretty certain that I was going all the way to Dawson in this car. I saw two people who looked much like the type I would expect to be heading to Dawson: young, white and healthy, looking for work. After my ride told me
“I’m having a beer, but I want to tell you it’s the first one […] Really, I don’t drink while I’m driving.” I laughed to myself, not knowing what to think. These two, named Adam Squibb and Clare Brunst as it turns out, wanted to go to Dawson but not in any hurry, so they wanted to know of a good place to camp along the way. Remembering when I got stuck in Carmacks last year and that when I emerged from my campspot just out of town that my ride, Eddie the Little Salmon chief from Carmacks area (Northern Tutchone Nation) picked me up and told me that I had slept on the dirt path that led to a fish camp. I suggested this place, and they agreed it seemed a good idea. About half an hour into the ride, I noticed my ride said what I take as a code from a revolutionary: he mentioned he had traveled to Chiapas not too long ago.
“Really? What were you there for?” I followed up with the bloodhound scent smelling instincts kicking in. It was indeed part of a solidarity trip, and we discussed it briefly. Then, as a follow up to this, I explained the political aspects to my being on the road.—a sure indicator that I felt “safe”. Safe, not so much in physical terms but safe to express and live as myself in any which way made the most sense to me at the time I had to express whatever it was that I had to express (approximately). After much time with no sense that it was okay to be ranting about smashing capitalism, racism, colonialism and whatever else happened to be pissing me off that day, it was nice to have (perhaps unwilling) sounding boards for my “special” observations about the world, current events or even my current location.
Nonetheless, I was still riding with strangers. After yet another lovely ride towards Dawson City talking about the various fires that had damaged and worse the region, we all arrived at Carmacks, ate dinner and went on to our campspot at the fish camp. As we first turned into it (as I would later learn) my driver Adam had no belief that this little road would actually take us to a fish camp—he believed that the river flew on the other side of the mountain range. I was pleased to see I had not been misled last year and indeed the location, very beautiful indeed, would provide a place for us to chat, burn a fire and eventually sleep (but not before a trite argument about Fidel, sigh, that always disappoints).
When finally I arose from my tent, I didn’t do much before my usual coffee and oatmeal camping day starter. After that and a good bowl to begin my day, I was doing the usual slow take down of the camp, and so were Adam and Clare. Clare noticed an unexpected sound, a sound she asked me about if I heard it. I, for those who don’t know, am really deaf.
“I don’t hear anything. Heh, it’ll probably be a porcupine and we’ll laugh at ourselves later” I replied.
“You don’t hear that? That doesn’t sound like a porcupine.” I shrugged, not hearing anything, and continued packing slowly. 15 minutes later, apparently the sound had never stopped and I wandered along a different part of the campsite. Then, I heard something.
“Sounds like something is growling,” I said.
“That’s what I have been hearing for the last while, it’s never stopped” Clare replied. I walked a short distance down the path/dirt road we were staying on. Then, the sun glistened off the brown fur of a bear walking towards me, partially visible.
“There’s a grizzly here, and it’s coming right for us!” I exclaimed, perhaps not the best choice of words Actually the bear was meandering more than anything, and was a brown furred black bear.
“Okay, that’s enough, let’s just pack and go” said Adam. After I did the trite tourist thing and took a few pictures, that’s exactly what we did. On the way out in the car, we passed the bear in a short tree. Clearly as frightened of us as the reverse, the breathing sound only intensified until we left with her still up the tree. From there, we had breakfast, stopped to get rid of a car problem at Five Finger Rapids before more or less just driving into Dawson City. Well, once in Dawson we all had a few beers and made rather merry you might say, and slept on the edge of the slide. Several weeks later, and completely unlike the typical road meeting, I was still spending time with Adam, a very good gent and comrade— though in late August Clare had to return to Halifax. I wasn’t able to see either of them for a couple of weeks however, as my feet got really itchy.
Within three days of Dawson I would rationalize my desire to move on by pointing out that the Dawson City Music Festival was in a week, and a lot of new jobs would open up after that (People drink to excess in this town on an average weekend; over the Music Fest alcohol poisoning occurs in large rates, people quit their jobs and go home to heal). Mostly, my spirit was still a flutter with the road and I had not done much yet, just another trip up to Dawson. I decided that now was a good time to try and do some project related work up in Tsiigehtchic, 120km’s South of Inuvik along the Joe Henry/Dempster Highway. Certain I wanted to leave, I decided to head almost immediately after a CBC phone in interview thing about hitchhiking. About two hours before the interview and after I fetched my things from Adam’s car (I used his beautiful little beater as a roving locker while sleeping in various places on the edge of town), I saw a truck pull into the front of Riverwest Coffee on Front Street.
“André!” I called out and went over to hug my friend ‘hello’ as he arrived in town. “When did you get here?” I asked.
“Right now,” he replied as he got his bag from his ride.
“Hey, you should meet my friend Adam. He picked me up by Lake Laberge a few days ago…”
“Hey, André! How you been man?” said Adam, smiling ear to another and also hugging André. They knew one another from New Brunswick. In the time before now, Adam and myself had drawn together many other dots of people we both knew. A few minutes later I asked André what he was doing now:
“I was thinking of going up to Inuvik, actually.” He replied.
“Really? I’m heading out to go up to Tsiigehtchic on the Dempster in a couple of hours, wanna go?”
“Sure,” he said, making the end of the first stage of my trip the opening of the second. We decided to meet up at 4:00pm, and then head out. And so we did…