Seeking the Source

It was a slightly boggy clearing, one where dear had gathered perhaps to drink or to feed.  Being late in September, it was almost silent of bird song and the bugs were few.  I rolled out my jacket with half an intention to eat, but really only one purpose in mind.

It was potent stuff.  The dope I'd scored, just by chance from a pair of youths.  One was walking towards me on the highway and stopped to ask if I'd recently passed a town or even just a dwelling.  They couldn't have picked a worse place to break down as I'd just cycled through the most remote stretch of highway yet.  The other was stationed by the car.  I had stopped to greet him and tell him the bad news then cycled on to discover a small group of houses less than a kilometre from the car.  So I had turned around.  The kid was baked.

An ATV trail ran up from the clearing into the hills.  I strolled up it while inhaling the acrid smoke.

Silence.  It was delicious.  After the constant din along the highway even more so.  It wasn't just the traffic noise that missing, but the sound of lawn implements, construction noises and the omni-present jet plane.  Was that the only reason that I had come here?  I concluded that it was.

I soon grew anxious.  I dared not stray too far from the bike as my saddle bags were loaded down with food and there might be wild animals about.  The thought would prove prophetic.

The First Thread

Sometimes you just have to walk.  And sometimes, what you find on you sojourn isn't pretty.  In this case, a giant, industrial-looking dam(n) dominating the river.  I don't remember seeing it the last three times I'd been here.  Perhaps this was the reason for the tears.  The ones I'd been choking back the last three night and now, lying in my tent.

Tears aren't my normal response to seeing such a monstrosity: disgust, nausea, even.  But in retrospect, tears are most appropriate.  I don't linger long; there is, after all, a journey to feed.  I just wish I had brought my camera to record the crime.


I take refuge from the early morning fog in a Tim Horton's where I feast on a fat- and salt-laden breakfast and watch a spider crawl up the other side of the booth from my jacket.  Was this the same spider I caught spinning in my campsite?  Quite a ride for a spider: like me travelling to the Antarctic.