Tuesday, August 2nd, 2022
Wake up in Stewart, BC. Wake up to rain. Before the alarm has a chance to go off the family upstairs are already thumping and bumping around. They were thumping and bumping well past midnight the night before.
Do children ever sleep??
Still, I feel rested. Alert and alive. My daily tasks are simple:
follow the itinerary
experience the journey
fulfill basic needs
I go for a run.
Pilot stays in bed.
Stewart is a quiet town. Small. Simple. Not a touristy port town like I expected. The buildings are painted in bright colors, an uplifting contrast to the heavy grey skies hanging overhead. This town knows winter. Knows dark days. Knows how to handle them.
The Canadian Switzerland we frolicked in the night before is now cloaked in the veil of the Pacific Northwest. Beautiful, still.
I check out of the B&B and drag a reluctant dog on a rainy walk before going to the town grocery store and buying two bags of ice at $4 each. The woman who rings me up sounds like she's from the States. Is anyone in this town Canadian?
I rearrange the food in my cooler before dumping in the ice. While doing so another traveler comes over to talk. He likes my folding camp table. We have the same roof basket. It was a good price. He just sold his house. He's on the road until fall. No particular itinerary.
His name is Andrew. He has mutton chops and sad eyes. I wonder what he's looking for, out here on his journey. I wonder what I'm looking for, too. It's not just the external, the sights, sounds, smells, fresh air, nature, expansive vistas. There's something inside ourselves that we all discover each time we make a journey. Something that we ache to find, to take home with us and keep forever.
Andrew says goodbye. He's going to check out the town museum. He used to be a curator. Now he works in a shipyard. I have a feeling we will cross paths again.
Pilot and I say goodbye. To Stewart. We don't go to Hyder. We take the 37A out of town toward the Cassiar Highway.
We cross the moody and mysterious Bear River.
I stop to take a photo of Bear Glacier from the good angle, but the light is much different from the day before.
Highway 37A is also called the Stewart Highway and the Glacier Highway, but I'm thinking it should be called the Bear Highway. Bear Valley, Bear River, Bear Glacier, take a sharp turn in the road and
Bear!
A big black bear, ambling along the asphalt. I stomp on the brakes. My right hand shoots out to brace Pilot. Between me and his seatbelt we save him from going through the windshield, but he still does a roll. Antilock brakes deploy. Car stops. Bear stops. Nobody dies. Nobody gets hurt.
The bear is frightened and stands halfway up, teetering from left to right, unsure which direction to go. The time that passes is only a matter of seconds, three at most, but feels like forever. Finally the bear picks a direction and lumbers off the road and into the woods. Gone. Was there ever a bear?
I step on the gas before any can come around the corner and hit me, but the adrenaline kicks in and I'm shaking so bad I can't hold the wheel. Pilot is shaking, too. I pull over. Console him and myself. And laugh, because apparently that's what you do after you almost die.
I feel compassion for the bear. What's that experience like, a huge, unfamiliar orange beast with shiny eyes rushing at you, appearing, seemingly, from nowhere? Had that bear ever seen a car before? Will that bear ever cross a road again? Does that bear even associate roads with cars and danger, and will they from now on?
Once calm, we continue. Connect with the Cassiar Highway. After some quiet hours on the road we get a sunbreak at the flowery Mehan Lake.
There's a small floating dock we can walk out onto to get a better view. Pilot hates the thing. He thinks I'm going to make him go swimming. I only made him swim once in his life. He said he had an otter body experience and refuses to ever do it again.
I'm not going to make him go swimming, I reassure him, but he only gives me 30 seconds to take photos before he pulls me back to solid ground.
The Cassiar Highway is all kinds of lovely. Long stretches of solitude without a single car.
And long periods of torrential downpours that blend and smear green trees with grey road and sky. At times the rain is so intense I question if I'm actually on a road or just driving into 1980s television static. The highway offers no places to pull over, and even so there is no telling how long it would take to wait out the rain. I push on through the torrents and turn inwards on the journey.
I think about people and I think about things and I think about all the work I have done these past few years. The hard work. The painful self-honesty that leads to rebirth and growth. I am lighter now. Braver, freer, and more confident than I've was in preceding years. The work was painful. Irritating. Tantrum-inducing. It still is. The journey never ends. But I'm educated, now. And I know myself.
I think of a friend. Someone I'm not in touch with anymore. I recall how unhealthy I was when we met. How unhealthy we both were. I think of the freedom and joy I have found on my internal journey and hope that he has found that, too, on his own path.
I think about Pilot, sitting there bravely in his car seat next to me. Sniffing the wind. Sleeping for long stretches of drive. I worry about him. Is he enjoying this trip or am I just dragging him along? But then we stop at a provincial campground and wander the grounds and the trails and I know he would rather be out here with me than anywhere else.
The feeling is mutual.
The days are long up here, which makes it easy to drive until dinner time. Just past a rest area named "Rabid Grizzly" is Sawmill Point, a free campground on the shores of Dease Lake. We pull into an open site and set up camp, which is really just parking the car.
The rain is light, and the site has a picnic table under a tree. I set up my camp stove.
I love my camp stove.
At home I cook on a set of shitty electric burners that have a temperature control that is meant to keep oil from catching fire which means they turn off intermittently. This stove, though, is akin to cooking on a gas range. The flame level is adjustable, it holds up well in the wind, and it only cost me fifty fucking dollars.
I make dinner. Put the kitchen away and climb in the car to eat out of the rain. As I'm finishing up the last few bites of my veggie sausage scramble who do I see trundling into the campground but Andrew. I tap the horn but he doesn't notice me. He circles past a second time and I wave, even open the door a crack before reconsidering my enthusiasm.
Do I really want company?
No. I just want to hang out with my dog and edit photos in the car, brush my teeth, and go to bed.
So that's what I do.
It pours all night.
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