An Adventure in Spirit and Road: Canada and Alaska, Part 3:
Running the Symbolic Gauntlet, Part 3
(Above.) Grizzly Bear in Hyder, Alaska killing a spawning salmon, blood and eggs going everywhere. Brutal!
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*
Read Part 1 here
Read Part 2 here
~
I’d sold the house in the Bay Area I’d owned for nearly a decade, since 2015. I’d been a mere, angelic, innocent 32 back then, which now, at almost 42, felt like an eon ago. What a different time. Before Covid. Before NYC. Before Britney. Before my father’s death. Before Trump, even. The last contemporary time of innocence in our modern society, one might say. And now that time was gone, erased like the miles used up as the car sped along Highway 97.
And, of course, my inner trek, which, for me, was the most important odyssey of all. I’d changed. Britney had too, it seemed. Every adventure, every trip, every journey—not “vacation”—changes you. I already felt like an old snake with fresh skin. I’d shed my old being, my old self. The road had changed something internal, something symbolic within me, as the road had always altered my inner life.
I handed our brand-new passports (good until 2030) over to the late 50s white-haired Canadian customs officer. He took them, unsmiling, and began punching things into an unseen keyboard; the sounds of the keys clacking were familiar. I glanced over at Britney, who shrugged slightly. Fingers crossed.
After a few minutes of tense silence the customs officer said, “Have you ever been denied entry into Canada, Michael?”
My heart froze. A chill tingled down my spine. I glanced at Britney again; now she seemed worried.
I faced the officer again. “Yes. 2009.”
“And what was the reason for rejection?”
Breathe, Michael.
“DUI, from 2003.”
He nodded and faced his computer again. Fear tore through my solar plexus. This. Again. Now 21 years after the damn DUI, a “crime” which had been lowered to an infraction. I’d been sober now just shy of 14 years. When would I be forgiven? Or would I?
The officer asked a few more general questions about why we were entering Canada, for how long, asked me to roll the back windows down, etc. (The car was full to the brim with camping gear.) And then he handed the passports back and said, “Ok. Go ahead.”
Relief surged through me. It had been frightening but we’d made it in without having to pull over and go inside the building like I’d had to do in 2014. No awkward, brutal humiliation. No good cop/bad cop routine. And it was done.
Or so I thought.
*
We crossed into Canada and caught Trans-Canadian Highway 1, which we’d take until switching around Cache Creek, B.C., to Highway 97, before switching once more to Highway 16 heading west at Prince George, also known as the Highway of Tears due to all the [often Indigenous] teen girls who’d gone missing and/or been murdered along this road since the 1960s. (Britney knew all about it of course because of her true crime obsession.)
The landscape quickly became absolutely gorgeous: Tall rugged mountains, some with snow around the peaks, Lodgepole Pines and Balsam Fir trees absolutely everywhere. Lakes, rivers, creeks, fields of natural green in a variety of nuanced shades.
We ended up staying not far from the border, a little north into B.C., splurging by staying one night in Harrison Hot Springs. We’d mostly been camping both before and after Portland, and we’d just closed, finally, on the two houses. It was time to celebrate, to live momentarily in luxury. The hotel was stupendous, right on the lake. We relaxed in the natural hot springs, ate a delicious meal, and got some well-needed sleep on a real bed.
The next morning we took our time. I got up early and went downstairs. I found one public computer. I used it and wrote post #1 of this four-part series. Britney did her own thing. We packed and hit the road. We ended up camping on a married couple’s farm in the little town of Quesnel, B.C., about 400 miles north of the Washington/Canada border. It was a “Hip Camp,” which Britney had found us. (There’s a Hip Camp app; it offers places to crash which are camping or similar to camping, sometimes “glamping.”)
The farm was gorgeous: 13.5 acres run by a woman in her mid-fifties and her husband, who happened to be out of town working. She was very kind. She showed us where to park the car, where we’d pitch a tent, and then toured us around the farm showing us the myriad animals in various pens: Sheep, horses, chickens, pigs, ducks, etc. There were half a dozen dogs running around the property, free as birds. One cat. Besides running the farm, she also ran a little ice cream shop. Sometimes, she told us, it was empty as a baby’s brain; other times it was jam-packed. It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, so this seemed strange.
She also had a new litter of puppies. Tiny little things, a rat terrier and others which almost looked like Labs. Cute as hell. She brought them out and we held them. This was joyous. Eventually, she left us to ourselves. Britney and I did a nice half-hour walk along the bucolic road surrounded by Balsam Fir, the glorious mountains in the distance, small rural farms dotting the landscape here and there as we passed. We knew we were in Bear country but I didn’t feel afraid. Britney did. But I figured we’d be fine; everyone had told us that bears—whether Black or Grizzly—were generally afraid of us. As long as you didn’t run or provoke them you’d almost always be ok. Still, we carried Bear Spray which I’d bought backpacking in Yellowstone back in 2015. Just to be safe.
*
The next morning I woke up early, before Britney. Oddly, this had become the new norm on the road. While home in Lompoc, she’d always gotten up first, around 5:30am, stirred by the cries and needs of our animals. But here, she slept and I got up. I chugged water and made Irish tea—my usual routine—and walked alone amidst the silence and trees and mountains, through the farm and out into the empty country road. I walked for maybe 25 minutes, at one point pausing and listening to that still, profound, utter silence, and then entering a flat green spacious field, gaping at the organic raw beauty.
I couldn’t wait for Alaska. We’d decided on going to Hyder, one of the most southeastern sections of Alaska, right across the border from Stewart, B.C., in the narrow, long southern tail of Alaska. We wouldn’t be fully going “into” Alaska proper, aka into the major meat of the state, i.e. Fairbanks, Anchorage, etc. So no romantic Chris McCandless experience. Not directly at least. Still, it was Alaska, at least technically. It would be less like visiting the final frontier and more like running a race and touching down for a moment before turning and sprinting back to California. We wanted to save money and time, that was the main thing. We’d begun to realize our expenses had been more than we’d expected.
We’d googled things and discovered Hyder, a tiny town just past the B.C. border, about 65% of the way north to the Yukon border. Up in northern B.C. The town, we read, was an hour via dirt road from America’s 5th largest glacier, Salmon Glacier, which was 14,000 years old. Also, a mile away was Fish Creek, where there was an official boardwalk along the Salmon River which allowed you to observe the frequent Grizzly Bears. The town was situated at the confluence of the Salmon and Bear Rivers.
I couldn’t wait.
*
Because there’s no logical way for anyone to get into the mainland of the USA via Hyder—the mountains quickly become B.C. territory again, once in Hyder, including where the glacier is—there is actually no U.S. Customs going from B.C. proper into Hyder. But, of course, anytime you leave Hyder—to, say, go into town for dinner in Stewart, B.C., the town just across the border, since there is nothing at all except campgrounds in Hyder—you must go through Canadian Customs.
We ended up staying at a really cool RV/tent spot called Eagle Shadow Campground in Hyder. The place had been purchased by a Morman family from Pennsylvania a year ago. There were about a dozen RVs packed in. Exposed tents were not allowed, due to bears. They had started using an old abandoned metro bus—with a still-functional hydraulic door—which had been left there when they purchased the land, for tent campers. Inside the bus were three solid, sturdy, thick tents. We were the first and only people to use the bus. It was fantastic. (And of course it brought back to mind Chris McCandless, who lived and died in an abandoned school bus 28 miles west of Healy, in the Denali National Park in Alaska.)
The drama started later that night.
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