We call those brown trout out here, when we seem 'em. Not very prevalent but I caught lots of them in Alberta as a kid. That and Brook trout which may be same species, different size. NOTHING in the world tastes better than pan-fried brookies over a campfire. Proper traditional Canadian experience that. I love Canada.
So I'm gonna tell an off-topic tale of how that love started from a flame of injustice but was kindled by everyone I came into contact with afterward. I absolutely adore this country, Canada. I love wilderness and have spent more hours of my life in it, than not, impossible though that may seem. When in my teens I fell in love with Kerouac's "On the road", "Dharma Bums", and George Orwell's "Down and out in Paris and London". Orwell was questioning his then-establishment, pro-empire value system so went to Paris without money presenting himself as a street person. I was so inspired by this book that I did the same for 18 months. I wanted to see what people's lives were really like in Canada as I'd been a sheltered middleclass teen, but shaken to my core by the following incident, and my first girlfriend's pregnancy and abortion only 2 weeks previous.
But the real trigger was, my best friend died of a heart malfunction at 16. It was a school night but I had snuck out and was sleeping over at his place. We were sexually yet innocently attracted to each other, and had only been into girls up to that point and frankly, since. But, that terrible morning I woke up early and found him dead beside me in the same bed. Time stopped. My ears rang and clanged. It took 30 minutes before I could move. First I was just going to sneak out the garage so no one would know I'd been there. But I couldn't, it felt like abandonment. I had first tried and I tried my recently learned CPR but it was obvious he'd been gone for hours, the coroner later said sometime before midnight. I went to find his sister, woke her, told her, told her to get her parents and that I had to sneak out and get home. Later the RCMP found out I was there and one Detective threatened to charge me with murder when he illegally cornered me in the street without my parents or legal representation on my way to school. He threatened to "out" me and out my dead friend if I didn't tell him what really happened... how I'd killed him. He wasn't really gay, neither of us were, just young and extremely close. It was a different time and place though and it would have hurt his parents and memory a great deal. but I had nothing to tell and eventually the med report made it all go away but my relationship with authority was now broken. I somehow managed to get through delivering his eulogy, then carry him to his final resting place as a pall bearer, but even the priest couldn't stop crying. Anyway, I mentioned all that because it set me off on my own Orwell-inspired "Down and Out Tour". Almost 2 years I hitchhiked in Canada the equivalent of the circumference of the globe. I hitched to all three oceans and spent many nights in the poor missions and salvation Army missions. It was so awful to see such human potential wasting so, but there were incident after incident that you can only describe as moments of pure grace. I had a very large, very wise Australian Shepard with me the whole time, Monro, who I'd liberated from a Calgary shelter. Almost pure white, with lab//shepard cross looks. a positive-karmic-producing machine, that dog, my beautiful Monro. Kept me safe, made me friends and would chew off your nuts if you touched my packsack he was guarding while I was indoors somewhere shopping or something.
I went all seasons. Sleeping in prairie snowdrifts, wrapped in a tarp with Monro and my sleeping bag in -35 deg, no problem. I was still a teen, but for years afterward received Christmas cards from those whose lives I'd changed on the road, and to those who'd changed my life on the road. I once drove an 18 whl. Peterbuilt from Regina to Saskatoon, in January, the driver just asked me to,and I know that experience would come just once. He slept the whole way. I shared and listened to thousands of hours of Neil Young tapes and CBC radio the whole time, and introduced many to Stan Rogers, a legend I'd met and spent some magical time with as a kid at the Canmore folkfestival months before he died in a plane fire. Once I crossed Canada from the Altlantic to the Pacific in winter, with 3.87 cents, a loaf of pumpernickel, peanut butter and dogfood for Monro just to see if it could be done. I went to Red Cross meetings in Kenora with the family-man who'd picked me up and taken me in overnight. I got stuck for days in Waw-wa, yes the legends are True, and if its still there I wrote my name inside the phone booth beside the giant goose statue that I had to sleep in standing up while blizzards raged outside. In BC I got picked up by a huge black guy who was acting a little confrontational who suddenly in the deepest wilderness drove off the highway into a hidden layby, where, I was certain the fight for my life had arrived. He told me to get out of the car, and as he did he pulled out a 12" stick from behind his seat. He positioned himself directly behind me, his breath on my neck but I decided this was something else because he' was from the US, working here as a teacher and had been asking me about racism in Canada for the last hour and seemed to genuinely think long and hard about my answers. He couldn't understand how there could be so many more blacks in US, so few here, esp then, 1988-9, yet less prejudice here. So I gave my thoughts, and eventually found myself standing with him him behind me, breathing on my next. He was 6.4, and ripped. I mean, real serious body on this guy. My heart POUNDED. But, he suddenly put the stick in my hand, and holding my hands from behind proceeded to give me a 30 min tai chi lesson using a tai chi rule. He was a martial arts master. Multiple black belts and competition wins it turned out. We drove all night together and had religious experience in conversation between two people otherwise unlikely to ever meet. That is why I was doing this. To see the world and people as they are, where they are. He invited me to sleep over in Revelstoke at his home where he taught gradeschool. We smoked some amazing hash he had and then he performed a marshall arts display using swords, spear, and nunchucks that I'll never forget. These experiences were the rule, not the exception.
I think you walk in Grace a great deal, Bill. And the men and women who do that often must undertake trials that challenge this grace to find if we are still capable, still deserving. You are, you can be. You will be. Prob the only thing greater than the human potential to walk in fear and misery is our potential to walk in grace. Persevere here and the world will be your oyster.
You are a trooper and its still early.
Thank you l
