I didn't really did not want to leave Yellowknife. I felt as if I had travelled a long way to see it but partially because of the weather and because it had been a long weekend I had not gotten to see or at least to know the city as well as I had wanted to. However I also had a sense of wanting to get to the west coast sometime soon. It had been over 5 months since I had seen my son and family. In the interest of both time and money I decided to take a Greyhound bus south. Considering how much I had spent on hotels to get up north, and how long it had taken me, it seemed a more effective use of my resources to get down south quickly. However, I could not find the number for Greyhound. There was a local company that took passengers to Hay River at the south end of Great Slave Lake but that would not help me a lot. I went down to the lobby to get some help from the clerk.After he made a number of calls and was put on hold for a bit, he told me that there were no Greyhound buses running in the NWT. He was surprised as was I, but it appeared that it was just not profitable to run a bus service in the north. The service had been infrequent and slow, visiting every community n the way. It was more effective for local residents and for tourist to fly. Like most things if the service is poorly subscribed the service becomes limited in the service which in turn causes even fewer people to use it. I suppose I could have flown out too but that would have felt far too much like cheating.
The next morning I got up early, paid my bill and asked for them to call taxi for me to get a drive to the edge of town. When the cab came I was not surprised to see that the driver was from a Middle Eastern country. The previous day as I was wondering around the town just before noon I had noticed a large number of cabs all parked outside the small mosque. Two hours later the cabs were not there. It made me wonder about a country where no one local wants to work as a cabby so we import others as immigrants or refugees.
My driver let me out across from the airport near a park that looked like a really good spot. It was a pleasant morning and there looked to be lots of traffic. Of course after being there for about ten minutes I quickly realized that most of the traffic was just local and that I would not get a ride from those people. There was also a lot of taxi traffic to and from the airport. I guess that is why there were so many taxi drivers in town.
The only difficulty with my spot was that day camps used it for a drop off spot and there were a couple of half hour periods where the parking lot was really busy and somewhat chaotic thereby making hitching a virtual impossibility.
I eventually got picked up by Alex - who is a realty TV star from the program "Ice Road Truckers" He was just going an hour down the road but I thought it was worth the chance. I had an interesting conversation with Alex, his travelling companion and another hitchhiker that we picked up. Alex was quite a character with 11 children, a varied work life and of course his experience of being filmed while driving his truck. One of the most interesting things that I learned was that he was, within the circle of people who watch reality shows, a celebrity and not only had written an autobiography, but also went on trips signing autographs etc. Only in America..... Actually I think he was a really nice guy who would be fun to hang out with. Perhaps I will look him up next time I am up there.
He let the other hitchhiker and I out near two small, just off the road communities. I was feeling silly and generous and so I let the other hitchhiker get the first ride. It took him an hour or so to get one and another hours or two for me to get one. It was a long wait in the sun and it was somewhat frustrating seeing all of the cars that were going back and forth between the two communities. Every time I saw a car coming towards me I would get excited only to be disappointed as I watched it turn off the highway onto the dirt road.
Right down from where I was standing was the exit/entrance to a snow road. These are paths/clear bits of the forest, that as soon as the ground freezes and the snow falls, are plowed into roads so that small communities in the interior can be accessed during the winter. Because the roads frequently follow hydro lines, the residents do not need to wait until the lake ice freezes over.
Eventually a big SUV did stop and got in. He was going to Fort Simpson so at least I had a ride to the same spot that Todd had picked me up a few days earlier. My driver's first words to me were " do you have $40.00. I told him no but that perhaps I had $30.00.
I was Danny's first ever hitchhiker and he was a bit unsure of the procedures but within a few minutes we were having a good time exchanging stories. Danny was from a First Nation community further north called (I think) Norman Wells. He looked really young but had had three children, two of whom were over 30 and seven grandchildren. He was particularly proud of his youngest daughter who had just returned from Africa doing some sort of volunteering and who was planning on going back to university. I am not too sure how the other two were doing. He appeared to be more reluctant to talk about them. He had worked in a number of jobs, but I think presently he had a small company that did excavations.
Danny loved to drive. The vehicle he was driving was brother-in-law's and he was not sure how much gas he needed to get home. Which is why he had asked me for money for gas. When we stopped at a gas station just before the Mackenzie River, I gave him $20.00 just to make sure he could get home. He had lots of stories about how well his various business activities were doing but I am not sure if either his sense of things going well were the same as mine or if he was slightly exaggerating. Or perhaps he had just left his wallet at home.
I asked him some questions about the bison. He knew virtually nothing about them...they were not part of his culture's history or knowledge base.
We spent a lot of our time together talking about the political process in the NWT, the opportunities available for some and how difficult the transition was for others. It was a common theme that I notice throughout the northern leg of my journey - lots of possibilities, but perhaps a rather high cost to achieve those possibilities if it meant being dislocated from ones past, one's roots, one's culture.
At the ferry "dock" I saw a bull bison..... it was just hanging out trying to avoid the flies. When he saw us, he ambled in between the cars and the heavy machinery being used to build the bridge. It was an amazing sight...this iconic animal of the mid and north-west scratching its butt against a bull dozer.
It seemed harmless enough. In fact he walked by like he did not even notice we were there. I had no desire to pet it though. One swing of his head and I would have been tossed into the river.
It was an amazing sight and still for some reason just a little bit sad.
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