On The Road Again 2013 A Brief Intermision #4

I don't do funerals. I don't like them and if I had a choice, I suspect that I would never go to one ever again. I prefer not to grieve in public. It is not that I am embarrassed by my or anyone else's tears - I would just prefer to think about the person in the quietness of a forest or beside a body of water. Sitting in some cold, man-made structure whether it be a funeral home or a church always feels artificial to me. It is not the place I want my last memories of the individuals to be. In spite of all of those feelings, last week I went to a funeral.

It was the funeral for a man I had only met a couple of times and who I hadn't talked to for a few years. We had first met at a Gathering. He, like so many of us, had come to his first Gathering by accident or at least because of a strange set of coincidences. We spent hours and hours debating philosophy, the state of the world and why it was so hard for members of his community to become re-engaged in the culture of the grandparents. We also  argued about diet. I as someone who has consciously not eaten meat or fish for some years argued that if I were invited to a meal at his house, I would not eat the salmon, and that if he insisted then he would not be respecting my philosophy/religion. He, of course argued with equal passion that if he offered me some salmon as part of a ceremony, I would be disrespectful to him and his culture if I refused it. There was, of course, no simple resolution to the conversation. I don't think that we expected there to be.

They were great discussions and I treasured the memories of them for years. I suspect that if I had continued to live in BC we would have seen a lot of each other. But I needed to leave to head back to Ontario. As we were saying goodbye he went to his red truck and from behind the seat he pulled out a necklace that he had made and gave it to me. I travel with it - seldom wearing it as it is a bit bright for me. I wore the necklace to the funeral.

  I had for years carried in my pack a wide red and gold sash that I had woven. I was never sure why I carried it around....I never wore it. But when he gave me that necklace I knew why I had carried around, why I had brought it to this Gathering. I gave it to my new friend.

The following year I came out in May, rented a truck and drove up to his house 60 miles from Duncan. We spent the day together talking about the Rainbow Family and about the kids in his small community. I think we agreed that we had much to teach other. For the rest of that summer and the next, tentative plans to see each other were made but we never again talked.

The funeral was full of stories from friends and family about the silly things that he had said and done. People also talked about the gifts that he had shared, the songs that he written and his vision of a community made whole. He was a much loved man. I am glad I went to hear those stories.

Today my son and his family took me to a forest near Port Renfew. While much of the forest had been logged decades ago, there were still some cedars left standing that were so old that ancient does not begin to describe their age.

I said good bye to my friend today amongst those grandfathers. I said good bye to him in a grove similar to where we first met. It felt right.

On the Road Again 2013 #5

I am not sure if hitchhiking is a profession, an occupation or a vocation. When I ask other folks who hitch, they do not seem to have thought about it. Yet for me hitching is more than a cheap way of getting from one point to another; it is not just a way of traveling that I use because I cannot afford a car or because I don't have the money to fly or because I can't stand traveling on a bus for any distance. All things being equal it is my preferred way of travelling. It may not be a profession but there are times that I think it could be a vocation.

This year has been unusual because I have done so little hitchhiking. As noted earlier, it only took one ride for me to get from Jasper to Horseshoe Bay.  I was therefore looking forward to going to Salt Spring Island in part because traditionally the hitchin' is easy. Everybody does it, or at least that is the popular perception.

However the fact is that hitchhiking has, in the past 10 years, been harder and harder to manage on the island. This may be in part because there are a lot more cars on the road and things are busier. But I think it is because those cars are being driven by people who while wanting to be on SSI because of its traditions of acceptance of various life styles and the sense of being a neighbourhood are not willing to participate in those activities (such as picking up up hitchhikers) to maintain those traditions.

Getting a ride off of almost any ferry has always been a challenge for me. While many hitchers are quite comfortable asking for a ride on a ferry, I am not. All ferries let their passengers off first but generally I can not get to a good (safe) spot until most, if not all of the cars have left the ferry. In a location such as Vesuvius which is almost at the tip of the island, once the ferry traffic has left the area there frequently is little traffic.

This occasion was no different. By the time I had climbed the rather steep but thankfully short hill up from the harbour to a safe spot all of the cars had left the area. I think I had to wait 15 or so minutes before a car did stop and I was offered a drive. It is only a short drive from the harbour to the Country Market Plaza where I need to get off. Perhaps what was most interesting about my driver was the fact that his wife was visiting her family who had a cottage on Stoney Lake  which is the nearest lake to Peterborough. I am always surprised at how many people know where Peterborough is. Later that week the owner of the restaurant that I ate in had got his first job after immigrating to Canada at Trent University in Peterborough.

On my way back to the ferry a week later it took three rides and over an hour to complete what should be a 15-20 minute journey. However the last of those rides was a great one as they took me all of the way into Duncan.

The driver was a former Australian. We had a lot in common with each other including the fact that he had been on the dissertation committee of one of my professors at Trent University. Because we had so much time together we had lots of time to talk about the difference in politics between his former country and Canada, gay politics, aboriginal treatment, economics, compulsory voting (it does not work very well),  how difficult the job market is for people like him ( he was, I think, quite envious of my position) and the price of gas.

So while hitching is harder on SSI than it use to be, it still works (although I did miss a ferry because it took so long to get a ride) and perhaps most importantly the conversations are still interesting and fun.