We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time ~ Eliot

I feel like a vagrant and I’m starting to look like one too. I always prided myself on being an attractive traveler, but it appears I’ll have to start letting go of this too. My mane of hair is growing wild and this strange Albertan climate is making it crazy. These cold, hard mountains that frighten me so much, their winds pull at me and my hair is electric listening to their call.



My last day in the prairies a flock of sea birds were circling my car where I sat listening to music, missing the mountains and writing:

The yogis are still crying. It’s something they do well aside from stretching. I’m not sure I’m a yogi anymore, though I still want to be upside down, especially on grass where I can watch insects doing their creepy little thing. It’s trippy, man. There’s so much life out there, little forms of life and instead we’re crushing on men who aren’t good for us and wishing we were better people. There are higher beings chilling in the grass. I don’t know. Stop stressing and keep a move on.

And I’m ready to keep moving. I want to drive these lonely roads through the desolate towns and back into the hills. I’m going to my family, but not before stepping into trees and water and listening to music from morning until night. Not before I weep for my lost loves and the people I’ve grown to love and the hardness in me still that desires nothing from those who have so much to offer.

How astonishing that we are all so alone and yet so desirous to be one with all. For a long time I’ve carried the bodies of dead dreams and lost loves and failures and yet I cross paths with people still willing to love me. And there are people here who do not want to know my name or my face or give me a second thought. How incredibly heartbreaking that nothing lasts.

My last day in the prairies I imagined those sea birds flying above my car must feel very lost too. I thought all animals away from the mountains must feel very lonely and out of place and I daydreamed of finding the cougar that had killed a sheep that day and bringing it to some high crag in the Rockies. A rightful throne. I smiled to myself, imagining how it would rip up my leather seats and make it hard to chill for the long drive...

It isn’t silly to be inspired by the animals. They've always struck me as magical beings, visions of our higher selves and if we stop talking to them, the natives warn, they will stop talking to us.

Listen here -- In the Dirt by Sean Carey

oh man oh man oh man, let's talk cellar doors and beautiful beards and let's talk big sky forever and ever amen

Jesus, this is a strange time in my life. I’m at this yoga teacher training and it’s insane. I don’t even know what’s insane about it, but it’s pretty out there. Here we are, adults, trying to get all bendy and spiritual. Man, the people here are just nuts. They’re lovely and and they’re dear and they’re trying ever so hard to find something delicious and benevolent and elevating. And that’s all good. But they’re fucking crazy. We’re all crazy. Every single one of us. And not just the ones who signed up for this crazy shit. The ones who run the show, the ones that cook for us, the ones that work at the Safeway, the ones I’ll meet down the road. Man, we’re all fucking nuts. We’re all off our rockers. And none of anything we say makes any sense at all and I just don’t know if I can handle uttering another word for as long as I live. Maybe what I ought to do is live in the woods. With a canoe or something and some solar energy of some sort. Probably the solar sort.

I just don’t know what’s what anymore and that’s a fact. No big answers over here. Don’t even ask me, not a goddamn thing because I just don’t know and I don’t want to pretend that it’s the case that I do because I absolutely do not and I refuse to and that’s all you’ll be getting out of me forevermore.

We keep waking up fucking early in the morning and walking in silence for oh, about an hour. We pass sheep and stuff and found a hill to walk up and down. We meditated in the grass for a while and my teacher, he looked so grounded to the earth and I got all jealous on him for it. Well, all I could think was that my bum felt wet with the grass and I was wondering what that noise in the bushes was or what it could possibly be. It was a cougar. I kid you not. A fucking cougar, man. There we were, all sitting around all docile like and trying to be one with our higher selves and each other I suppose and the grass and mother earth and there was some big cat looking at us, probably hungry, maybe just curious. I wonder who saw the cat. I would have liked to have seen that cat.

I thought I’d come back all yogic from this, but I don’t think that will be the case. I think what will probably be more likely is that I’ll drive back home a thousand kilometers with a very sore neck. Sore everything is what’s more likely than the sore neck. God, my body feels full of pain. And I’m just dying for a lay. That’s not very yogic, is it? I was feeling more yogic and hopeful and spacey before I got to this crazy yogi gathering. Maybe I am not a yogi. Maybe I am a big faker. Sore neck because I keep trying all day to get into this one pose for a few breaths, it’s the one where you plant your forearms firmly to the earth and you look straight ahead and your neck is screaming for you to just fuck off and what the hell it’s saying, and then you kick your leg into the air and the other follows if all is going well and then you’re just up there sort of rocking out for a bit like yo, this is a different thing to do than the every day. Well, that’s the pose and that’s what I try to get into every chance I get. I don’t know, once you can get this shit into your flow, you sort of do go off and you sort of spiral into this bendy, emotional, spacey plain and when you come back down that experience sort of kicks you on your ass and tells you to smarten up. That’s why I do it. That’s why I came to this crazy place with the sheep and the cougars stalking us in the grass as we sit in a circle trying to be children.

I can’t believe I paid for this shit. It’s not that it’s not great. I don’t really know what it is. Maybe it’s great. Maybe it’s my quarter life crisis. After our morning walk around the hilly part and the animals out there, and our breakfast in silence still, I laid down on this couch where I am now in this strange old room. This whole building is just absolutely bizarre. Feral cats that piss all over and create a mess in a stairway next to the room we get all vertical and weepy and crazy in for the whole goddamn day. Man, I must be exhausted to be writing like this. It’s all the inversions. The inversions! The crazy backbending. This girl was sobbing next to me on her mat today. Why are we doing this?! Why did I travel so far to be doing this with these absolutely perfect strangers? Anyways, I laid on this couch and I listened to this song Val Jester. And I took off again. Dreams and gooseflesh swooping over my skin and I was just the fuck out of here, out of this bizarre room with cacti and big gold framed corny prints and empty bookcases and several uncomfortable chairs and odd coffee tables and two tiny televisions side by side.

What’s more, I’m pretty sure my teacher thinks he’s a lion. And I got so caught up in this whole yoga salvation thing, I started thinking I’d like to be a lion too. Well, I still sort of think I’m a lion and I think my teacher thinks I’m one too and he sure behaves like one. I’ll be talking to him and he’ll just stare at me intently and not really respond to anything I’m saying and I think this is part of being a lion. He makes his eyes really big and stares. And once I saw him yawn and his neck went round in a circle and it appeared to be more of a breathy roar and less like a man’s yawn. Next thing you know I’ll be stalking mice on all fours with the feral cats that piss everywhere. The management of this crazy building lets the cats in for fear that the cougar outside will find them and eat them. To that I say, Circle of Life. I know all about the circle of life. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve heard it in the wind. Does that sound yogic? Can you hear the circle of life in the wind or do you have to get eaten by something that is hierarchically superior to you to really grasp the concept ‘circle of life’ instead of just sounding like an arrogant fuckin know-it-all asshole all the time? Not that I want to get eaten by anything. I guess I’m saying I don’t get this whole circle of life idea, I’m going a little nuts over here in this mountainless wilderness and I’m really not terribly impressed that wild cats are just pissing everywhere and no-one’s too concerned we’re sweating down our asses and junk onto the carpet that’s already rank with the worst smell ever which would be cat piss.

So, it’s going really well.

Listen here: Val Jester by the National

The Lion leads to the child by expanding the horizon ~ Coleman Barks

The view of Oosoyos just before entering the Kootenays

I wasn't in Nelson ten minutes before this beautiful blonde bra-less hippie was hugging me tightly and treating me like her best friend. Though I loved the town and all the people I met there, I felt the whole time the way you might feel just before jumping into a really cold body of water. You want to do it, but you're not quite sure you want to do it. It was about five o'clock in the evening and I was all ready for the beach when I decided to just leave town. I said to my new friends a very quick goodbye and departed before I had to answer any questions because I had no answers. I just had to go.

It would have been a swifter route to make my way South to Salmo, but I mistakenly took signs towards Kaslo in a lateral direction of some sort. Maybe east. Trying to feel better about my sub-par set of navigating skills, I told myself the two towns are different only by one letter. Unbeknown to me that I was traveling in an unexpected direction, I was already in a state of tears. It wasn't that I was unhappy. Torn between wanting to know everyone and reverting to a desire for solace, missing my deepest loves all at once, feeling worn from writing exams and moving out of my home in one week -- the heaviness of it all I felt in my chest and my throat and my shoulders. Not five minutes after the tears had dried from my cheeks, I realized I was headed in the wrong direction, corrected my travel plans by taking a ferry across Kootenay Lake, and then... I met Collin.

He asked so politely if he could ride with me to Cranbrook and I had been feeling all crazy and something about him made me feel calmer and maybe I did it in part because my mother would keel over if she knew I was picking up a hitch-hiker. Be careful the men you cross paths with, she warned me before I left on this trip, You never know who's just gotten out of prison. I asked him half-joking as he jumped into my passenger seat if he was going to kill me. I felt half ashamed when I looked in his eyes. He is the gentlest soul I have met in a long, long time. The next four hours we spent so sincerely and happily, sharing carrots, lemons, cherries and wasabi peas. He left his business, an organic grocery store in Victoria BC, and his partner for the summer to travel over the water by kayak and to live simply. He said it's made him really happy and his partner is thrilled for him. I love that.

Collin

Kootenay Lake in the Valley of Lost Souls

We lost an hour just as we arrived in Cranbrook, where I dropped Collin off to be reunited with his lovely family. After visiting with the mom and dad and that wild encounter with Collin, I was super wired for the night. It was after 9 o'clock, but I thought I'd drive at least until midnight. I slipped through the Rockies by cover of night, which I lamented on one hand because they're so magnificent, but accepted readily enough because they're full of memories from other days. It was when a car further ahead slowed suddenly that two semi's went off the side of the road to avoid colliding with each other and I had to slam on my brakes and my heart and knees got all electric on me. Definitely more confident when I can see what's going on in front of me, I decided to call off the drive to Lethbridge and settle for Fernie around 11 o'clock.

Waking up in the Rockies took me by surprise, but it wasn't long before I was out of there into the Canadian Badlands. Upon first seeing the prairies, I got really hyper with a trill of excitement up my spine, which is exactly what I predicted would happen. But as I headed east along southern Alberta I found myself slightly put off with how rather hilly yet oddly flat these lands are, but alas, patience, for as soon as I began heading north it all got very flat and the sky opened up.





I drove past The Landing and turned my car around to snap some shots. The hills of this valley are ringing with energy. A place that makes the hairs on your skin stand up, everything's magic and watchful. The Landing, I was told, is a place the Natives revered and kept sacred for healing circles.

The Landing

Taking my last highway, the #7 to Saskatoon, I took the wrong turn and ended up by a little hill on top of which were railway tracks and beyond, the great expanse. I set forth in my flip flops, but got scared when I heard a snake or a rabbit or a weasel in the weeds, so I ran back to my car. I unrolled the driver's seat window and perched there on my toes over the rooftop to take a picture of what was beyond the hill.


It had been a long day of driving and I was 40 minutes from Saskatoon when I started thinking about that part of the past. It was some lovely memory of ours that triggered it all, something I want to keep secret for myself. Out there in the middle of all those fields and space, this deep forgotten mourning came over me and I just wept and wept and wept. A rich sense of loss and sorrow and intensity to it all, and I came to know just as deeply that I have to let go of this too. People say they can't let go, but they can. You just have to get hell-bent in that direction. After all this time I could still say, I never stopped being in love with you. But sometimes the people you love are just gone and that time of your life is done and all you can do is be grateful to have known that kind of living and hope that wherever they are in this life, they are whole and so happy and loved and at peace. But I can't keep this up and I'm getting pretty done with it, this half offering my love to the world and pretending like I'm offering all of it while hoping to just be loved again by that one person.

And now I'm here in Saskatoon. And I'm 24 today. And I think my life is going to be amazing. And I feel in this chapter of my life that I'm constantly riding a crest of change. And that I'm afraid, but that it's good because it's thrilling this business of facing your fears and maybe even owning up to your shit.

My driving song love song: July Flame by Laura Viers
It's incredible and it's my new favourite song.

First Day On the Road

Looking in the rearview mirror I congratulate myself on a trunk well organized for the next three weeks on the road. With so much space, I could for sure find a place to sleep back there. It is after this last pat on the back I realize I have forgotten my luggage. I turn my car around despite the hour’s return home as it’s decidedly not a good idea to show up for a two week yoga intensive in one tropical skirt and one black tank top with no money.

The plan to stay my first night in Nelson is quickly dissolved a few hours later by a phone call from Grandma coupled with taking the wrong highway through the mountains.
“Well, you absolutely must at least stop by,” Grandma says to me as I’m wondering how to do a U-turn on BC's fastest six-lane highway.
“Gram I have to go, but count me in. I’ll be by this afternoon,” though I know ‘stopping by’ won't mean a quick visit.

The dogs Max & Daisy at my grandparent's home

On the Coquihalla which I zoom down all the way to West Bank, I think to unroll my window to stick up my thumb and yell YOU’RE AWESOME!! at the sweet biker next to me. He has some sort of terrier sitting behind him on the passenger seat. This might be perilous for the little dog as he doesn't appear to be attached to the Harley in any way, but he seems quite content and I fall in love with the contrast of the burly biker man and the little dog in for the ride. I don’t yell out any joyful affirmations as I have a rather quiet voice and yelling never seems to achieve the effect I desire, but as I pass them I do stick up my thumb and make my eyes all happy for the two companions.

Arriving in Penticton and waiting for Grandma to meet me at our favorite coffee shop in Penticton, one of two young men driving a van down Main St. hollers NICE ASS!! Stopped at a red light I walk up to the driver's open window of the van and thank them quite seriously. They are embarrassed and I think it’s safe to say, feeling a little less expressive. Before I leave their side, I give a little smile to let them know they haven't fucked up forever and it feels like they are grateful for that and relieved and in that instant there is an air of camaraderie and respect. The light turns green and we part ways. I feel all the pedestrians checking out my ass and really, it's not my best feature. They could have yelled out NICE HAIR!! or NICE DEFINITIVE CALVES GIRL!! but seriously. The madness of this world.

Aunt, Uncle, the Kids, the Dogs, the Cat, the Grandparents -- it turns out to be a full house and we have a big dinner in the backyard hot air of the Okanagan. We sit outside until midnight drinking wine, telling stories and chatting happily. The next morning -- “Gram, what’s your favourite fruit? I ask my grandmother. I'm changing the subject. We have a large display of fruit and pastries for breakfast and I need a diversion in conversation. It’s stressing me out that everyone has been emphatic that I should travel Rogers Pass to reach the prairies. There is something in me that absolutely does not want to go that way right now. I remember stopping my car along the winding highway the first time I saw the Rockies. They are so different from the mountains I am used to, jutting, bare and foreboding compared to the lush green and soft appearance the trees provide to the mountains in BC. More than that, they carry a sense of energy that is so much more expansive, electric and intimidating than what I’m capable of absorbing at this point in my life.
Well, she says most contemplatively. They used to be apricots. But not anymore. I picked them off our tree just recently and before I could can them, they were spreading their misery.
You mean they were rotting? I ask.
They were going bad, she says.

Pretty intimidating stuff, a shot I took in May on my way to Canmore.

My aunt, uncle and the kids have now departed our home here on the Skaha bluffs, headed back to their own home in Rocky Mountain House after a great summer vacation in BC. Cole, who is going into Grade 10 tells me I'll be able to see Quebec from the flatlands of Saskatchewan. This sounds like a great deal to me. I love Montreal.
Oh Kendra, my uncle says exasperated with my gullibility, you’re just ridiculous.
They’ve invited me to come visit them on my return trip from Saskatchewan and I can tell they are not thrilled with me as I keep ‘bailing’ on them for the ‘boy in Canmore’ each time I venture over to Alberta. The first time it was snowing on the highways in May, I keep saying and the last time he was incredibly sick and everything was just about as unproductive as you could imagine, I keep insisting.
So what's happening with that boy in Canmore? my uncle asks.
Nothing, I say. We send pleasant, cheerful messages every now and then.
My uncle shakes his head and says, You lead such a complicated life.
I feel like shaking my head too.

My Uncle taking a nap with the dogs and the cat

Well, maybe I did sort of bail on my aunt and uncle those two times, but I sort of do that. The timing has to feel right and you can never achieve that with definitive plans. That's when everything goes awry. And that’s never good for anyone.

Anyways, back on the road for me. Here is the newest quote I love from Japhy out of Dharma Bums by Kerouac.

'All these people,' said Japhy, 'they all got white-tiled toilets and take big dirty craps like bears in the mountains, but it's all washed away to convenient supervised sewers and nobody thinks of crap any more or realizes their origin is shit and civet and scum of the sea. They spend all day washing their hands with creamy soaps they secretly wanta eat in the bathroom.'

A Good Traveling Song: I and Love and You by The Avett Brothers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05cJgEcIkvA