PART ONE

1.

I’m down on my knees with a small jack in hand, trying to find the correct position on the frame of my car to raise it up and change its front right tire. Bingo. Start cranking 1300 kilos into the air. The car is one of those boxy Japanese hatchbacks my brother Taylor says looks like a football helmet—he’s flanking me to my right, telling me to crank the jack higher…higher still, yep keep goin’. My stepdad is next to him and he’s commenting on the shape of the car and it sounds like I made an excellent cash purchase. I’m about to drive 4000 kilometers, from Calgary to Cabo San Lucas, and I’ve never changed a tire.

Once I reach the tip of the Baja Peninsula, I’m scheduled for a week-long retreat to take a strong African psychedelic called Iboga. I want the plant medicine to cure me of chronic anxiety and love addiction, those two things being tied together, the latter a magnet for the former. Being addicted to love is a controversial avowal—many professionals say it’s not a real addiction. Alright, so, maybe I’ve been dependent on relational pain. On frictions. Or is it fictions?

I’m in my ‘NO’ era, a time for all dissatisfying elements to be scrubbed, removed, and banished, especially men and romantic relationships, in hopes of making room for the things I actually want, though I don’t really know what those are yet. Here on the cool garage floor, I’m breathing in the comforting cocktail of oil, dirty rags, and mildew on this unusually warm day. A drip-drip-drip can be heard outside the open door, drum beating a midwestern spring song in mid-January. We’ve been blessed with unseasonably warm temperatures the last few weeks permitting long strolls through the dense parks here flush with scents of my childhood—the ripeness of Siberian larch and Colorado spruce in the air, spindly Balsam and Northwest poplars and green Ash stripped bare, and on the western vista, always the apparitions of Rocky Mountain peaks spliced across the prairie calling me like a dare.

Having two men scrutinizing my labour seems counter to the spirit of this new man-free era, but family support is one of the reasons I blew up my life in Montreal and moved back West where I was born and raised. Now they’re showing me how to take off the loosened lug nuts, shit they’re still tight, but I need to do it myself so I stand up and heave my body weight onto the wrench, bouncing a little, slowly loosening it. What if I get a flat on a backroad where lonely men with guns live? I need to be able to throw my sheer will behind these things as I make my way through the Americas.

I manage to remove all the lug nuts and lift off the flat winter tire deliberately deflated for the authenticity of the experience and hand it to Taylor so he can refill it. I pull the spare out of the guts of the trunk and carry it over, lifting it onto the steel bar and digging into the pocket of my sweatpants for the nuts. I tighten them as tightly as my body weight will allow, he checks them, approves, and the three of us stand back to admire my first-ever flat tire change at age 43. Not too shabby. Next will be replacing the windshield wipers then a quick review of all the fluids. We’re in oil country here and motor oil is one of my stepdad’s favourite subjects, so I make a note in my phone of his emphatic insistence on getting brand name 5W-20 like Mobil or Shell even though he’s stashed an extra bottle in the trunk so I can add it along the way. We fill the wiper fluid and put a new jug of it in the back next to the other emergency car kit stuff.

My mom opens the door leading into the house and asks how we’re doing. She’s been inside organizing my things in different boxes and suitcases laid out in my brother’s entryway. I’ve brought way too much stuff proving that I really am my mother’s daughter. She is the family champion of Stuff, relentlessly buying, hauling, and piling it wherever she goes. My brother says he’ll switch the tire back and I thank him, concluding the car portion of the day, feeling lucky for receiving familial care, a sensation I’m catching up on after a few decades away.

Abandoning the beauty and complexity of a French-speaking city like Montreal wasn’t easy, a place always at war with the encroaching English, stirring up the kind of tension I once craved in my chosen homes. Here in farm country the war is with unpredictable weather (as the saying goes, “if you don’t like the weather wait five minutes”) and a wider world that moves a bit too fast. Being raised in rural Alberta in the ‘80s and ‘90s was what you might expect of a small town: at any grocery store on any given day, you could run into your kindergarten teacher in the cereal aisle or overhear a mean joke about a woman’s weight told loudly and casually in the produce section. Like, c’mon can’t you take a joke? Our wealthy were doctors, dentists, and “rig pigs”, a local term for the men who leave town to do very hard labour on oil rigs then come back to ball out at the bar. My youngest brother Graham worked on the rigs for a few years and lost half his left ring finger. For me, it was the kind of small town you either never leave or dream to escape. The truest measure of small town achievement was first and foremost your vehicle.

A large percentage of the world’s oil comes from this land, and as much as it is voraciously consumed, it’s become a dirty word its workers and direct beneficiaries feel is aimed squarely at them. Even I worked in the industry growing up, funding my arts degree each summer by shoveling cooled sulphur slated from its molten form sucked from sour gas onto steel belts that dumped it onto trains and shipped it to China. Oil, like men, is in the middle of everything. But I’ve decided I can handle the big trucks and angry bumper stickers about Justin Trudeau because being here, home, my birthplace, now means I’ll have somewhere to go on the weekends like former east coast colleagues who were off to their mom’s or sister’s or grandparent’s place on the weekend while I secretly longed for the unremarkable privilege of living where you’re from.

Mom has neatly folded my clothes into two suitcases. The smaller one is my overnight for all the motel stops along the road packed with a spectrum of weather-dependent pieces—grey cashmere sweater, a few T-shirts and tank tops, jeans and jean shorts, cotton tights, one sports bra and one lace bra, lots of underwear, a pajama set, five pairs of socks I’ll reuse if I have to, a hoodie, one summer dress, and a bathing suit in case I want to jump in the ocean. In a laundry basket she’s arranged all the shoes including a wool-lined pair of Uggs along with runners, a couple of cute mule heels (I mean, you never know!), more sandals, and a pair of impractical flats that aren’t waterproof. The larger suitcase houses the long-term clothes I’ll unpack once I get to Mexico plus a few backup shoes.

Looking at my stuff laid out like this it’s way too much, but it’s my everything right now. Some furniture, books, kitchen stuff, and art are stored in a locker nearby but I have no idea when I’ll be housed again. After the retreat, I plan to stay in Mexico for the winter and depending on how things go, maybe longer. My mom seems to be in denial about this because she keeps saying “we’ll see you in a month or so then” and I keep replying “I don’t know yet it might be longer…” which doesn’t register. This time I’m supposed to be back home for good but then it’s very on brand for me to take off as soon as I arrive. You could say it’s a pattern.

I’ve got a small cooler full of LaCroix in lime and lemon flavours, a fold-up chair in case I need to sit on a roadside stop, a pile of towels including one reserved for Stevie, my dog, and a huge bag of his expensive kibble, a picnic bag with basic cutlery and a coffee cup, two big makeup bags with my toiletries, hairbrush, etc., and a large IKEA container with all my art supplies because I plan to paint down there. My mom and I start hauling it out to the car, playing a fun kind of Tetris game to pack it perfectly, like the cooler on the floor behind the driver’s seat so I can grab a drink, and Stevie’s travel bag with his food dish and smaller pack of kibble and treats behind the passenger seat where he’ll be sitting. We arrange it all, leaving out my overnight case, and head inside for dinner.

In the house, the dogs are running around growling, fighting over a pig’s ear. My twelve-year old niece Violette is telling my stepdad about different horse breeds and their jumping advantages. Georgie, her older sister, hair askew from napping and chatting with her friends in her bedroom, is asking when we’re going to eat and my sister-in-law, frying something, deadpans, “When it’s ready.” The cat jumps up onto the sofa and hisses at Stevie who’s whining at her, his front paws up, wanting to play. I’m happy to be with them all again, in the fray, in the centre. Violette stops her conversation with my stepdad and yells my pet name.

“Auntie Carmie!”

“Violette!”

“Why are you driving to Mexico? You just got here!” She puts her sweet face up in mine.

“I know. You’re right. But I’ll be back,” I say, cupping her face in my hands.

“What are you going to do there anyway? You don’t even have a job.”

“That’s true,” I say, “but I have savings and look, I’m going to drive all the way there all by myself which will be pretty crazy and will make me stronger and braver,” I say.

“Maybe,” she says, grinning.

“And once I get there, I’ll make new friends and we’ll take a special medicine from Africa that will hopefully make me less anxious and less likely to date the wrong men.”

“Sounds boring.”

The room breaks out in laughter.

“Maybe! Maybe totally life-changing.” I hug and kiss her.

Tomorrow morning, the journey begins.

2.

I wake at five when it’s pitch black, throw on jeans, T-shirt, the cashmere sweater, and warm socks, and creep downstairs with Stevie and the overnight suitcase to make a coffee in a to-go cup my sister-in-law left out. Winter boots on, driving through the empty suburban streets, I stop at a dog park we’ve been frequenting to let him relieve himself before the long drive. It’s a large hill Stevie loves to race up then wait for me at the top, smiling. We get there and I’m seized by a crushing new sensation; my chest feels like someone’s fist is inside it, putting pressure on my lungs and lifting up my stomach in an unpleasant buzzy way.

I have never felt scared of wild animals before but now that it’s pitch black on the hill, Stevie running ahead of me, all I can conjure are glowing eyes attached to predators ready to snack on all fifteen pounds of him. I start calling his name, telling him to wait. I’m feeling wild myself, like prey, untethered and perhaps unhinged, gripped by a nearness to my own mortality. Girding myself in icy footprints, I keep glancing behind me and slipping on the path because melted snow froze overnight. I call for Stevie to come now, looking back at my car in the orange streetlight, my gaze darting around the empty streets searching for lurking thieves. All of my most valuable things are in that car! IDs, passport, American cash, insurance papers for three different countries, an overpriced pillow a guy at Sleep Country convinced me to buy, a brand-new car stereo and speakers. Christ almighty this was a terrible decision—not just this stupid park with its unlit slope and icy pathways, but the whole road trip.

I’m totally exposed, my hands are cold and Stevie isn’t coming back fast enough. I screech his name using the deranged voice I only utter in emergencies, and he comes darting back, both of us now running at full speed toward the car. I get in, reach for my phone and open the road trip playlist I’d made, hoping Tom Petty’s familiar nasally voice will calm my nerves. I press play and “Time to Move On” starts as we speed down empty city streets toward Highway 2, pushing into the south wind like it’s all my fears blowing back at me.

Up here in January, the sun doesn’t rise until at least 8:30 so we’ve got hours of dark highway to endure. I hate driving at night and decide that this will be the last time I do so on this trip. I sing along to the playlist to keep my mind steady. I’ve been off the anti-anxiety medication Lexapro for a few months now and my mind requires focused background activity to keep it level or it starts to catastrophize. Stevie is curled up in his cushy front-seat bed, too short to watch the road, groaning every few minutes as he tries to find a comfortable sleeping position after a bump or brake revives him.

We turn onto the long stretch of Highway 22 south of Calgary driving through towns called Longview and Lundbreck, past places like Upper Bob Creek. This is one of the most beautiful stretches of open land in the world. It rolls and waves, downy with prairie grasses that look like floating reeds up close and warm carpets in the distance. The Rockies keep watch on the western horizon. The sun, so far away, cracks an orange grin above the cowboy hills promising a softer way forward. My fear has subsided; I’m not anxious in this stretch, not at all. Ahead will surely be obstacles and dread and tears, but for a few hours under the sun’s half-moon smile, Stevie and I are okay.

3.

As the sun slowly rises over the prairie it occurs to me that I’m befriending death. Modern cars are equipped with features that give us the illusion of safety, but facing down other metal machines at high speeds, plus unpredictable road conditions, wild animals, and wind gusts—what real chance does one have if death comes knocking? The roads between Lundbreck and my first stop, Blairemore, in a strip of towns called the Crowsnest Pass, are damp but not icy. The weather is just warm enough to melt the bit of precipitation glazing the highway. My anxiety levels are back up to medium.

I’m stopping here to visit Regita, a woman I met in Japan back in the mid-2000s. We lived in the same cluster of communities near the Alps and had partied together, then occasionally liked one another’s Facebook posts in the years following. I was driving through her town so I thought I’d stop by and give Stevie and me our first highway reprieve, plus I was curious about how she was doing. We’d messaged a few times in recent months and she told me she got divorced again.

In coming to know one’s own age, re-encountering someone you knew in your 20s then seeing them again as a middle-aged person is both jarring and profound. She answers the door and apologizes for limping but she’s recovering from a brutal hip surgery. At the kitchen table over black coffee, she tells me about sifting through the ashes of an even more brutal divorce. Both of us are single again in this mid phase of life, disfigured by the realities of womanhood (and dare I say, the dismal state of manhood), but are, as in our early adulthood, as ever, picking up the pieces, looking forward, and building anew. Facing her at this table, seeing how small and cramped her home is, how beaten she looks, I feel judgmental, or maybe threatened. I used to feel this way when we were younger, too. Not about her surroundings, or her accomplishments which were many. “My roommate made me hang those up,” she says, pointing to a thick string of medals hung like a droopy smile across the wall of her tiny bedroom, prizes for countless bike races she’s won.

Regita was always the kind of ‘mirror’ I struggled with. A strong, capable, top-of-her-game woman, always the shimmering heart of every party, getting up to dance and not stopping till the final song, whose life orbited the attention and validation of men. There was always an obsession with a new guy with all his promise, and the subsequent fallout after he turned out to be just another broken dude. Despite her many accomplishments, our conversations never, ever passed the Bechdel test. Back in my mid-twenties, I saw us as women with man-sized holes in the middle of our beings, and since I hadn’t seen her in a few decades, I’d hoped middle age would have cured her.

“I lost my house in the divorce,” she says, “and a group of friends who I’m barred from contacting.” She stares at her coffee cup, twirling it in her hands: “He fucking broke me.” I find it all pretty agitating and start playing armchair therapist saying things like, maybe starting over again is what you needed, and maybe this surgery is your time to finally slow down and listen to your body. She’s always seemed impervious to “love yourself” conversations where obsessions with men were concerned. Hearing myself say these limp phrases is annoying, like I’m morphing back into the young woman I was, someone who repeated trite phrases like prayers against her own maw. I feel so much more spiritually intact and free of men in this moment. I should get moving and Stevie is growling at her young puppy signaling that it is indeed our time.

As I’m halfway out the door, she starts a story about a young guy she recently dated who ghosted her and I interrupt to share that the most amazing thing has happened to me in the last few months. “I’ve been emptied of desire for men or romantic love,” I say. She’s envious and asks how. “Exhaustion from my last relationship and TikTok. There’s a whole movement of women ‘decentering men’ and romantic love and recentering themselves…their videos really helped me move forward after my breakup.” She promises to watch a few of my favourite creators and we hug goodbye. I feel like a traveling preacher spreading the good word.

Carrying on from Crowsnest Pass, we push further into the Rockies when a patch of snowy fog descends and everything goes misty and white. With only the base of the majestic mountains peeking out, the sun suddenly intervenes and a rainbow appears. On a journey like this, with death on one’s shoulder, everything is a sign and a rainbow is a very good one.