Everyone driving through the Kootenay Mountains was in a rush. This is something I would discover over and over as I burned by new roadside scenes, this time remarking on piles of small boulders accumulating on the shoulder. Pushed there by snowfall and slush, these rocks will kill you if you’re trying to let people pass. I’m not morbid by nature, but these were the types of thoughts I was forced to have as I navigated the interior of British Columbia. I was heading West because I planned to stop at my aunt and uncle’s house in Castlegar.
Interior of B.C. is an interesting place. Rough, raw, and populated by barely held-together trailers, crooked shacks, and automobiles gutted for parts. Curious tourist attractions cobwebbed by early winter pop up in every little town. It feels like a completely different world than the prairies with its own unique rules of cobbled-togetherness and junkyard aesthetics. Seeing all this brought back early childhood memories of crossing B.C. with my dad, or my Grandma King. She lived on Vancouver Island so it had been an annual pilgrimage to visit her in the summer. I remember stopping at some of these weird attractions, my memories a mix of unsavoury events that forever marked me, and happy moments of gas station treats, loud music, and paternal lawlessness.
I stopped in Creston to walk Stevie and buy my aunt a housewarming gift. I love gift shops wherever they appear. The smell of burning sage, assortment of candles, thoughtful greeting cards, reasonably priced jewelry, stationery, and the random scarves, and clothing items typical of gift shops. I always love the person working at these shops because they’re usually a woman and usually the owner and since the shops are also usually empty, you get chatting. These are my safe places.
I bought my Aunt Andrea a plant that reminded me of her sister, Linda. Auntie Linda was good with plants. She also happened to be good at playing piano, drawing funny cartoons of my brothers and I, knitting, racquetball and squash, watercolour painting, math, swimming, identifying and photographing birds, and making acerbic remarks then laughing at her own wit. She also loved smoking and was good at that, too.
Who knows if she got cancer from smoking, but some of us can be as good Auntie Linda and still love something bad. She was my other mother, the person whose homes and smells were the easy, comfortable fall-grounds of my childhood, and my young adulthood, too. I spent many nights in one of her spare beds always fitted with flannel sheets, either crying about some boy or hungover from going out with high school friends. Linda’s was always a soft place to land where morning coffee would be served and rye bread toasted. So Linda was on my mind as I bought a gift for my Aunt Andrea because she’s on all our minds all the time now that she’s gone and that’s why we need to visit each other more often and remember her.
I got to Castlegar by early afternoon. It was raining a bit, as it wants to do, and my aunt and uncle were happy to see me. Uncle Kelly showed me his beautiful sequoia trees, rare in this region, and planted by the original homeowner half a century earlier. Over dinner, we talked about the drive through the US where perhaps I’d try to see whole sequoia forests, and about Mexico. They were naturally trepidatious given that no one in our family had ever driven to Mexico, so all the information we had at that dinner table was what I’d been told by friends and the Internet, the latter being a doomsday machine ready to churn out only worst case scenarios. I’d been following a few Facebook groups and it seemed like this whole driving down the Baja Peninsula thing was a cinch. But Kelly wasn’t convinced and his worry got into my head. I was also tired from the first leg of the drive, and PMSing—a deadly combo when it comes to confidence about a totally unknown journey.
I went to bed that night in an anxious state and couldn’t sleep. I probably cried but not about anything in particular, just releasing a valve on the anxiety raging in my body. By the morning of my 44th birthday, I’d decided I’d stay another night and go on a hike. One of the most admirable things about Andrea and Kelly is how active they’ve always been, always immersed in nature, even in Edmonton where they lived for many years. So I knew they’d have a really good hike to bring my mind back to stasis and calm.
The mountain trail was dewy and mossy and Stevie was zipping around full of joy. There’s no better barometer for happiness than a dog in the forest. Trees just ground us little earthlings. On the hike we got talking about Linda, each of us venting our grief in different ways. I sensed we all needed it, perhaps me more than them since they have each other to talk about it with. We’ve never really been a big feelings-sharing family. But trust me, I continue to break the chain on that tradition.
The next morning, with my confidence renewed and my period started, I got back on the road. Had I just experienced one of my big tests? And did I pass? That remained to be seen as there was still a week of roads to keep hitting.