line.
Rennie and I trucked and flew that hi – way for 100 miles and more and then he dropped me off with best wishes, a six-pack of beer and an amazing bag of robust and rowdy marijuana. A kindred spirit and a rare person. I called and bawled many blessings and benedictions at the man and his rapidly departing cloud of dust and then sat back on the side of the road and watched the world go spinning past my eyes.
At that twisted moment in time, I naturally felt like a saint, kiss – tilted and stone – rocked on believing and I was positively crazy and abnormal. I even took to ignoring the occasional vehicle that chanced and rattled on by and to those drivers who did bounce past, I was a mystery. I mean … what was this animal, down in the dirt, drinking beer from an un-sterilized can and laughing at a clear and empty sky? A lost link that had accidentally strayed from out of the bush and encountered a vestige of civilization? A savage? Folks, it was all I could do to find my mouth with a smoking joint or a foaming can of beer.
About the only thing I remember of my last ride north to Y.K., was stepping out of a battered old car and dumping the sand out of my pockets. I had arrived in Y.K. I was dizzy and dazed from the booze and the dope and bent badly from the road. It had been a long haul and drag. Journeys end.
Even though I was garbled and off – centered, I wasn’t overly bothered or concerned, as being nuts in the North Country was a man’s private affair. Not for the first time had I been worn and wasted in a friendless and foreign land. No worries.
No money either and not much for it other than to do my hocus – pocus routine and convince someone innocent of the wisdom of buying me a beer.
This I did, by targeting the Gold Range Hotel, a nom de plume I thought entirely auspicious and there, to my great delight, I came upon an even dozen miners, drinking their wages. I may have been a homespun union representative on that particular occasion. No matter. In return for my having to listen to their gripes and groans, they were, in their own casual and friendly way, willing to buy me drinks all day long. I do have an affinity for caging a brew.
I needed a place to sleep. It became my lot to hook up with an American, a sportsman, a man who had materialized in the north country behind the wheel of a complete R.V., stove and fridge, shower and sauna, guns and rods and a wallet stuffed plumb – full of 100 dollar bills.
The man was prepared to do battle with any bear or moose or fish or fell beast that could be taken safely and without getting his Yankee ass thrown in jail and deported. To further bolster his image as a rough and rugged hunter and in the ever-likely event he met a girl of the high – country, he had rented a suite of rooms in Y.K.’s best hotel.
Therefore, I thought it only right and proper to jump in and stake my claim before a pretty northern girl picked and pinched him clean. ‘A wonderful opportunity,’ thought I, ‘I belong at this man’s side.’
It was appropriate I pass myself off as a backwoodsman of the northern lands, a skilled and proficient guide, who reverently guarded and protected and knew of every secret location, where the most dangerous and ferocious and wiliest of wildlife could be found waiting for a keen and sharp challenge, one such as my American friend clearly possessed and offered.
Actually, I did look the part, a week’s growth of whiskers, a face set deep with inquiring and intelligent eyes, patched and faded shirt and jeans, a standard hermit appearance, a man who had left his shack in the outback, after a hiatus of several years and returned to civilization to write the Great Canadian Novel. Ho! Ho!
It was a good cover and the man bought it hook, line and sinker and together we became a competent and capable team and nothing moving in the bush was safe for the next 2 weeks.
The man was pleased and thought me a wizard and gave me leave to sleep on his hotel carpet. No way he wanted to be rid of my accomplished services, not for a spell.
Captured all the prizes and told all the stories, did all the sights and drank all the beer, the only safe and sanitary beverage fit for human consumption in those healthy northern climes, so I told the man and was constantly insistent and on about. I cost the man a small fortune before I was discretely cut loose. Hello America!
Owing to my American friend’s generosity, I led an easy and carefree life of affluence for a week but then had no recourse other than to become a gentleman of the streets of Y.K. and had been reduced to the status of beggar before managing to connect with a band of relaxed and at large inhabitants of Old Town. I had plugged into this group of sundowners with my usual flair and the accommodating nature of the Gold Range Hotel. “Hi there. Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you a story. How do you like me so far?” I needed a place to sleep once more.
Now, while these folks couldn’t quarter and shelter me themselves, they claimed to know people in O.T. who could, a speculation roundly acclaimed and applauded at the 20 beer mark, a point at which everything was serious and made perfect sense and was sane and even if I thought their batty allusions to knowing people alive and well in O.T. as being so much hokum, I was trapped and desperately needed to believe there was a place for me in Y.K.
Which in itself became a curious item. The people of O.T., Y.K., were naturally cautious and my next 2 nights were done in a glass building, a plantation, surrounded as I was by 50 – 60 mature marijuana plants. This was the resting place my northern friends had found for my spent and weary body. It was a safe place to bed down until my further and soon to be told adventures with alternative living and lifestyles.
Immediately upon viewing my lush and luxuriant shelter from the storm, I was seized by the greenhouse effect and temptation came over me, to tug those bushy pot plants up by their scraggly roots and run away but a power stronger than me declared, “Don’t do it! Don’t steal from these folks! They’re helping you!” While being an admitted scoundrel and even though I was encircled with solutions to my problems, there are certain things a man can’t do and robbing a friend is one of them.
I backed off but not before selecting an ounce of choice buds, for personal use and that oz. of sly appropriation may have been a prime and contributing factor in exiling me to a barge, a low - slung craft, adrift and slumbering on the waters of the Great Slave Lake. Which never bothered me much, considering as I had the Northern Lights for dancing and my Mary Jane for dreaming.
After and odder still, I found myself being constantly shunted to stranger and more remote locations. Those northern folk and their keenly – honed senses were aroused and they were carefully suspicious of the hazards and dangers of wandering gypsies like me. I had begun to feel like Carlos.
I am a lazy man. Always was. Always will be. As mentioned at the beginning of ‘the book’, these very words seem shyly like forced labor. To be correct and factual, the tally of my life’s drudge and toil can be measured and recorded and contained within an uncommonly diminutive time – frame.
I have forever had a fixed and rigid aversion against work of any persuasion and labor especially, even the thought of it, I generally consider to be a figment of my imagination or an unreasonable delusion. For me to actually perceive and approve of my being an element of the work force is beyond my powers of definition to accept and explain. The image of me moiling and toiling and getting dirty makes me giddy and faint. I cannot comprehend the idea of me having to work. The concept does not belong and has no significance in my world. Physical labor and the circumstances which would force it upon me, would have to be bizarre indeed.
Many has been the time when I have been in dire straits regarding rent, food, booze and other issues yet I would near die and trust in merciful providence to deliver me, rather than plug away and punch a clock. At certain drastic and catastrophic moments in my life, the work had been there, had been available but I had never been wise and humbled enough
