Detour
Finding my place on the road
If I have this right, the snows and rains of a northern BC winter are supposed to have us focused on work and the discipline of productivity.
But you know… I’m just not feeling it!
My mind is still behind the wheel of my truck as I drove this past summer down Highway 16 and 97 and Route 2 in Alberta.
I’m inclined to stay “on the road” because that’s where my affinity for life in this part of the country was formed.
When I moved here three years ago, it was a new life in a new place. For a while I wasn’t sure what to make of things. It was on one of the road trips that I take from time to time for my work that the ice finally broke.
I was heading home to Prince Rupert from Prince George. Along the Skeena River portion of the highway I caught up with a train, heading the same direction.
For a few minutes I kept pace with the train. Eventually my eye and the conductor’s met. I waved to her, and she waved to me. I had the feeling that our respective vehicles—mine a CBC truck and hers a VIA passenger train—were connected by our commonality in being national institutions. All that would have made the moment more complete was Gordon Lightfoot on my CD player. Perhaps it was playing on hers.
Do they have stereos in locomotives?
On my most recent road trip, I travelled across Highway 16 to Jasper, Alberta. I explored Banff and reacquainted myself with my old home in Calgary. Then back to BC, through the Rogers Pass, past beautiful Mara Lake, onto the Okanagan, and then finally to Vancouver. After working there the month of August, it was back north through Williams Lake and Quesnel, stopping again in Prince George—a place that’s become my second home in Northern BC—and back along the very familiar Highway 16.
These trips have become so much fun. Even though I talk to people on the radio, you can’t imagine how good it feels to see the places that I talk about every day. Putting the proverbial “face to the name” type of thing.
When people debate the pros and cons of developing Chandler Park in Smithers, it’s nice to be able to see for yourself what’s at stake. When you hear that Prince George’s Cameron Street Bridge is closed, it’s good to be able to picture that setting. When you do an interview about how busy Fort St. John is, it helps that you’ve witnessed that activity firsthand.
After spending the better part of 30 years living next to the Atlantic Ocean, I’m still naturally attracted to water of any kind. I’ll never forget standing in the Nechako River last summer and feeling the power of the current flow past my legs. I stop in Telkwa when I drive through just to watch the river surge past the cabins.
And then there’s Bijou Falls. The setting is memorable even just for the Stellers Jays that populate the trees all around the small parking lot. But the falls themselves, small and simple yet stately in their way, have every ability to fix your attention. On one visit I dared, despite the very sensible warning signs, to step past the protective fence. I stood for a few moments right beside the falls and reveled in the water surging past.
If you live in the north, you travel. It’s part of the way of life here. But whether travelling for work or pleasure, be sure you take the time to stop and smell the skunk cabbage.
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