Want some Murder with that candy, kids?

Well I didn't have anything planned for All Hallow's Eve, so I just put on a makeshift costume, grabbed a butcher knife and I've been freaking out trick-or-treaters. WAY too much fun. Too bad there's only been like 6 groups so far. I've been blasting all my darkest, evilest, and most glitch-tech music (read: Tech Itch) out the windows, and I pretend to be seriously mentally ill and talk really loud. Scares the kids and the parents love it. I wish I could hand out dental floss instead of candy though. Definitely gonna do this every year since trick-or-treating ends early and parties start later. Right, me party. ha...

Motion Notion

In July, after flying back into Calgary from my family reunion in North Carolina, I met up with Ashley and Dani and we drove to the Motion Notion festival. It's situated about an hour west of Edmonton, and off the highway about 25 minutes. In other words, the middle of nowhere. But considering the rest of the prairies, this was a pretty sweet spot, cuz there was trees all around, and everything was in a slight valley beside a nice river. It's basically Alberta's attempt at a Shambhala, but I give em mad props for it. It was only 2 nights and there was a quite time from like 8am till 1pm, but I had a great time. From our Golden crew, there was the 3 of us, Jordan, Leonard, Smue, Jimmy, Steve, Megan, Andrew and his g/f from Victoria, Nicole. I think most of us had been attracted to Tech Itch being the headliner. Other than a handful of dnb though, it was mostly psytrance, so it was hard to find a good stage, but the decorations were awesome. Main stage at night time was unreal, better than any decorating job I've seen at Shamb. The black light artwork was UNREAL. Below are two of the many murals. You could get lost looking at them for a long ass time. Took me hours to figure out what the first one even was. It started pouring rain just before Tech Itch, which probably harshed it for some people, but by the time Tech Itch came out, the only thing dropping was beats, and very heavy ones. I'd taken about a hit of acid, and from the moment he started, I just lost myself and there probably wasn't a single recorded thought in my brain for at least an hour. The darkest, most evil, glitch-tech drum n bass I've ever heard. I don't think you could even call my motions dancing. It was just a very fast paced flail. But I loved it. I couldn't even tell if I was high or not, because I had no thoughts as reference points. I swear, it felt like Tech Itch was up there for 3 and a half hours, but after two, he was done and the Psy Trance started, so I left that stage. It was shitty to have to go to a smaller stage to hear dnb, cuz this stage had no decorations at all, and you could see the main stage from there, with it's huge sound, and plethora of glowing colors. The second day was nice, and the river wasn't too cold, so you could just walk out into the middle of it and sit on a rock. Nothing too spectacular happened the second night. But I would still go back next year in a heart beat if they've got some good dnb again. Good vibes, good venue. I think these pics zoom in a lot if you click on them, so you'll be able to analyze the details better

BOB

This was the picture I was looking for all winter. Finally got it back from the other guy in the pic. This is the Big Orange Bridge in Nelson, the day before Shambhala last year. Me and Danny Bertrand. Hard to estimate the height. I'd say 80 feet. Biggest jump I've done, also the funnest and least painful. Go figure. I tried to do it again this year with Kelly, but he wasn't cool enough. I'm the one in the blue shorts....

Not having good luck with bureaucracies today. Apparently I'm one week short of work to qualify for E.I., and there's no way around that, so I'm screwed there. I've had to call my 2 student loan offices to get them to stop taking payments out of my account since I can't afford it, and I won't get into the details there, but one of them has some brutal policies. And I've called Telus twice and been told they'd call me back, but I'm still waiting, but at least with Telus, they owe ME money. 70 bucks somehow. Anyways, let's focus on some fun things....

This is me huckin off the roof of Matt's truck into the Blaeberry River. Super fun river to jump into, but I dislocated my shoulder once and that was some sketchy as shit, cuz there's bad sections a little further downstream. Anyways, Matt wasn't driving very fast, but it's really one of those things that, once you decide to do it, you just don't think about it. It's really a philosophical thing as much as a physical thing. I learned something that day. Rational thinking has it's place, but there's many times where quick thinking is required and you have to just act/react without thinking, or it's too late.





















Oh what a glorious day this was. Me and Kelly drove up the Valennciennes River, ate some mushrooms and
bushwhacked up the box canyon at Icefall Brook. Quite possibly the coolest place I've ever been in my life. Surreal to the extreme, with or without psilocybin in your veins. THere's another waterfall just to my left, and the ones at the back are at least 150m tall. They're draining from the Lyell Icefield that you can actually see the tiny tip of if you zoom in (but don't do that cuz you'll see the expression on my face). I can't even put into words how cool this place was, but I would love to cross-country ski into the area in the winter, to see the frozen waterfalls, or come in the spring when the water level is higher. I'd love to take people back there too.

Tactics and Demographics

Just thought I'd go a little moe in-depth about the art of hitchhiking. There's tons of factors adding up and subtracting, that determine how long you'll wait by the side of the road.

Using a sign is probably the one technique that hitchhiker's will disagree on. On the one hand, you like like you've got your shit together when you use a sign, and it attracts some gazes that wouldn't otherwise look at you. But I think the most important factor is what's on the sign. Destination names are obviously the most common, but this all depends on where you're heading and how far you are from there. Even if someone's heading from Calgary to Vancouver and your sign says 'VANCOUVER', they might drive right by just because they don't want to take a chance that you smell or are weird and that they'll get stuck with you. I think the best bet is to have a sign, but put something somewhat original on it. 'further', 'please', 'concert', or even 'i support bc teachers.

Whenever I wasn't holding a sign, I'd be reading my book. Mostly just because I enjoy reading, but also because I was toying with the idea that I'd appear a little more trustworthy. I didn't just crawl out of the ditch, hell I might even be a university student. But I'm undecided on whether that helped or not.

To protect yourself and also attract more people, I think looking confident is a huge deal. Back straight, head held high, arm held out, smiling, and EYE CONTACT. Eye contact is so important. I'm absolutely certain that I activated people's brakes with only my eyes. And maintaining eye contact till the last possible second. And I never put my arm down until the person was past me.

Location is also huge, if people are zooming by, don't see you till the last second, and there's nowhere to pull over, there's barriers, and hitchiking is illegal, then good luck scoring a lift. Obviously the edge of town is the best place. No one is gonna pick you up in town, it's just too busy, plus most people aren't leaving town, so you're just gonna get discouraged. I'd usually wait at the edge of town beside a good pull-out, but if that wasn't working, and it looked like it wasn't too narrow of a road, I'd just start walking down the highway. I must've covered at least 20km all together doing that. Helps the time pass, you get a workout, and you look determined, but willing to take a ride, regardless of how far the person is going.

Aside from being a female, which is some sketchy ass shit, I think being a young guy is gonna get you picked up the quickest. But you have to look like you've got your shit together. Look somewhat clean and organized and approachable. I had lots of people tell me they don't pick up hitchhikers, but that I looked like a nice guy. I think staying clean-shaven is helpful too, but I just kept my neck shaved. Being my age, as long as you look confident, no perverts are gonna pull you over. Of course, if you do get picked up by a psycho, theres a whole new realm of strategy involved, but I'm not gonna go there, mainly because I didn't experience that. I'll never be sure, but I think that 2-3 females subtly came onto me, but I didn't reciprocate. I think that on average, I probably waited between half to two-thirds as long as the average hitchiker. It was a lot easier than I thought. I've heard of peple waiting 2 days to get a ride, but I only had to wait more than an hour 3 times, and never more than 2 hours.

Common sense would say that you don't want to thumb it on less-travelled roads, because there's less traffic, but I think it's inversely proportional. The more traffic, less chance of getting picked up per 100 vehicles, because no one feels responsible for you. The less traffic, better chances per 100 vehicles. I got picked up relatively easily on Queen Charlottes. Of course, there's a limit. If you're on the edge of town and there's less than 1-2 vehicles every 10 minutes that are leaving town, then it's probably not worth it. That's why I abandoned going to Stewart and Alaska this trip (from Stewart, you walk 3km to Hyder, Alaska).

You'd think you'd be more likely to get a ride in the rain, due to pity, but I don't think this is necessarily true, possibly because people don't want to get their interiors wet.

Truckers can be your best friends, because they're usually going the distance, but lots of trucks aren't allowed to pick-up hitchhkers (although some will anyways) or don't have room (like dump trucks and logging trucks). If the truck looks like it's privately owned, then he's your best bet, but of course, that's tough to tell from a distance.

I've been stoked to count up all the rides I got, in order to figure out the demographics of people that gave me rides. Generall speaking, you're gonna get picked up by people that have hitchhiked before, and you're chances of getting picked up by people over the age of about 60 are very slim. No couples either. Ok, I'm gonna count it up here. Keep in mind these stats could be completely different on the Trans-Canada. I got picked up by a lot of old work/farm trucks, but you wouldn't see that as much on a major highway, me thinks.
I separated ages, younger as looking below about 35 (but usually older than 25, not many young people), older being above 35.

I got 32 rides altogether.
23 were from males, 15 older, 8 younger
9 were from females, 2 older, 7 younger. Notice the reversal in ages from males to females.
1 colored male, 1 native female, 4 native guys.
I was picked up once by two young guys, once by two young girls, once with a young girl with three young kids, once from an older lady with a kid. But generally, my rides came from single occupants.
11 trucks, 11 cars, 4 SUV's (big/small), 3 vans, and 3 semis. Not one ride was from a newer luxury car (think Buick).

My most common rides were from guys older (than 35) males driving big old trucks, but my wildcard was older subarus, lots of them too. But both of these oculd jsut be due to the fact that smaller vehicles couldn't pick me up with my big pack. For every hour I'd get driven, I'd usually spend an hour on the side of the road. I travelled 2700km and thus my average distance gained by each ride was about 85km.

-I finshed my trip by adding Days 13 and 14

No, it's not a bigfoot sighting. This was out at the Giant Cedars on the way to Kinbasket Lake.
















This was up Bluewater Creek with Dani. Cool area back there, the roads have fallen apart, so it'd be cool to see how far back you could get with a bike.

Just the facts please

I just spent a few hours researching the different denominations of Christianity. I'm not nearly ambitious or presumptuous enough to share what I've learned and I'm sure I'll forget it within a few days anyways. Wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, but when you're dealing with the world's largest religion, I guess it's just not gonna be that simple. Just wanted to direct anyone interested towards Religion Facts, it has info on all major faiths of the world and I intend to dive in another time when I have more energy.

Quartz Lake

This was the Quartz Lake trip. Me, Kelly, Devon, Andrew, 2 Wills, Regan, Jesse, Adam, Leanna, Langus. This pic was when I summited a ridge on the first day, solo. Wicked views, of Roger's Pass from here. That little lake in the background is Second/Upper Quartz. There were awesome rock-rolling opportunites up here and I'd stand up top rolling rocks down and the guys back at camp would see them ripping shit up. I try not to roll too many rocks, cuz of the damage done, but I oculdn't resist this time.


This is Lower Quartz. Lots of bouldering opportunites for the climbing enthusiast. This was the second day on the way to Second Quartz. That cliff in the distance is where I am in the next picture. You can click on any of these pics and they zoom in quite a bit if you click again.















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That's Second Quartz down below. It was much clearer (not that Lower Quartz was bad either) and even colder. This was the second day, me and Will Doyle summited the ridge across from that first photo. That's Roger's Pass in the background. Mt Macdonald is the one way back there on the far right, and that may or may not be Mt Sir Donald on the left.












This is magnificent Upper Quartz. After this shot was taken, everyone else left and I went skinny dipping. Rejuvenation is mine!

-Added a link to my rant about the Chrisitan minister. I was referring to what party he probably voted for. If you already read it, here's the link
-I also moved the whole Haida Gwaii post up, so that it stays on the front page. I changed the posting date to the 24th, so that it won't be hard to find, since it's taking me so long to finish it

-Added Day 10 which includes my the weirdest ride I got on the trip

I was able to unpack a bunch of stuff today, so I'm gonna start going through my pictures and figure out which ones to scan from the summer. I'll try to post some tonight.

Met a girl named Tara (my sister had done some work for her mom) today. She's spent a month in India this year, so I wanted to pick her brain a bit. She said Dharamsala was the coolest place she went and she had great things to say about it, so that got me pretty stoked. Told me there's lots of trails going up into the mountains and how it's not burdened to heavily by the tourist scene. She didn't think it'd be covered in snow in the winter and that it's super easy to eat vegetarian there. She seemed like a pretty cool chick. smart. Fuck, I wish I could just go to India right now. I feel like I'm missing my chance or something. Don't get me wrong, I had a great summer in Golden and I certainly haven't been wasting my time lately, it's just that I wanna travel before too long, while I'm still not tied down to anything. Here's a pic of Dharmsala.

Haida Gwaii and Pecan Pie

Well I'm back, rolled into Qualicum Beach last night. Feels good to be back. For those unaware, after I was laid-off from the ski hill, me and Kelly moved out of our suite and planned to go hitchhiking together to the Queen Charlotte Islands (or Haidia Gwaii - Islands of the People - as the locals call it). He didn't end up coming and I departed Golden with most of my belonging and two new tires on Tuesday, October the fourth. What follows is the uncensored (my apologies) reconstructiuon, thanks to the log I kept, of everything that happened between Golden and Qualicum Beach. I am going to develop the 4 rolls of film, but don't expect to see the pics online for at least 10 days. I've organized the account into different days so that you don't have to read it all at once. Click on the maps to enlarge.

Day One:
I made it to Kamloops to late to start hitchiking, so I stayed with Drew, Craig, and Jolene for the night and had some excellent discussions.

My Pack:
Due to the length of the trip, I packed only the bare minimum. Including what I was wearing, I took a t-shirt, a long-sleeve shirt, a hoodie, a shell of a jacket (thanks Michelle), MEC pants (thin, dry fast, second-hand $3), Burton snowpants (second-hand $4), two tuques, 3 pairs of socks, two pairs of boxers, thin shorts, long underwear, and two pairs of those super thin gloves. For camping, I took a sleeping bag (nothing special), tent, inflatable thin mat (thanks Craig), a groundcloth (or makeshift tarp), and a small pillow. You could prolly care less, but I also pack a 1.5L Nalgene bottle, camera, binoculars that I never used, lots of ziploc/grocery/garbage bags, 2 books (Shambhala: Sacred Path of the Warrior and Tom Robbins - Another Roadside Attraction) a towel and cloth, flashlight, a gram of hallucinogenic mushrooms that I never ingested, TP, a marker (for signs), candles, earplugs, and a bunch of small not-worth-mentiong stuff. For food, I took two bags of oatmeal that I'd made up (large oats, dried raisins, currants, cranberries, dates, and blueberries, flax seeds, 12-grain mix, cinnamon, cardomon, dried coconut, granola, and hempseed), big bag of trail mix (nuts, granola, and dried fruit), and a bunch of random dried fruits (like apples, thanks Martina). I took one small pot and a spoon, that's it. I didn't take a stove, so I'd leave the oatmeal to soak over night and by morning it would be delicious muesli. Better than any oatmeal I've ever had. All in all, my pack weighed about 50-55 pounds, not bad for 2 weeks.


Day Two:
Knowing that I would make a circle tour, I had to decide which direction to start. I settled on going through Valemount and coming back through Quesnel. Craig dropped me off heading out of town north towards Barriere and Clearwater on Highway 5 (Yellowhead). This was basically my first hitchiking experience, so at first it felt awkward, but I caught on really fast I think. Waited about twenty minutes with a sign that said "FURTHER" and an old guy in a small older single-cab picked me up. This was one of the most interesting people of the entire trip. We got into deep conversations right away. I told him about the warrior book I was reading and he started probing me, asking me if I considered myself a warrior and so forth, then he basically got me to tell him my entire life story, and then he told me his. He studies lichen (a type of fungi) and lives by himself on 10 acres with no neighbours on the edge of Wells Gray Provincial Park. He described Wells Gray, which sounds awesome and a backpack trip into there is on my To Do list. He told me how he was a loner (you'd have to be to be wearing braces at that age buddy) and an outsider. We talked about his depression and about the medication and meditation that helps him get by. He told me he was a mentor (figure that out) and brings young guys out to his place for a few months at a time (this was the only moment I felt uncomfortable). He told me how he'd flown over Gwaii Haanas (an isolated park on Haida Gwaii, but more on that later). He was a really interesting guy for sure and we got into all sorts of small discussions on everything from drugs to logging to self-development. He told me about a fascinating study that had been done (wish I had more details). Apparently, there were these two tall healthy Douglas Fir trees in the wild with a young Birch that wasn't doing to well growing beside them. They put something in the water to trace what was happening and it was observed that the Douglas Firs were sending the Birch nutrients through subterranean fungal roots, apparently in order to help the Birch tree survive. Crazy! It really was quite enthralling, but of course, all interesting rides must come to an end. He dropped me off in Clearwater, gave me his contact info and left.
I waited in slight rain for a while, with no luck, so I started walking. Altogether I waited about 2 hours for the next ride. A trucker hauling for Superstore picked me up. I had been wary of getting rides from truckers, but then again, they can be a hitchhiker's best friend, cuz they go such long distances. This guy was nice though. I learned about trucking and he told me about how this young girl from a Wal-Mart in Grand Prairie, AB (where he was headed) fucks him sometimes. At one point, he pissed into his piss-bottle after warning me. It may shock some, but I knew that that went on from my days cleaning rest areas, so i didn't care. Apparently, some guys cut holes in there trucks so they can takes shits while their buddy drives, to cut down on stops (and it was supposedly characteristic to a certain ethnicity, but I'm not gonna play that game). The scenery got much better at Blue River with the Monashee Mountains on my right to the east and the Cariboo Mountains on my left to the west. Then at Valemount, the Monashees end, and across the Rocky Mountains trench and and the northern end of Kinbasket Lake rises the... you guessed it. Rocky Mountains. The valley is even wider than the Columbia valley there, it's pretty rad. It's also cool, cuz within a 10km area, you got waters feeding the 3 major rivers in BC, the Thompson, Fraser, and Columbia. The Columbia waters flow into the north end of Kinbasket Lake and make there way down towards Mica Dam. We had been driving up the North Thompson river valley and when I got to Tete-Jaune, I started following the Fraser, as far as I know. The trucker dropped me of at Tete-Jaune, which is the junction of Highway 5 and Highway 16, although both are the Yellowhead Highway. 'Tete-Jaune' means 'Yellowhead' in French. Apparently the legend is that there was a famous half-indian half-caucasian who had blond hair.
Unfortunately I was just around the corner and going the wrong direction to see Mount Robson for the first time. Another trip perhaps. Still the scenery was pretty rad. I started walking down the highway reading my book. Not much traffic, and it took me about an hour and a half to get picked up by two guys returning home from work. After the one guy got dropped off, I talked to the other guy about the area. He dropped me off in McBride at dusk. Quite windy there, which apparently is characteristic of the Fraser Valley there. I waited on the highway udner the lights for about 2 hours, reading, trying to shelter mytself from the wind. It was looking pretty hopeless and I finally decided to give up, so I went to the payphone, checked in with my fam and went to look for a spot to set up camp, as I was about to cross the highway though, another truck pulled into view. I decided I'd focus all my human powers on manifesting a ride. He pulled into the gas station though, so while he fueled up, I focused wholly on him picking me up. Sure enough, as he pulled out of the gas station, he offered me a ride, fancy that. The dude was pretty quiet and we were listnening to his daughters music cuz that's all he had, but there was some mad fiddle/banjo combination that sounded pretty cool. He offered me some beer, so I drank 2 on the long completely void two hour drive to Prince George. Seriously, nothin on the highway at all till just before PG. He kindly drove me to the UNBC campus and dropped me off at 11:30. I found Adam Doyle's dorm and proceeded to relax. Met his multi-natinoal roomates, flipped thru his book collection, then watched Question Period (that legislature show where all the MPs argue that nobody ever watches). Then Adam showed me his pics frmo his year in China. I guess when he was there on exchange, he got the best grades of anyone in the 10 year history of the exchange program. he's in his 4th year of Politcal Science, and next year he's going to UBC for Law. So I'd made it about 6 hours down the road from Kamloops in 12 hours of hitchhiking. That tended to be the general rule. For ever hour of driving, I'd wait an hour for a ride. Sometimes better, usually not worse than that ratio.

Going with the Flow:
Resistance is basically futile when it comes to hitchhiking. I mean sure, you can refuse rides and all that. But I think going with the flow is essential. Being that hitchhiking isn't exactly a locus of control, there's no point being a control freak. I don't drink alcohol or coffee and I seldom smoke weed these days, but I didn't want to offend whoever was offering. So I'd drink beer and coffee, or smoke weed if it was offered. Might as well bond with someone while I had the chance, since I'd never see them again, in all likelihood. It didn't make to too comfy when the drivers were drinking, but nobody I got in with was visibly drunk, if that's any consolation. But riding the wave doesn't stop at heeding offers. In order to be effective and efficient and safe, I had to constantly be aware of my surroundings and follow up on all coincidences. For example, trusting my gut and waiting for that last truck out of McBride paid off big time. Instincts are honed on the road, no doubt about it. I think it's best to view everything as happening for a reason when you travelling in these circumstances. Lingering or second-guessing gets you left behind, and I mean that on many levels.

Day 3:
I chose to stay a full day on the UNBC campus to explore. Dorms there are pretty pricey, you share a quad, yet you pay 500 bucks, utilities included. That seems outrageous to me. But if you have a meal plan card, food is relatively reasonable, although the caf is closed on weekends (or maybe just sundays) and the grocery store is probably an hour walk. Buses don't run past 9:30 and not on Sundays. I didn't like the lack of freedom in that respect. There was the pub too, but yeah. All non-teaching employees at the university are paid pretty weak wages, in my opinion. Fully trained ex-military Level 3 security guards make $12/hr and they have no work in the summer. But they have it the best. Weak shit. Also, there was significant corporate sponsorhip that was higly visible (Pepsi, CanFor, etc). Otherwise though, UNBC gets respect from me. My year at UCC in Kamloops left me jaded and disillusioned with the post-secondary education establishment, as you'll probably notice if you look in the archives of this blog. And while my tour and experience at UNBC is obviously rushed and shallow, I was still impressed. Beautiful campus, away from the black hole of doom that is the rest of Prince George. Composting, public info clubs, organic food delivery, 3 floor library. Talked to the guy at the public info room. Basically a social justice club similar to the one I'd be a part of in Kamloops, I had a good talk with the guy and they even had their own mini-library that was worthy of respect and covered all the major topics du jour. He invited me to their movie night and I graciously accepted.
I attended an International Studies third year course with Adam and had fun. It was so weird being back in a classroom observing all the dynamics. The guy that won't shut up, people that never have the answers, etc. The prof was good though and I enjoyed the lecture. At one point, we were discussing where in the world a new Renaissance might be taking place. The internet, China, and California were all suggested, and although I may have been out of line (since I was passing thru), I decided to add my own suggestion to the pot. I suggested that in third-world intercity slums and shantytowns, and new socieaty was emerging, exiled from the outside world. Contrary to globalization, these cities, being so paradoxally isolated, thrived on local economic systems and such. Everything was on a face-to-face basis and creativity has been shown to be thriving in places like Rio and such. There was some expected resistance to my suggestion, but I backed it up and the prof showed genuine approval. I had been so nervous during my mini-presentation that my hands were almost numb. I don't get to speak in public enough these days. Apparently the next time the prof saw Adam, he asked about me and expressed disappointment that I was just passing through. honestly, it felt pretty cool and stimulating to be back on a campus, and I'd like to do it again sometime. Maybe stay with Kean and attend some UVic classes, for example.
Adam, being student president of the Political Sciences faculty, had to go to some meetings, so I ducked out to attend movie night. They were showing two movies about the proposed (thanks Dubya, you virile cunt) oil-drilling in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge. The first movie ("Oil on Ice") was a typical documentary about the controversy expressing the concerns about the native people in the area who were dependant upon Cariboo migrations that would allegedly be gravely disturbed if they started drilling for oil. The second movie ("Being Caribou") was about this couple from Canmore, who followed the Caribou herds for half a year from Yukon to their calfing (birth) gorunds along the northern Alaska coast where the drilling is proposed. A beautiful movie, showing at one point, a view of thousands and thousands of caribou migrating. Very down-to-earth movie that spoke for itself, and I'd highly reccommend it. After the movie, I talked to a guy from the Queen Charlottes that imparted some local knowledge and expressed bewilderment that I was travelling there during the fall (foreshadowing). Me and Adam watched Question Period again and discussed politics.

Groceries:
Since I didn't want to have to get a driver to pull over for me to shit or piss, I kept food and liquid intake to a minimum. I found that if I ate small meals, I would get hungry, but it would pass and I could get by on about a third of my normal intake, wheras, if I ate a big meal early in the morning, I'd have to sustain normal intake throughout the rest of the day. Since fresh food was too heavy, I'd usually buy some fruit whenever I got to a grocery store, although the organic selection was less than desireable so I often went days without fresh fruit and veggies. However, I'd steal copiously from the bulk bins and chug those Boathouse or Pom drinks then ditch the bottle, and other such tacts. Thus, I was able to keep my average expenses to below 10 dollars a day, including my ferry tickets. Like I said before, restistance was often futile, so i had to break the vegan trend and take what I was given (or stolen, heh heh). I think my lowest moment was consuming 6 consecutive donuts from Tim Hortons.














Day 4 (first day of the teacher strike I think):
It took me 5 rides to make it 2 hours from PG to Burns Lake. The 4th ride was cool though. My first ride from the fairer gender, an early 30's decent-lookin girl in a big Ford picked me up and took me to Vanderhoof (halway from PG to Burns Lake). She was hungover and tired from the previous nights Collective Soul concert, but I felt really comfortable with her. We talked about the logging indsutry, which was a very popular topic the whole trip.
She worked at a mill, so she had some interesting things to say. Logging roads can go for over 600km. Jinkies! But it's funny, cuz since it's relatively flat out there, once you're far enough from the highway so that you can't hear it, there's no point going any further, cuz it's all the same. Contrasting sharply with Golden, where the farth you go on logging roads, the higher you get, and the crazier shit you see. Plus unlike the Interior Plateau region, logging roads in valleys like the Columbia valley rarely connect to another road, they always go up side valleys and such, whereas you could drive for a week around PG without hitting the same ground twice. It's funny, everyone from the bottom of BC calls it Northern BC, and that's what the NBC of UNBC stands for. Yet until you get to around Smithers and Hazelton, you're still in the Southern half of BC. I covered a lot of ground in the past two weeks, but I barely scratched the surface of the truly northern half of the province. Of course, like I said, a lot of it seems to be identical to the next part, until you get to the Coast Mountains.
I'm sure by now, everyone's aware of the pine beetle problem plaguing the province, thanks to global warming (we need cold-ass winters to kill the buggers). Personall, I expected to see more widespread devastation, but ike I said, it's pretty flat up there (not prairies mind you, just small rolling hills), so I'm sure if I'd be in a helicopter, I'd be telling a different tale. Anyways, this girl, Victoria, tells me that sometimes, when a swarm of these beetles takes off, it shows up on the airport radar. HOLY FUCK! We smoked a doob on the ride, and she dropped me off on the other side of Vanderhoof, where I met the first other hitchhiker of my journey. A friendly young Swiss fellow who I later realized, was going in the wrong direction. He was going for Ft St John. Poor guy. I'd been lucky with the weather so far, and the luck continued. I watched three separate (you can see a lot when there's no mountains, which makes for better amateur weather-interpreatations on teh sides of the road) showers pass me by on all sides and a rainbow, while I was in the sun. Hitchin in the sun is so nice and chill. No hurry at all. Gloomy days can be iffy, but not till you get rained on or darkness falls, does it add a sense of urgency.
My next ride (the one that got me to Burns Lake) was from a rancher who lived ona 1200acre piece of land. That's unheard of in the southernmost part of the province, as far as I know. That's huge! It turns out his son had been mauled by a grizzly in September and we were talking about it, when I realised that I had read about it, front page, in a newspaper weeks prior. That was trippy. I remembered it wuite well too. And later on my trip, I came across another paper with this guy on the the front page, this time with his son in a hospital, as he recovered from the attack. So we talked about all the details of the fateful and other wildlife stuff. Sounds like there's way higher numbers of everything up there (except for exclusively mountain animals, like goats and sheep). More wolves, caribou, wolverines, grizllies, black bears, and cougars, oh my! This guy had worked on Haida Gwaii logging what is now Gwaii Haanas, during the highly televised, but before our time, controversy. He was a really nice, chill guy. I was starting to gain respect for what we'd call rednecks and hicks. We had an interesting talk about perspectives. Being a rancher, he likes flat open land, so he can watch his cattle and doesn't care much for mountains, whereas I'm the exact opposite.
After having played leep-frog somehow (thanks to my multiple rides), a girl, after passing me for the third time, finally picked me up, when I was in Burns Lake. She was going to UNBC for hairdressing. WE talked a lot,a nd she gave me a good tour of the sites, as we passed by Smithers (nice looking town, best surroundings up till that point coming from PG) and their ski hill which is apparently being bought and expanded by Whistler (it's called Hudson Bay Mountain and I hear good things about it). She showed me this sweet little canyon and falls just off the highway and smoked a joint with me. Like Victoria, she came onto me very subtly, but even mroe subtly, I evaded (ok, maybe I don't ALWAYS go with the flow, not to self). The area around Houston and Smithers and onwards to Terrace has a very high proportion of deciduous trees and unlike the windy Fraser Valley, where the leaves had all fallen, this area was peaking in color and even where there weren't mountains to gaze at, it was still spectacular. Autumn is such an underappreciated season. Then we got to her hometown of Hazelton, where the tri-city twns (Old Hazelton, New Hazelton, and Southtown) aren't that nice looking, but the area is very nice. Decent mountains all around, but the one mountian, Rush of the Bull, is AWESOME. Apparently, the legend is that the mountain will collapse one day and destroy the town. And in addition to all the lovely fall colors, they also have the Hagwilget Bridge crossing 200 feet above the Bulkley River and canyon, that is really cool to see. I'd love to have gotten a pic of the mountain looking up the canyon. By the time she dropped me of (and gave me 10 bucks for no reason), it was dark. Right away, some locals that were driving by, informed me that they'd jsut seen a cougar cross the road and they didn't seem to be joking. So instead of trying my luck on the higway, or setting up camp in an old barn across the road, I decided to camp in civilization for the night, so I walked into town and a lady let me stay for free in her campground for the night. This was the first night that I actually had to camp, but it wasn't too cold out at all. Started raining though right after I got set up. In the middle of the night, though, I woke up from a growling. No, it wasn't the cougar. It was my stomach. And it needed to ditch some passengers. The lady had told me that the bathrooms were shut down. They were people camping besides me, it was raining, and I really had no choice. sigh. So I stayed in my tent and shit in ziploc bags (plural). Heh heh. I'll never forget that. Anyways, moving on....

Logging:
Although their are differences such as visibility, the central BC logging industry is fairly similar to here in the south, except they don't have tourism to rely on as a backup. Livelihoods rely on the indsutry and it's been past it's prime for a while now. The pine beetle issue has changed that, however short-term or temporary, though. Most people think we should log all the pine beetle instead of new forests, which is a fair position, I suppose. I'm undecided yet on what course of action, regarding the dead pine, that should be taken. There's many small considerations, like this neat fact: When a tree is being attacked by a bug, it releases scents in the air that are somehow sensed (smelled?) by the other trees notifying them to start producing chemicals to help ward of the bugs. Usually it's a futile effort, but it's still pretty cool. However, a consequence of this action leaves the wood of dead pine tinted blue, which affects who is willing to buy it (the Japanese won't, for whatever reason). I'm gonna talk to my mom about the whole issue (being that she's a proffesional forester) before I come to an opinion. I didn't talk to many people who expressed overwhelming sympathy for the logging industry (except that first driver that took me to Clearwater, he's actually writing a book against logging). Most people place the economy on higher priority. Usually, they don't actually use the E word, they simply talk in terms of 'jobs'. I grew more sympathetic to their position as time went on. There's really not much keeping this area going except logging on fishing (more on the coast than the interior though). Of course, I'm not suggesting they halt logging, but at the same time, we can't continue on our present pace forever. People speak of logging being sustainable, but we're a long way from that, in my opinion. A tree farm is not a forest, I can't stress that enough.

Day 5:
I got a ride pretty quick from a local native lady and her young son. She was quite put off when I told her I didn't eat fish. My next ride was from a Mark Jackson, who used to live south of Golden. Apparently he's related to Brandon Ryter. he took me to the edge of his town so I could head north. I'd decided that since I had a few days to make the ferry (there's only 3 sailings per week), that I would make some side trips, to Stewart and then Kitimat. Stewart is supposed to be gorgeous, isolated and rugged, right on the border with Alaska, and a few km from Hyder, a tiny Alaskan town. Hyder isn't connected to the rest of the state though, just a bunch of logging roads, which would be pretty cool to explore if you could get high up. I waite3d for a while, but it was pretty dead heading north, so I aborted that plan when mark came back to check on me, and I continued west to Terrace, which at about 20,000 is the biggest settlement west of PG. Mark has the same truck as my dad, with the same dents and problems with the speedometer, so I felt right at home. The drive was ripe with autumn colors and we passed Seven Sisters, probably the coolest mountain I saw on my hitchiking trip. Literally, seven jagged peaks. I hope the pics turn out. Mark told me about the mushroom picking that goes on. On Haida Gwaii and the coast, mushroom pickers flock to the areas from sept-oct to make some bucks, some people even make their whole years earnings doing this. Pine mushrooms are the big prize near the coast, but they're tough to find, cuz they're usually hiding under moss. The big mushroom on QCI is Chanterelles. I considered trying my luck, but I decided against it, sicne I dind't even know at the time what these mushrooms looked like, nor did I know the area. Another time perhaps. Mark also pointed out Balsam, Cottonwood (HUGE!), and Hemlocks so that I'd know what I was looking at. Coast trees are so much bushier than their inland brethren. The transition to coastal forests from Hazelton to Terrace was awesome. Needless to say, it was much more humid. Much more cedar and other evergreens, but still lots of deciduous.He dropped me off heading south to Kitimat. I'd been thinking about the demographics of drivers I'd been picked up by so far. I figured the least likely ride I'd get would be a mother with kids in a new van. Guess who picked me up next? Trippy. She was from Campbell River, so we talked about Vancouver Island and I picked her brain about Kitimat. Kitimat reminds me a lot of Port Alberni, but it smells like pulp and for some reason, isn't right on the inlet, so it doesn't seem like you're on the ocean at all. I went to the public library after eating, and checked out maps, used the internet to send out emails and read about QCI. I was contemplating staying in Kitimat for the night, but I kept getting warned about how many bears there were. I walked quite a ways through town to check out the giant Sitka Spruce trees they had, but when I got there, there was only two trees, haha. I was hoping to score some shelter under them. but more likely, a branch the size of may body would've crushed me during the night. What a romantic way to die. So walked through town and up their hill (think Golden hill) and scored a ride from a guy that worked at the infamous AlCan smelter plant there. He had the the most shallow and naive perspective on logging. He didn't see any negative effects to it, in fact, he thought logging was great. He made no distinctions between real forests and tree fams, "they're all trees to me!". Fool. I got to Terrace and pitched my tent under the bridge (the Skeena River is BIG). This kept me dry despite a rainy night, but

Day 6:
The next morning I had to walk for about 2 hours in the rain through town and made it quite a ways down the highway, before a female dietician picked me up. So naturally, being a vegan gave us lots to talk about. But the best part of that ride was the views. WOW. Seriously, it was unreal. Very steep hills with rock faces collected all the rain and it would practically flash flood and cascade down the faces. Gorgeous pumping waterfalls too numerous too count. I could see the tops of the hills, so i didn't know whether they were mountains or not, so I decided to take pictures on the return trip (bad call, as you'll find out later). The other cool thing was that the Skeena river widened right out way before it made it to the ocean, so it looked like we were driving down the inlet of sea-water, but it was green (cuz it was just the Skeena). Very wide, musta been several km across, and not all one channel, not a bunch of small ones (like I said, BIG river). It was definately one of the higlights of the trip, seeing all the falls made me think I was back in the Sullivan River valley (RIP) back near Golden. When she dropped me off in Prince River, the rain had stopped, which is amazing, consdering that Prince Rupert is the cloudiest place in Canada, and rain is almost always present. PR is a neat little town, the houses are pretty neat and the view of the ocean (well, of the bay) was really cool. Lots of small islands, which is my favorite ocean scenery. I walked into Safeway and right away, a young guy (older than me, though) approached me like he knew me and asked about my pack (remember I have a big pack with my tent, sleeping bag, and mat warpped in garbage bags, tied to the outside). I told him I was hitchin to QCI and he told me all the thigns to check out there. Really friendly guy, got me stoked. The ferry didn't leave until 11pm so I had lots of time to kill. I went down by the water and took shelter from the scattered showers (the weather was improving though), admired the view and read for a while. I walked all he way to the ferry at about 6:30 and waited there for the rest of the evening. As I was chilling out and waiting, a young guy walks in and goes to the phone, I notice he's got a booklet under his arm that has some familiar letters on it and I decide to follow a hunch (always a good idea). Turns out I was right, the book he was holding was actually a WWOOF directory.

Educational Interruption:
Willing Workers on Organic Farms is an organization that helps connect volunteers and farms. Basicaly you work a predetermined number of horus a week and in return, you get room in board. In other words, no expenses, no payment, just work and you'll be taken care of. This is a worldwide organization, which I know about because I'm highly considering volunteering on a WWOOF farm in India when I go. It's the cheapest way to extend a trip when cash runs low, or a great place to start, in order to learn the language and customs of a country without the risks.

I start talking to the guy and he tells me that he's going to work/volunteer on a farm in Port Clements. Very quickly, I realise that this would be an excellent opportunity for me and I start getting really stoked. SHELTER!! SO he lends me his directory (normally you have to pay about 30 bucks to be a member) and of the 6 or so farms on QCI, one of them was looking for help. SCORE! So I arrange to show up on Tuesday (the overnight sailing would deposit me on the islands at dawn on monday). This was insurance for me, so I was able to really relax, knowing that I wouldn't have to battle the elements the whole time I was there. We boarded the ferry, which is considerably smaller than the Vancouver Island ferries, but not tiny by any means. Since it's a night sailing (6-7 hours across, about 130km), the lights are down low and everyone just rolls out their sleeping bags and mats and sleep. At one point during the night, I walked out onto the decks. it was pretty cool to look around in total darkness and not be able to see anything. The sailing was rougher than the Vancouver Island sailings, but apparently it can be MUCH MUCH worse.

Queen Charlotte Islands/Haida Gwaii:


































Haida Gwaii is an archipelago of hundreds, but the main two islands are Graham, which is the larger northern island, and Moresby, to the South. The vast majority of inhabitants live on Graham Island. Aside from Sandspit, all the major communites are on Graham Island.

Populations:
Masset - 1900 (600 of which are from the enarby Old Masset, a Haida community)
Port Clements - 600
Tlell (pronounced Tuh-Lell)- 400
Skidegate (that middle 'e' pronouced like the 'i' in 'spit', Skid-i-git), - 700
Sandspit (Moresby) - 600

The ferry Arrives at Skidegate, and to the west is Queen Charlotte City and from there, via logging roads you can access, thru the mountains, Rennel Sound, the only road-accesible west coast beach on Haida Gwaii. Being that it's on the west coast, it gets way more rain than the east coast, so it is home to some of the largest trees. One tree reportedly takes 22 people linking arms to make it around!! North of Skidegate along the east coast about 30 min is Tlell, then the highway leaves the coast and goes to Port Clements, along the boundary of Naikoon Provincial Park. Port Clements is on the Masset inlet, and another 30 minutes will land you in Masset, on the north coast. From there, you can go to Tow Hill (the best viewpoint in the area) and onwards to Rose Spit, which according to the Haida, is the center of the universe.
The islands are the former home of two extremely rare anomalies, that are both dead now. An albino raven and the Golden Spruce (the only one in the world). I find it a crazy coincidence that there were two such rarities on the same island, especially when the raven is so central to Haida culture.
Voted the best park in North America(!), Gwaii Haanas, is the massive park that covers the southern half of Moresby Island. Accesible only by boat or plane, it's probably one of the least visited too. Hot Springs Island is the most obvious attraction, but the ruggedness of the coast must make for one hell of a kayaking trip. My ambition one day is to hike up Mount Moresby (about 1200m, highest point on the islands) to gain a view of the park.

Day 7:
The ferry arrived at 5:30 in the morning and I still hadn't made up my mind where to go, so I just started walking down the highway to nearby Skidegate (the ferry lands about 1.5km away). I sat on a bench and admired some smaller islands as dawn arrived. That was pretty awesome. I walked into town and it was dead. Nothing and no one was out. Probably because it was Thanksgiving Day. After taking shelter from a small burst of rain, I started walking around again and some native lady on her balcony called out to me asking me if I wanted some coffee. Of course, I didn't, but who am I to refuse? We had a nice chat about the islands, and I decided that while it may be tough getting a ride, I should try to make it out to Rennell Sound. I started walking back down the road, and decided first, to do a short hike. Took me about an hour and a half to do the Spirit Lakes circuit. It was a lovely introduction to the forests and I was the only one around, so it was cool. I caught a ride pretty quickly to Queen Charlotte City and got a view of Sleeping Beauty, which is a mountain that resembles a chick laying down. It'd be a cool hike someday. But it was obvious there was no traffic heading out to Rennell, so I turned around again and caught a ride just north of Skidegate. I walked along the beach a bit, then hit the highway. Took me a while to get a ride, but I finally did. Hestops to let me fill up my water at St Mary Springs. There's hardly any drinkable water on the islands and the well water is a little funky (iron manganese and orange tannins), so this was by far the best water. Also, legend has it that once you drink from the springs, you're destined to return to Haida Gwaii. After, we stopped off at his place and he showed me how to identify Liberty Caps (psilocybe seminlaceata), a notoriously potent hallucenogenic mushroom. He dropped me off at a cafe in Tlell, which is basically the only building that isn't a house, besides the post office and firehall, which are in the same building, haha, and a new small grocery store (very small). I had some overpriced chili. Everything costs twice as much on QCI, gas was about $1.25/L. While I was eating, a journalist showed up and started talking to the owner. He mentioned that he was writing numerous articles on Haida Gwaii, so I interjected and jokingly asked if he was doing anything on hitchhikers. We chatted a bit and he offered me a ride up to Masset, so I took him up on it. Sounds like he's a decent writer. He takes a lot of time for each project, he'll research and read all sorts of books on a subject (like QCI) before going there to write the articles. He's written on the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico, and his next article is gonna be on the separatist movement in Quebec. Personally, I found him to be harbouring a bit thick of an ego for my liking, but I got all sorts of info from him and we had some good talks. We drove to a bunch of places that he wanted to write about in his article, then went to Masset where he interviewed some bigtime Haida artist. I stayed outside and finished my first book, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. I watched the weather for a while, but couldn't figure out what it was gonna do, so instead of trying my luck and heading for Tow Hill, I caught a ride back to Tlell with the writer. He told me to write my name on a piece of paper and a summary of why i'm hitchhiking and this is what I wrote for him:
"Hitchhiking has honed my instincts. I've had to follow my hunches, chase coincidences, take chances, and be mindful of my surroundings. It's been a beautifully paradoxal hybrid of rolling the dice and manifesting destiny. To put it mildly, it makes for a nice break in routine."
He told me he'd put in in all of his articles if his editor let him, but these the magazines Gam on Yachting, Crusing World, and Wavelength Paddling, so I'll probably never even get to see if he put me in or not. We talked about the conflict between the Haida, loggers, environmentaliosts, and the Ministry of Forests, and it's a lot more complex than you'd think. Many of the Haida believe they should be in charge of the logging so that they see the profits, the loggers just want jobs, the Ministry thinks it's best experienced at managing the forests (which in all fairness is probably true, unfortunately), and the greens want what greens always want. Anyways, it was interesting stuff to think about. Oh by the way, here's the writer's website.
He dropped me off at this campground where I thought I might stay. I walked down the road to it, expecting it to be on the ocean, but it wasn't. It was very pretty, but it was empty, and I just didn't quite feel comfortable camping alone, cuz I didn't know enough about the local bears yet. They're the largest species of black bears in the world, from what I'm told. But I probably had nothign to worry about, cuz they've managed to be lucky enough not to become garbage bears, so they stay away from humans, unless you reak like fish guts, plus being the season it is, they have all they could eat from the salmon anyways. But I didn't know thus at the time, and when I heard something large rustling in the bushes, I didn't stick around to stay 'hi'. I walked back to the highway and down to the Warden Office, which i assumed would be empty due to the season and holidays, but there was a guy staying in the back, so I knocked and asked him if I could set up my tent under the covered balcony to give me some shelter and he said 'no'. Happy Thanksgiving, dick. so I hitched a ride to the organic farm and decided that I might as well try my luck, even though I was a day early. Local girls picked me up and told me that the family that ran the farm has a cabin that they'd probably let me stay in. So I got to the farm, and they had just finished thanksgiving dinner, so i felt like I was intruding, but I asked anyways and they let me and also offered me some leftovers. So I stocked up and proceeded to the cabin. A lone building on the edge of the property, the highway being the only thing between the cabin and the ocean, affording me an awesome, unobstructed view of the water from upstairs. No electricity, no running water. At first, it was kinda creepy, cuz I ahd to light candles just to see, but I got used to it and it was actually pretty fuckin cool. Whereas it was dark at about 6:45, it was dark here at about 8. It was awesome to hear the waves crashing on the shore, and I think that was one of the main factors, aside from the sheer novelty of it all, that helped send me into a very deep meditation in the blink of an eye. I haven't gone that deep in a while, and it was almost nostlagic. Plus the fact that it came about so quickly. Very cool. Then the storm started....

Day 8:
I was awakened early in the morning before daylight by the unstoppable duo of wind and rain. I could actually feel the cabin move from the wind, and the rain was blowing sideways so hard that it managed to be coming down the chimnney. I didn't get much sleep after that, but it was pretty cool. All I could think about was how lucky I was to have asked the guy at the ferry to borrow his WWOOF directory, or I'd be one miserable son of a bitch. And I'd wanted to camp on the beach. I was so naive coming this time of year and expecting to camp. Praise Allah for four walls and a ceiling. It stormed all day as I got a tour around the ranch. Winds got up to around 80km/hr and my so-called rainjacket that I'd waterproofed (thanks Michelle) was drenched just walking from one building to another. I helped a guy organize a shed, then we worked on his bus that he was turning into a restaurant. I did some carpentry, which apprently, I'm embarassingly bad at. I caught on though. We had some great talks all day about the forestry industry and other aspects of island life. We compared karate to Aikido (think Tai Chi meets self-defense). I wanted to check out an Aikido and Tai Chi class, but it never worked out. Evening came, the storm died, and I moved all my stuff into the house and into a private room. I waslked to the beach at twilight to watch the waves, which are huge after storms. It was nuts. Felt really authentic, that was my word of the week for the Charlottes. Eerily authentic. Waves as tall as me, it was so powerful tranquil. The man of the household is retired and on disability, so he doesn't do much, but he plays lots of video games, and at night, I could hear him playing Zelda 64 below me. That put me in the strangest mindstate. While I looked through their library of books, I saw that second newspaper with that guy on it whose kid was attacked by the Grizzly. Trippy. The lady of the house is a principal, so we discussed the teacher's strike for quite a while.

Racism:
Heading north from Kamloops, I expected to encounter racism, due to the fact that the native population is much higher as you head north. I didn't encounter anything too blatant, but it was clear that racism was in the air. There's many different tribes/bands though and racism is occasionally confined to certain bands. It bothered me, but then again, I guess it's really nothing new, it's a fact of life, which isn't an excuse of course, but it probablly isn't going away any time soon. I didn't hear anything too derogatory though, thankfully. Lots of reserves. Most of the ones I saw weren't as depressing as I'd envisioned, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe this isn't the best spot to state this, but fuck it. I found it very hard to distinguish the Haida from the Caucasians on Haida Gwaii. The Haida have much lighter skin than you'd expedct, and they seem more Oriental too. Nothign too distinctive, in fact, most Haida looked like there were only half-Haida, which they probably weren't. Took me a few days on the island to realize that many people I saw were Haida. The lady I was staying with said about 60% of the kids at school in Queen Charlotte City are Haida, which I would never have guessed.

Day 8:
Not much happened this day. Wish I could've worked in the garden, but the dice didn't roll that way. I did more carpentry. Only highlight was taking a break and riding a scooter (max 60km/hr) to the springs to fill up my water bottle. I was doing a lot of thinking about how long to stay on the island and where I wanted to go. I still wanted to make it to Stewart, and I would've loved to have made a detour at William's Lake on the way back, and going all the way out to Bella Coola and seeing Tweedsmuir (largest provincial park in BC). But I knew it'd be getting colder on the mainland and rainier, so it'd probably be best to just head straight for Kamloops. After reviewing the ferry schedule, I realized I'd made a wrong assumption, so that I had the choice of either leaving the next day or a week and a day. I could've left other times, but I wanted to take the night sailing in order to be bale to hitchhike with a full day ahead of me, instead of one hour of daylight.

Day 9:
Apparently on the west coast of Haida Gwaii, garbage and other matter often washes ashore from Japan. The people I was staying with had found a Japanese hardhat, funny little thing. Makes you realize how small of a world it is. Pristine coast, edge of the western world, beautiful rainforests, tons of cultural history, and oriental soda bottles. weird.
I started packing then went for a hike that was just down the road from where I was staying. The trail is a loop that goes by a huge jam (like MASSIVE), but I imagine that the main attraction is just the forest you walk through (no elevation gain). You pass through numerous types of forest and vegetation before you get to the old growth forest. Such a cool place, this is why I'd come 1000km and taken a 6hr ferry ride. Nothing but trees, moss, and mushrooms, on the ground level, because not much else can grow when the canopy is blocking so much light. Such an awesome area. I could just sit in there all day, high on life (or other things), but I had to make it back to the farm, so i tried to keep a decent pace. I started spotting what I thought were Liberty Caps, so I picked a bunch, as well of one of every other kind of mushroom. Mushroom picking is fun stuff. I had a ton of fun walking through the forest, but eventually the trail disappears into the river, so I started following these ribbons, and eventually I'm stuck in Slall (big leafy bush with berries) that's as tall as me, and there's no trail anywhere. Suddenly I realize how much easier it is to lose any sense of direction when you're not on the side of a hill (like around Golden). I bushwhack for a while, kinda worried, kidna having a blast, then it starts raining.Thankfully, and I cannot stress how lucky I was, there was no thornbushes or anything prickly, or I'd have been bloody miserable, literally. It took me about 20 minutes to find a trail again, and I'd totally lost all sense of direction by then, so I had no idea how much further I had to go. I past the log jam, which helped me orient myself, then I decided to take this branch of the trail, labelled 'CMT', out of curiosity. I later found out that CMT stands for Culturally Modified Tree. The trail was leading to a tree that the Haida had started to carve while it was still growing, with the goal of it becoming a canoe. I might be wrong, maybe it wasn't alive and maybe it was for a canoe, but either way, it was unfinished. Regardless, I never made it, cuz I got lost again. Must be this time of the year, when the bushes grow so rampant that it covers the trail. It took me another 15 minutes to figure my shit out again, and I was soaked by now. After I found the trail again, I stuck to it and found my way out to the highway . Very awesome place though, I can't imagine what the west coast forests are like. So that was the only noteworthy thing I got to do while I was on the islands. I didn't make it to Tow Hill, into Naikoon Park, out to Rennell Sound, or to Moresby Island. But that's ok, cuz I definately plan on coming back and doing a bike trip. The sialnds would be so cool on a bike with a buddy, and I could take the ferry from Port Hardy on Vancouver Island too.
When I got back to the farm, I sorted my mushrooms and tossed out most of them because they were too mushy (HA, get it?). I finished packing and started hitchiking, trying to make to Queen Charlotte City in time to meet the guy I was working with and check out an Aikido class, but it took me too long to get picked up. I got picked up by a nice, but very fat, guy from Vancouver who came up and done some kayaking down the west coast of Moresby, so he was cool too talk to. He was a loner too, so he'd done the kayaking by himself, which I found to be quite impressive, and not just cuz he was such a big guy. After realizing I'd missed Aikido and seeing that the library was closed (libraries have the weirdest hours and the one there has the exact opposite days as Golden's branch). As trivial as it sounds, i found it interesting that the QC Library is part of the Vancouver Island Library system, which is a long long ways away (15hr ferry ride to Prince Rupert, then the 6hrs from Rupert to Skidegate). I caught a ride from a lady to the ferry, where I ran into these three young people from the Czech Republic that I'd seen at the Prince Rupert Sailing, so I talked to them a bit about theuy're travels. Then I might these two nice mushroom pickers from Quebec. They'd been out at camp for about 6 weeks picking mushrooms, so they weren't exactly models of human hygiene. I shoed them the mushrooms I'd picked, but tehy told me they weren't the right ones, so I tossed them out. They had their packs full of dried mushrooms, legal and other. We talked all ab out hitchhiking, and they shared they're horror stories with me. We talked about always having a knife easily accesible for protection (I could have my blade open in my hand in about half a second), but the one guy told me how he doesn't do that (keep a knife for defense) anymore because he believes that it attracts negative energy. Of course, that depends very much on your own beliefs, but I dug what he was saying, so I put my knife in my pack. They told me about catching rides on coal trains. They said never to go from Prince George to Dawson Creek (or was it Fort Dawson or Fort Nelson, whatever) because there's sucha long tunnel that you'll die of suffocation. He said the conductors wear gas masks when they go through it. I walked around looking for someone to ask for a ride heading east towards Prince George from Prince Rupert after we got off the ferry on the other side, and the first and only guy i asked was another Quebecois, but he'd been living in Golden. Name was Francoise and he'd been working up Chatter Creek, probably doing some sort of logging. He said he'd try to give me a ride, so I was stoked. The ride back on the ferry was uneventful and wasn't a rough ride at all.

Day 10:
Francois gave me a ride from the ferry. I had my camera ready to capture the waterfalls this time, but they were nearly non-existent since it wasn't raining. There were perhaps one or two trickles, but nothing close to what was there before.. The drive was so much different this time. Still nice though. We stopped to see Mt Shames, Terrace's ski hill. I don't know if I believe it, but I was told it gets the most snow in the world for a ski hill. Looked pretty small though, so maybe there was a backside to it. Nice location, very scenic.

Francois dropped me off in Terrace because he had lots of stuff to do there. A teacher gave me a ride to the edge of town, and I expressed my solidarity with the strike and got the latest news from him. After he dropped me off, I decided that I'd make a new sign that said "I SUPPORT BC TEACHERS" as soon as I could get some new cardboard. My next ride was probably the weirdest of the whole trip. A Christian Minister picked me up and right away we started talking about religion. I wanted to pick his brain, not so much to try to poke holes, just as reconnaissance, so to speak. He wouldn't answer me when I asked what denomination he was part of. He did tell me that he had organized a church youth rally that evening in Smithers and that there's were youth coming from as far as Kamloops. He said it was sort've an anti-terrorism thing (oh boy, I start to think). He didn't really explain how it was anti-terrorism, but that they were gonna go around town performing radical acts of kindness, such as, and this is the example he gave: handing out cans of coke. Maybe some of you won't catch the irony there and I don't feeling like expanding, but lets just say I started to wonder how daft this guy really was. He invited me to take part and that all the youth were staying out at his ranch at night, so I told him if I couldn't catch a ride out of Smithers by dusk, I'd call him. When asked about my faith, I told him I was interested in learning about all faiths, but that currently, I was quite interested in Zen and Buddhism. Then he starts a mini-rant on so-called 'mysticism' and how it's so vague and doesn't offer any concrete answers. ok, let's hit the 'pause' button here (apologies to Tara if you're reading for the blatant plagiarism)

First of all, mysticism is an umbrella-term that basically means putting faith over reason/logic. so basically, buddy here is just bashing himself. all religions put faith over reason. that's not a judgment, it's a fact. and it's not a bad thing either, faith and reason can't come hand in hand.

Second, I never said I'm into mysticism, I said I'm into Zen and Buddhism, I don't see what's so vague about that. And if you don't see the concrete answers, that's because you haven't even attempted to educate yourself on either of those systems. Dickhead.

'unpause'

He continues to subtly bash eastern religion throughout the rest of the ride. Mentions how he likes things that are black and white, yet when I ask him about Jesus stance on non-violence, he says, 'well it depends on the situation'. And I'm not even TRYING to test this guy. Brutal. He talks about how the life of Jesus is the most documented event in history and how the bible is really a history book and that it's very consistent. So if it's the most documented event... fuck it, not even gonna start.

It was pretty obvious from the start, that this guy was very out-of-touch with the world, very conservative and all sorts of things that made him not come across very well. If I had been more sensitive, or a stronger believer in any particular religion, I would've been deeply offended by his ignorance and choice words. He'd babble on about something Jesus said without really getting the message across and he'd take various other opportunities to preach. Clearly, he was pretty Evangelical, if not in name, than at least in style.

Twice he said stuff very controversial (and preceded the statements with "and this might not sound politically correct). One of the statements was basically saying that Israel should destroy Palestine, that Palestinians are being punished by god, etc. Sure buddy, and next we should finish off those Commie pigs too. Nazi fuck. His other statement had to do with how the most powerful and prosperous nations have been Christian (I'd love to see his fact-book, cuz I'm pretty sure they forgot to check out a little-known fellow called GENGHIS FUCKING KHAN). He also went off about how all the laws that we know evolved from the bible and how we the church and state need to be reunited. Gee, I wonder you he VOTED for (click it, come on, do it).

Despite this guy's nastier side, we did agree on a few things. We're both disgusted with politics today (although I guess our solutions differ slightly, heh heh). We also talked a lot about how pervasive and subtle subliminal messaging has become. But if he thinks the church has clean hands in when it comes to that topic, he's surely mistaken. VERY surely mistaken, but that's a topic for another day, if I'm feeling particularly brash.

The last thing he told me about were a series of exorcisms he'd had to perform. The most in-depth one he told me was basically about a guy who was checking out the church during gospel hour, and he fell into a trance and just started rocking and wasn't responding to anything. a bunch of people got freaked out and left and this guy felt god speaking to him, telling him a word. So after unsuccessful tries, he was like, "in the name of Christ, I summon _____(whatever the word was) out of you!"

Then the guy came to and after calming down, he admitted that he'd had a guru who was teaching him transcendental meditation and he'd given him a mantra to use and that mantra was the word that the minister had summoned out of him, so presumably, it was the name of an evil spirit. Now I'm gonna sure what I do and don't believe, but it freaked me out, that's for sure. holy moly! He also told me about supposed connections between Buddhist spirits and nazi Germany. Obviously, he was choosing these topics of discussion to scare me into asking him for protection or something. anyways, he dropped me off after that, cuz he lived just west of smithers and he had to turn off the highway.

So I stood on the highway, super-spooked. one of the creepiest mindsets. I got a ride into smithers, then got a ride real quickly outta smithers. as soon as i saw the guy pull over for me, I was so relieved, cuz I knew that if i'd gotten stuck in smithers, I'd have called the guy, cuz i'd take a dry warm house over camping under a bridge anyday, in those circumstances. i vented to the guy who picked me up and he seemed pretty cool, so i relaxed right away and put the other stuff behind me. Really nice guy too. Dropped me off and Houston at dark and stayed under a bridge. We'd driven through snow between smithers and houston, so I knew what awaited me in the morning.

Day 11:
The coldest night of my trip revealed snow on the ground in the morning. I was up bright and early. I'd lost my spoon somehow, so eating my muesli was quite the challenge. I ended up putting my hand in a zip loc bag, and just scoop it into my mouth. Packing up was very cold on my hands, so once I got up to the highway, I start walking down the road to generate some warmth. I must've walked 7km before getting picked up. Dropped off between Bumfuck Nowhere and a hole in the ground at a place called Topley. Didn't take me too long to get my next ride. An older native fellow took me to Fort Fraser. On the way, we talked about drugs, ones that are tolerable (weed and mushrooms), and others that shouldn't be taken by anyone (crack, meth). He didn't support the teacher's strike. Most people that didn't support the strike used the reasoning that the teachers were setting a bad example for the kids, by breaking the law. Personally I think these were the people that, in general, didn't know the facts. And besides, personally, I think they set a good example, it's all a matter of perspective. I don't have respect for unjust laws, simple as that. Martin Luther King said it's your responsibility to break these sorts of laws. Anyways, this guy told me about an elder from Kitiwanga that gone hunting but had been missing for 2-3 weeks. We stopped in Burns Lake to find his cousin that would sell him a joint. Took him about 15 minutes to find the place. Then we started driving again, and we were smoking it, but he wanted to put the rest of the doob in a doobie toker, kinda like what Johnny Depp smokes out of in Fear and Loathing. We had to search the car for a while to find it, and then about a minute down the road, I went to ash the doobie out the window and the wind sucked it right out the window. SHIT! So we pull over and search the 150m of highway to no luck. I felt like such a fuckbag after all the time he'd taken to find the doobie and the roach holder. He didn't talk after that until I broke the silence by asking them if there was such a thing as native martial arts. He said no and I figured out that it's cuz, unlike karate, which means 'empty hand' because it's perfect for poor people who can't afford weapons, ancient natives would always have weapons, because they were hunters. So they'd have spears, bo and arrows, and hatchets. And they wouldn't have to practice much because that's what hunting was for and since their weapons were long range, hand to hand combat didn't really exist. But for fun, there were things like indian leg-wrestling. You've probably done this as a kid. Two people lay down, face up, head to toe, then raise the leg closest to eachother, wrap their legs around the other, and try to flip eachother. Stuff like that. And I guess archery and other accuracy stuff would've occurred.
After he dropped me off, I scored some cardboard and made that sign that said "I SUPPORT BC TEACHERS". I got a ride within ten minutes with a hunting guide that was returning home for the season to Enderby. He was working up north, west of Highway 37 on the way to Dease Lake. He said there were no trails in the wildlife refuge (irony) he guided in, and it took a few days on horse to get there. Sounds really fuckin remote and teeming with all sorts of animals. He was a really nice guy. He'd been in karate too, so we talked about that, and he shared some sketchy-ass hitchhiking tales with me. He got me to Prince George, where I took a series of buses that deposited me back at the UNBC campus, where I met Adam again, and shared my trip with him. We went out after and played pictionary at some chick's house. We were waiting for Jari and Bryce from Golden to show up form Golden, and we got into qutie a heated debate (about 8 of us) about the teacher strike. It was pretty interesting and kinda fun, but a little too chaotic with so many voices. Pictionary was fun, I had a few drinks that surprisingly weren't really affecting me. After, I got into a conversation with the girl that had been adamantly against the teacher strike, but still very informed (and conservative). We talked about her political views and she basically described herself as a progressive conservative, and thus, supported gay marriage, right-to-choose (abortion), and stuff like that, but was all about the 'laissez-faire' government when it came to the economy (no regulation). There wasn't much to reconcile between us politically, but we didn't rub eachother the wrong way either. In the same way that she was a progressive conservative, she was a progressive christian. This was a VERY welcome relief, and I was very thankful to hear her side of things to balance the whacko form the day before. She was part of the United Chruch, which I belive is the only chruch hat will perform gay marriages, and doesn't focus so much on sins, but on love and acceptance. I can't emphasize how much better it made me feel talking to a Christian on a one-on-one level where it actually feels one-on-one, not preachy and daft. She represented the exact opposite of the minister from Smithers. I found the biggest difference between them not in their beliefs, but in their people skills. Even though this girl was drunk by now, we could still have an exchange, and she was down-to-earth about things. Whereas buddy had been so out of touch that it seemed like he had travelled through time to present day and had no idea what present day life was like. So after that, me and Adam returned to his dorm, where I had to sneak in, because security was checking for student cards. That was the first night that I started having weird dreams and I've been having them ever since. I don't even bother writing them down, cuz there's so fragmented, but for example, last night's dream was about me going to live in the woods, and somehow i get stuck with these kids and i try to teach them to swim, but they all almost drown and when i pull them out of the water, they're all these litle kerosene lamps. WTF.

Day 12:
I decided to stay a full day in PG, before making the last leg of the journey. This was Sunday, so there wasn't much going on and the only place to eat was the pub. We talked to a security guard about her wages. Adam's great at starting conversation like that. I went to the library to browse. Being a private, not public, library, they lacked literature on subjects unrelated to academia, like matiral arts. But, thanks to biology, they did have all sorts of books to help me identify magic mushrooms. Me and Adam made the long walk down into town, talked about forestry, economics, and the pros and cons of university. I went to the computer lab for a while to read about martial arts, specifically Aikido, and the 5 animals (tiger, leopard, crane, dragon, snake) that make up the Shaolin animal style. I had brought my karate uniform along, hoping to train in 100 mile house on the way back at any cost, even though I wouldn't finish till it was dark and i'd prbably have to take a bus if i wanted to make it to kamloops in one day. But, when I called the sensei, I found out that karate was cancelled due to the strikes, since the schools were closed down (no janitors or heating, etc). I decided I'd get up as early as posible to try to make the 5-6hr trek to Kamloops in one final effort. I'd been able to make it 6-7hrs from kamloops to PG the first day, but since they, my max distance had been the 5 hours from PG to Hazelton. And I'd have to figure out a way of catching the buses to get me closest to the highway at the edge of town.

Day 13:
I had left the blinds open in Adam's living room so I had full view of a nice sunrise to drag me outta my sleeping bag nice and early. I took two buses to get to the highway and there was another hitchhiker returning to town, cuz he'd been trying for 3 hours without success. Whatever, he was old and dirty. Two other hitchhikers showed up after me and started walking down the road, out of respect for me being there first. I held up my sign and I know tons of people read it, but I didn't notice too many reactions. A few smiles and thumbs up, only one thumbs down and a few negative nods. It took me about an hour and 45 to get picked up by an older native trucker. He was nice, but I couldn't understand anything he said. Might've been cuz he was missing his two front teeth, but I'll never know. He talked a lot, crazy old fool, and I probably caught about 1 in every 4 things he said, but I kept nodded and smiling. Talked about his ex wife, blow-jobs, hating cops and the government. He drove me all the way to 100 Mile House. The drive wasn't that nice cuz all the leaves had fallen off the trees and there wasn't any other scenery. Quesnel was fucking disgusting. There was so much smoke, it was like driving through the fog. Trucker told me that Quesnel has 13 mills. UGH! He dropped me off just after 100 Mile House at the junction with Highway 24. I'd been trying to decide for days if I'd risk taking the less traveled road. It connects Highways 97 and 5, between Little Fort and 100 Mile House. Drew had told me it was a scenic drive, but I knew it'd be less traveled. On the other hand, I'd heard Cache Creek wasn't easy to hitch out of either, it'd be the same ugly shit I'd already seen that day, and I'd probably get dropped off on the wrong side of Kamloops. So I took my chances with the road less traveled. It paid off and a new trucker actually turned around to come back and pick me up and I'd only been waiting 10 minutes. It really was a scenic drive, much prettier, undisturbed forests, and nice little lakes, lots of elevation gain. The trucker was an ex-Hell's Angel and told me all sorts of stories, from dead hitchhiker’s to hash. He told me about some unknown trucker that's been running over native hitchhiker’s on the highway to Bella Coola. After we stopped for him to eat near the summit, he put on one of those 'books on CD', but it was REALLY bad. like trashy and shit. He deposited me at the Husky in Kamloops at 6:15. I was feeling good, so I speed-walked the 5km to Craig's and Drew's. I'd made it!

Day 14:
I decided that I might as well continue exploring new territory, so I took Highway 1 to Cache Creek, then Highway 99 over to Lillooet, and then through Pemberton, Whistler, and Squamish. It was probably the scenic highlight of my whole trip. I picked up a hitchhiker and his bike, poor starving, dirty bastard, and dropped him off in Cache Creek. Once you get closer to Lillooet, the Fraser River canyon appears and the desert there is much more eye-pleasing then the area around Kamloops. Lillooet is in a pretty cool location and I started to really like the place. Small town, probably a few thousand people, maybe 5-6000 with surrounding area. After that, the highway becomes narrow and windy, as it works it's way up towards Cayoosh Pass. Very awesome in here. Super narrow valley, with lots of rec sites by the river. It was so fun (but sketchy) to drive through. The scenery had changed drastically within 10 minutes. From desert to mountains. Once you get higher up, there's some wicked mountains, big lakes, and glaciers too. It's like the coast version of Roger's Pass. I believe you gain like 1000m, which is much more drastic of a change, but you still end up at a lower elevation than Roger's Pass. Descending to Pemberton, you drive by huge Lillooet Lake. After that is a small town and I would've never known if the next hitchhiker I picked up hadn't told me, but it was actually a reserve. This was in stark contrast to the reserve I forgot to mention at Burns Lake where me and the native guy had picked up that doobie. That place was very depressing. No trees, no color, just ugh. Felt very gray. But this town was super nice, I actually thought it was Pemberton. Pemberton itself is really nice, kind've like Canmore. Probably because it's only 30 minutes from Whistler. After descending from the pass, the valley had widened out again, but there was still mountains all the way through. I picked up a young native hitchiker, who told me all about the area, which was cool. Whistler is ever more posh than I'd expected. By far the richest place I've ever seen, it was unreal. Which isn't to say that I liked it, just that everything looks brand new and top of the line. It starts to get more coastal here, as far as vegetation goes. Nice area, but the scenery isn't as striking around Whistler as it is elsewhere. I dropped off the hitchhiker just past Whistler. The drive to Squamish was very busy and there was lots of construction (in prep for the Olympics), especially from Squamish to Vancouver. I saw some mountains that made me drop my jaw, it was very cool. The area Squamish is located in is really nice too, but there's some mills in the area that make it pretty hazy. The forests here are very cool to drive by. The Sea-to-Sky highway goes from Vancouver to Whistler, and is definitely quite busy , narrow, and windy, as it goes right along steep embankments down to the water. Nice views of the ocean and islands, before arriving at the ferry. This route had taken me about 5 and half hours at a moderately fast pace. Normally Kamloops to the ferry takes about 4 and a half hours, so I think the extra hour is well worth it. Not sure what the road conditions are like in the winter, but in the summer, I would VERY highly recommend checking this route out, I loved it. Didn't have any music in my car, yet I was never bored. Plus you don't have to drive through Vancouver at all, the ferry is the first thing you get to (if that's where you're going). I had just made the 5:00 sailing, and I had a great view of Mt Baker on the ferry, which I don't ever recall having seen from the ferry before. Everything seemed so new, since I'm not used to day sailings, so it was quite hard to get my bearings.

And that's all. I really liked the area between Lillooet and Pemberton and would definitely consider living there or even just checking the area out more in-depth for a summer, while camping at any of the rec sites along the way. I'll add a few posts about various aspects of the trip that didn't fit into my linear timeline here. Congrats and thanks if you actually read through the whole thing. That was over 13,000 words. Good job, team!

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Well I tried to add another Day onto my Haida Gwaii post, but my comp crashed. If you've benr eading along so far, you'd remember me mentioning the movies I saw at UNBC on the proposed oil drilling site within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska that may severely hurt the Porcupine Caribou (Porcupine comes from the name of a river they migrate near) and the Gwich'in people in the Yukon that rely on the Caribou for a large portion of their diet. This is a link to a petition that PM Paul Martin has read and seems to be gaining momentum. The site claims to have over 70,000 signatures so far. Some may say that as Canadians, we really have no input, since this is happening on US soil, but this isn't entirely true, because the Gwich'in people that rely on the Caribou live in the Yukon and the caribou herd is evenly spread between Alaska and the Yukon, it's only when they move to their calving grounds do they congregate solely on US soil. By all means, look into the topic yourself, there's all sorts of info out there. Bush says they can do the drilling in a way that will have little environmental impact, whereas the other side says that there's no way they could carry out the drilling without massive repercussions. Quite polar views (pun!). Personally, I've seen the footage and we're not talking about drilling a small hole with a hand tool, the machines (and the noise and pollution created by them ) is no small matter. Plus they'd have to create roads to get up there. We're talking about a gigantic project here and if the US wasn't so desperate for oil, they probably wouldn't bother. That's another thing that's disputed - how much oil will they actually find? anyways, take a look at the facts for yourself and decide if you wanna sign the petition.

-Added Day 9 to the QCI post

Watched my sister's soccer game otday, she plays just like me, it was cool to watch. I'm gonna try to join the men's team here. I'd be stoked to play even one more game of soccer this year. Played in a tournament in Revelstokewith the Golden team. Lots of fun.

Books

This was last spring. I'm on Wesley Ridge, overlooking Cameron Lake, between Qualicum Beach and Port Alberni. I was exploring one day and found some trails up to this repeater tower overlooking the Strait of Georgia. I think I mentioned it in my blog around that time. Anyways, I kept exploring down this trail and decided to go off the path and peek through some trees and voila. The higway that goes to Tofino from the east coast goes along the far side of the lake. Port Alberni's on the other side of the hills in the distance












I just spent a good hour looking through all my dad's topographic maps of the area around Golden, all scales and varieties, covering the area from the mica dam to revelstoke to the Nakusp ferry to Invermere to Banff and up along the continental divide to the latitude of Mica Dam again. He worked at an outfitter's shopa long time ago and stole one of each map, haha. He told me his name appeared in a book for taking a new route up a mountain and I didn't believe him, so he showed me, and also there's a pic of him skiing in this other book. I thought that was pretty cool. He told me a story about how him and my mom and a few other guys were camping way up high one night and this one guy dropped acid and when everyone had gone to bed, he went and climbed a mountain under the full moon. A big mountain too. And everyone was freaking out at 2am when they realised he was gone, but then he showed up, stoked beyond belief at how fun it had been. Awesome....


Working at the ski hill in Golden this summer, I had a ridiculous amount of time to read and I took full advantage of it. So I thought I'd share my opinions of the books I read. Between leaving the island in April and now, I think I finished 25 books. Hope you like books, cuz I'm gonna share my thoughts on the some....

Fiction:

Tom Robbins - I've fallen in love with his writing. It's almost depressing when i finish one of his books and return to the normalcy of other literature. His books are so rich in the weirdest metaphors, and the themes he incorporates are very thought-provoking. I read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Jitterbug Perfume, and Another Roadside Attraction. Jitterbug Perfume is my favorite so far, btu the other two were great too. I fully intend to read all his other books too, he's got at least 8. I highly recommend him.

Chuck Palahniuk - Survivor - This is the guy that wrote Fight Club. I fully intend to read all his other books too. Such a raw fuck-the-world style. Very funny and witty. I'm sure any of his books are great reads, they all have such fucked up premises. This one was about the only survivor of a cult that had committed suicide and he becmoes famous, but it's so twisted.

James Redfield - The Tenth Insight - Sequel to The Celestine Prophecy, not as good as the original, but still a decent continuation. I found it to be less practical then the first and almost too 'out-there', even for me. And that's saying a lot. Still some useful stuff for sure, but he kinda loses is the pragmatic aspect at one point. I would still highly recommend The Celestine Prophecy.

Dan Brown - The DaVinci Code - This was laying around my house so I decided to debunk the hype myself. I really liked it, but having not come from a Christian background, it's hard for me to critique his handling of the religious implications. Good read though, and got me very interested in the subject.

Biographical/Autobiographical:

Mark Salzman - Iron & Silk - About an American's experience as a teacher and martial arts student in China.

Rick Ridgeway - The Shadow of Kilimanjaro - About a trek from Kilimanjaro in to the Indian Ocean (Africa). Made me rethink and change my mind about hunting. It's not really a macho thing (well, not ALWAYS), it's more of feeling the adrenaline of being in the wild, and despite the rifles, it makes you feel closer to nature. Conservationists are some of the most avid hunters. I like books that make me re-evaluate my preconceptions.

Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan - The third book in the series, dealing with shamanism, ritual hallucinogens, native american spirituality. It's argued that this was all made up, but I give him the benefit of the doubt. He was an archaeology student who wanted to interview a shaman about peyote and ended up becoming a life long apprentice, these books were submitted as his thesis and he was awarded his master's degree for it. Crazy crazy crazy shit. REALLY makes you think about all sorts of stuff. Highly recommended. I think there's about 10 books in the series altogether and I intend on reading them all.

Robert Pirsig - Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintence - A classic that I had to read just because of the title. I didn't get too much out of the present timeline in the book, but the other stuff he talks about is some heavy shit. Deeply philosophical shit that reads like calculus, so definately not for everyone. This guy woke up one day in an asylum and his old presonality had been destroyed through shock therapy on orders from the governement (although it doesn't fully explain why). He talks about the philosophical revelations (intense!) that his old self had had. Helped me develop some ideas. Definately makes my perception of Zen and Buddhism fuller. NOt recommended unless you have some backgorund in philosophy.

Alex Grey - The Mission of Art - This is by the guy that does all the crazy art I've posted on my site like the painting below. Unfortunately I'm drawing a blank about this book, but I know I liked it. This was when I was on a plane to my family reunion in North Carolina, so I was sort've distracted. Dammit, I wish I could remember more. He examines all aspects of the art procees, like creativity and meaning and the social implications of art and all that. My apologies to Mr Grey for shooting blanks here.

















Nelson Mandela - Long Walk to Freedom - Africa's freedom fighter, largely responsible for ending apartheid in South Africa. I read this huge autobiography to help me fine-tune my stance on non-violence. I've read Che Guevara, Martin Luther King, and some Gandhi, the full spectrum of the application of violence in seeking revolution. I still haven't made up my mind fully yet, but I did learn alot about South African history. He spent 23 years in jail for starting a guerilla army. I thought he would've been more non-violent, but it's kinda complex. Good book, but not highly recommended, unless you're interested in the subject. I enjoyed the Che book more. And I really loved reading Martin Luther King.

Arun Gandhi - Legacy of Love - Gandhi's grandson tells stories about non-violence through dealing with his grandfather. Fairly short book, but very nice. I think I'll read Gandhi's autobiography, The Story of My Experiments With Truth or another one recommended to me called Gandhi's Passion. If you see it on the shelf somewhere, pick it up, but otherwise, don't worry about it. But definitely read something regarding gandhi, besides just a historical overview of India's independance movement

David Suzuki - The David Suzuki Reader - A complilation of his best articles on many topics. I have tons of respect for this guy and I loved the first section of the book, called Interconnections. Fascinating stuff that really makes you think twice and wonder how much we really know about the natural world around us. Except for the other section on Leaders and Role Models, I found the articles to be a bit repetitive, but that's just cuz I've read so much environmental stuff before. Definitely recommend it though. It'll change the way you think about ecology.

I also read Bronwyn's mom's book, Beyond the Fortress, about here physical and spiritual trek into the Himalaya in Nepal. I think you either have to know Janus, or be familiar with the topics she talks about (like the Celestin Prophecy among other thing). I did enjoy reading it because I knew the author and also for the trekking account.

Tom Wolfe - The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - An account of the misadventures of on of the guy's who helped opoularize LSD (no, not Timothy Leary, but he's in here too). Main character is the guy that wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Really brings you back to the '60s, especially helpful for someone as young as myself, who otherwise has very little access to such an amazing era. Written in very weird still, I enjoyed the book and was really drawn in. Recommended, especially for anyone interested in drugs, hippies, or anything that was spawned out of that era (like raves and strobe lights, believe it or not).
Other Non-Fiction:

Chogyam Trungpa - Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior - Spritual (but not clinging to any specific religion) guide to becoming a warrior. A pretty cool read, especially for hitchhiking. I have a feeling that I need to re-read it to let certain conecpts soak in, even though I've never read the same book twice. Some really good concepts and ideas and I was able to apply many of them, but I just didn't grasp it in it's entirety, so I know it'll fade away. Recommended.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead - Probably the biggest let-down of the summer. I was expecting some highly psychadelic shit and was pretty stoked by the introduction, but ultimately, I never gained anything, in fact I stopped reading about three quarters of the way thru and just skimmed the rest. Not because it was crap, but because it wasn't what I was looking for. Reminds me of Dante's Inferno, when Dante is led ona tour thru hell and learns about all the different punishments for the sinners. Interesting to certain degree, but really doesn't have any practiciality, despite it's claims. Well that's not true, in Buddhist society, I could see why this would be a highly valued book, but I couldn't take much out of it. Maybe I need to read a different interpretation. A lot of it was too esoteric and technical.

Phillip Kapleau - The Three Pillar of Zen - Really great book on Zen Buddhism, either as in antroduction or as further reading. Really helped drive the concepts home and will definately help my meditations. Highly recommended.

Aldous Huxley - Doors of Perception / Heaven and Hell - The writed of Brave New World documents his experiences with mescalin (the drug in Peyote). This was short, but I really enjoyed it. He covers a bunch of topics, but it's all very fascinating and I'd highly recommend it, especially cuz this was written back in like the early '50s, before the drug scene emerged.

Jon Krakauer - Into the Wild - My favorite book of the summer, if not ever. Documents the life of Chris McCandless, a young man who donated all of his savings and belongings the day he graduated university, then travelled the US as a hitchhiker, before he headed to Alaska and was found dead four months later. An absolutely enthralling book that stunned me. Not a long book, I read it in like 4 sitting on my days off and couldn't get my mind off it. The character of this guy is amazing and inspiring and the tale of his travels is haunting and really stoked a fire inside me. This book is solely responsible for my hitchhiking trip (Alaska was my orinigal destination). Not sure how others will feel about it, because this book speaks directly to me as a human being. A must read, VERY highly recommended.

Political:

Noreena Hertz - The Silent Takeover - Documents the rise of corporations. Not fatntastic, but not bad either. I've read so much of this kind of stuff though, so it didn't do much for me. Meh.

Joel Bakan - The Corporation - This book on the other hand was great. The movie was based on this book. Same subject as the above book, but much better written. Really helped me certain technical things about capitalism. Definately a really good book, you'll learn something. Covered most of the same stuff as the movie, but more in depth, didn't seem to repetitive though and I've seen the movie three times. Highly recommended.

Naomi Klein - Fences and Windows - A collection of articles by one an awesome activist. No Logo is one of the most important books of our time, and I'd highly recommend it. This book was ok too, but as with the David Suzuki Reader, because it's a collection of writings, it lacks continuity. But it's probably the most up-to-date book I've read on globalization. Read No Logo instead.

Still here? Whew, that was tough. After Into the Wild, Jitterbug Perfume was my favorite read of the year. I'm currently reading Bruce Lee's book that he was never able to finish, Tao of Jeet Kune Do, a fresh take on martial arts, that I think will be very helpful in my training. Also, I'm reading The Dancing Wu Li Masters, a book from the '70s on quantum mechanics for laymen that I'm really enjoying. High on my 'To Read' list are books spanning the topics of karate, paganism, exitentialism, ecology, various political fields, non-violence/civil disobedience, LSD (Timothy Leary), Aghora (a secretive and fascinating barnch of Hinduism), Tai Chi, more warrior literature, and more of Tom Robbins, Chuck Palahniuk, and Carlos Castaneda. If anyone ahs read any of the authors or books I've mentioned, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Wow, I've been working on this post for two hours....