North!

I was thinking North. Canada is big. If you look at a map of Canada you will see lots of towns with no roads to them. The Northern part of Canada is wide open with few, if any roads. The map I was using marked a number of roads that were winter roads only. Their routes crossed rivers and lakes when everything was frozen over. Frozen over! For the last three mornings there had been frost on my car. A month earlier I was swimming in the ocean off of the Florida coast. Now I was in an area that freezes over all winter long and I was about to go... Norther!

It was one of the reasons for heading into Ontario in the first place. Go as far North as possible within my time constraints. Ignace would be my jumping of point. I would drive up to Pickle Lake and keep going. The pavement ended at Pickle Lake, but one of my maps showed that it continued as gravel. Oboy! Let's go at least a hundred miles into the bush! And what a name for the end of the road, Pickle Lake! Funny thing about Pickle Lake. A few days later I was checking into a Motel and the Lady at the desk raised her eyebrows when I mentioned I had been to Pickle Lake.

"Pickle Lake, were you Crazy?"

"What's wrong with Pickle Lake?"

"You're lucky you didn't run into a roadblock."

"Roadblock? What?"

"The Indians up there set up roadblocks. They stop you and then help themselves to whatever they want of yours."

"Well I didn't see any roadblocks and none of the locals I spoke with said anything about them."

"Well then, you were lucky."

Personally I don't know. It might be a vicious rumor. There is a bit of friction between the aboriginals and the settlers where I was up North. For some reason, the Canadian Government is extremely generous to them, some feel it is undeserved welfare. I heard all kinds of stories. Alcoholism, gangs, nothing good going on. One thing I keep in mind when listening to these things is that for many people (and the media) it is more fun and interesting to relate stories about the bad aspect of folk. So if one in a group of ten people is misbehaving, that person will be talked about a whole lot more. People outside that group of ten will associate the tenth's behaviors with the whole group of ten. I didn't study the issue long enough to tell which way the scale is tilted.

It was a 200 mile drive to Pickle Lake. I filled my tank at the store in town. When I was paying I chatted with the clerk.

"So how much further does the pavement go?"

"Not too far, but I don't know exactly, I have only been here two weeks."

"Two weeks? What brought you up here?"

"My girlfriend, she got a job as a school teacher in town."

"Oh my and you followed her way up here? You must really love her."

"Oh Yeah. I can't wait to get the cable TV installed so I can get an internet connection again."

"Cable? Way up here?"

"I don't watch TV, but that's how you get high-speed. Yeah , cable, they have a big dish outside of town."

It was clear he could provide no local gossip. I paid and went out. Three miles later I hit gravel and noted the odometer reading.

It was a wide and well-maintained gravel road. It seemed an endless drive that went on forever. When I was about 35 miles beyond the asphalt I passed a road grader. The Grader was on his way to work . I never thought of the logistics of maintaining a road this far beyond the edge of everything. The grader had a camper trailer in tow. Apparently the driver was going to set up camp way out somewhere and work the grader close to his campsite. When I was driving back I saw the grader again and his campsite about 40 miles beyond where I passed him.

Just about 100 miles in, I found a nice place to camp. There was a lake, no one else around. No one except some black and white birds that were quite bold and friendly. It was pretty easy to get them to eat from my hand. They took a gadzillion peanuts and hid them into the nooks and crannies of the Jack Pine trees. The next morning I saw a squirrel finding all of the hiding spots, extracting the peanuts and moving them to a cache of its own.

It is interesting how you might think you are way far out in the middle of nowhere and someone else will stumble into your scene. The second day a truck drove up and stopped by the latrine. Afterward, they drove the loop around the camp ground and stopped by my camp. It turned out to be a semi-local couple. They had been coming up to that area every year for fifteen years spending six to ten weeks in their trailer which was set up about 25 miles away. They were just out for a drive. Looking for mushrooms for their supper and maybe a few grouse on the way back. We talked for over an hour. He never once mentioned road blocks. We did, however, cover the topics of moose, moose hunting and bears. Oh there were bears in the woods and when they poop they don't use Charmin. I asked if he thought I had my food tied up high enough. He said yes, probably. "Bears can't look up. Their heads won't let them. They might smell the food but they can't or won't think to look up."

I wrote a poem that involved bears that morning:

I can't sleep with my honey

because of the bears

They might try to come get it

thinkin' it's theirs.

So, come the morning

it's no honey for me,

Cause it's too cold and hard

to put in my tea.

Clearly not Shakespeare.

The second day I also realized one of my tires was leaking air. Hmmm a flat tire 100 miles into the bush. I think I might have picked something up the previous day when I was exploring some track that went way off into the woods. Good thing the my truck had a spare, I would have to drive carefully on the way back and curtail any more exploring until it was fixed.

There is one thing to keep in mind about North. When you are up there you just might be the only one around for miles. Be prepared to spend time if something goes wrong. Don't drive out more than half a tank if you have no spare fuel. Gravel roads will lower your mileage. And be aware of bear.