(May 2003)

I once read a poem (I wish I could remember the poet or title) about a vagabond who always starts getting restless when he sees the leaves falling from the trees. Joni Mitchell might have based her song "Urge for Going" on that poem, because there the restlessness is also associated with autumnal imagery. I've always related more to Astrid Lindgren's vagabond ("Rasmus and the Vagabond") in that autumn makes me wish for a warm house to stay in. It's when the air gets warm and the days grow long that I get the urge for going.

I'm back in Vancouver* now after another little excursion. Two friends of mine (Dan Steenburgh and Colin Wood) needed to get to Toronto and were going to drive their cars there (through the U. S.). It was sort of weird doing a road trip with three guys in two cars, but it ended up working all right. I had been up all the previous night recording some new music, so I was out of commission for much of the first day. We took an indirect route, passing through southern Idaho to visit a friend, and then heading to northwestern Wyoming to see if we could do a spin through Yellowstone National Park. My typical timing defects seemed to be at work here again, because we stood before the entrance of Yellowstone on the day before it would open for the season. Instead of waiting around for another day, we decided to just keep going.

Both Idaho and Wyoming have a lot of great scenery and empty landscapes, which were even better because we took back roads, instead of the main highways, for most of the stretch. Along the highways you usually don't see as much, and there's always the same giant corporations represented at every stop (McDonald's, Texaco, etc.). But we got to see some charming small towns, quaint log cabins, friendly Mormons, and plenty of natural splendor. In Rapid City, SD, we stopped again to visit a friend. We did the whole Mt. Rushmore visit touristy thing, and had a look at the Crazy Horse statue (this is a gargantuan statue being carved out of a mountain. When it's finished it's going to be the biggest statue in the world by far, but it looks like this won't happen in our lifetime, given the minimal progress over the last 20 years or so).

Our next stop was Minneapolis, which meant a full day's driving. We took turns driving and sleeping, and since we were three guys and two cars, one of us was always driving alone. But it was sort of nice to be able to just drive alone through large stretches of land while listening to Miles Davis or Sigur Ros. I rarely get around to really listening to music anymore.

I got pulled over on a Minnesota freeway for doing 90 mph, but the cop let me go with a warning when he saw that my driver's license is German. (who can figure it out?) I got to meet some friends in the Minneapolis area (including a day at the famous/infamous Mall of America), and then took the bus to Winnipeg for a few days. It was good to be in Winnipeg again, hanging out with family and relatives. Then I got a ride to Flin Flon, 8 hours North of Winnipeg. I was slated to play a Saturday night gig in a coffee shop and do the mother's day sermon at two churches. It went really well, especially the Saturday night. The people were actually listening to my music, which is far beyond what I've come to expect from any crowd, let alone a coffeeshop crowd. The Sunday night I went to Snow Lake, a little northern mining town where I had worked as a youth pastor two summers ago. It was good to see "my kids" again, and how they've grown. I was able to do a "music and missions" evening at the church there.

Hitch hiking out of Snow Lake would have been an ambitious endeavour, since the traffic up there is very sparse, but I found someone who was going to The Pas and took me along. Even in The Pas, which is on one of Manitoba's major highways, the rides were scarce. Someone took me a few miles out of town, which was a little bit of an improvement because the sympathy factor was high ("Oh, look at that poor guy standing in the middle of the wild, let's get him to the next town before the bears get him"). Every seven minutes or so a car would come by, and the third or fourth one stopped for me. The driver was a school superintendent heading down to Swan River to meet with some student mentors. By the time we got there the sun was beginning to set, and I started considering when I would head over to the empty barn across from me to see if I could spend the night in there. But I did get a ride out of there from a Lutheran minister who dropped me off in one of those tiny Prairie towns that look like the houses have stood since the early settler years. There were probably only about two dozen houses in the town, and no store, no gas station, no restaurant. I walked the streets and took in the atmosphere until it got dark. I spread out my sleeping bag in their ballpark (they did have one of those) and slept for a bit. I awoke again around 3:30 AM because it was very cold. From then until sunrise I drifted in and out of the sort of half-waking dreams about icebergs, blizzards, glacial lakes and Inuit. I need to find me a warmer sleeping bag. The dogs of the town kept waking up and barking throughout the night, and the whine of coyotes could be heard from the bushes.

Once the sun came out, it got warm. The traffic along the highway was still very sparse, and mostly it consisted of the type of people that just drive right on by with an expression of fear. Eventually I got a ride from a tractor salesman in a Dodge Ram hauling a large trailer. After a while he got tired and asked me if I wanted to drive so that he could take a nap (the same thing had happened the day before with the school superintendent). It was a bit of an adjustment, hauling this great trailer along with so much momentum that would grind to a slow halt even when you push the brake all the way in. In this way we got all the way to Qu'Appelle, on Highway 1. Here there's more traffic, but also less sympathy. I didn't have to wait too long, though, until a soldier picked me up and took me to Regina. He's stationed in Afghanistan, and was telling me about marching around in the desert mountains there with 120 lbs of weight (mostly weapons and water). I said I suppose everyone wants to know what happened to bin Laden. He said bin Laden is dead, and told me the story of a troop of guerillas getting shot down by Black Hawks and local villagers coming in to bury the bodies. Then the military went in and exhumed the bodies again and supposedly found bin Laden among them.

Of course it is difficult for me to verify this story, and it certainly doesn't seem the sort of information that someone nonchalantly tells you as you're speeding through rural Saskatchewan. This soldier was actually surprised that I had heard nothing about it in the news. Hmmmm.

That's about half the story, but I'll end the eMail here because my travel reports tend to get a little long. I'll write again in a few days, and tell you about mosquitoes, opera auditoriums in Edmonton, and what to do with a houseboat if you're in Salmon Arm on the long weekend in May.

Til then,

Marco

*Someone told me I should be more specific, since there's more than one city named Vancouver. Whenever I mention Vancouver I'm talking about the big one, on the West Coast of Canada.

(read next travelogue)

<-back | pictures->