The last day of the pack trip. We woke up at five, ate quickly, cleaned up camp, and packed the horses. It was only about a four or five hour ride back, and the horses knew we were headed home so they set a quick pace. A couple hours in it started to rain. We stopped, dismounted, and pulled our rain gear out of our saddlebags and put it on. The rest of the ride the rain only got harder. It was cold and miserable and my hat got warped. When we got back to the ranch we started to unpack and un-tack. My hands were so cold that I couldn’t make them work properly. I couldn’t get a good grip on anything. I went to the bathroom and I couldn’t do my fly back up so I ran my hands under hot water until I could sort of feel them again, but I still couldn’t work them in the way I needed to. I ended up just doing my belt up really tight and pulling my shirt down so that no one would see that my pants were in fact undone. Brenda helped me finish un-tacking Eldorado. Over the next couple hours my hands started to operate as usual.
After we had finished taking care of our horses I showered. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Originally I had planned to stay for another three weeks on an internship. I had assumed this would lead to a job, but since the pack trip season was ending and the hunting season was beginning there wouldn’t be any work for me to do, during my internship or after. Most of the other students were going back to Surrey after lunch, and Brenda told me that if I went back with them I could stay with her at the Sheraton. Fairly last minute I decided to take the shuttle. I stuffed my things into my backpack, no idea if I was making the right decision or not. I remember sitting in the bus on the six-hour ride back to Surrey and realizing I couldn’t just take it back. Sometimes I think that maybe I spend so much time in my head going over scenarios and then changing them slightly or scrapping them that sometimes I forget that I can’t redo things if they don’t work out. I made the decision to go impulsively which meant I hadn’t had the chance to go over the different possibilities and I felt a little panicked. I was afraid I’d made the wrong decision. Which isn’t really something I believe in I don’t think, at least not in the way I was feeling it at that point, like this was a wrong turn that there was no recovering from. In the end I think it was a decision I didn’t expect to have to make, and I ended up in a place I hadn’t expected to be.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Day Three of Pack Trip
On the third day of the trip we got up around six. First we got the horses and then we started packing up the camp. We all ate breakfast together, and with our food and the other groups food combined we actually had quite a bit to eat. The other group left around ten. They were heading back to the ranch and had an eight-hour ride ahead of them.
We cleaned, took a last inventory, chopped wood, and then packed the horses up. While we were packing we heard a floater plane flying overhead, and from all of our respective locations we ran to the lake to see it land. We missed it, but we all stood on the beach watching it as it maneuvered towards our dock to drop a couple of mountain bikers off.
It took five or six hours to get to the next camp, which I believe was called Lacky. Lacky is a much more basic camp then Spruce Lake. The tents are the same, but there isn’t a cabin, just a shack with dishes and a fire stove. When we got there it was obvious that a bear had been through the shack. Some plates and cups were strewn across the floor along with a bottle of dish soap that had been spilled. There was one big soapy paw print in the dirt on the floor.
We cleaned up the shack and took inventory while it was still light. Clayton and Dave made dinner and I snuck off to one of the tents to be alone for a while. It got dark quickly and I was glad we didn’t have to go stake the horses after we ate. We did however still have to feed and water the horses. In order to water them we had to go to the creek, fill buckets, and bring them back to the corral. It was pitch black and the buckets were really heavy. It took two of to carry one when it was less than half full, then we filled smaller buckets and stumbled back and forth between the corral and the creek in order to top up the big buckets. By the end my arms throbbed and felt like they might be a little longer than before. I stumbled up the hill back to camp hoping like hell that there wasn’t anything else we had to do before bed.
We cleaned, took a last inventory, chopped wood, and then packed the horses up. While we were packing we heard a floater plane flying overhead, and from all of our respective locations we ran to the lake to see it land. We missed it, but we all stood on the beach watching it as it maneuvered towards our dock to drop a couple of mountain bikers off.
It took five or six hours to get to the next camp, which I believe was called Lacky. Lacky is a much more basic camp then Spruce Lake. The tents are the same, but there isn’t a cabin, just a shack with dishes and a fire stove. When we got there it was obvious that a bear had been through the shack. Some plates and cups were strewn across the floor along with a bottle of dish soap that had been spilled. There was one big soapy paw print in the dirt on the floor.
We cleaned up the shack and took inventory while it was still light. Clayton and Dave made dinner and I snuck off to one of the tents to be alone for a while. It got dark quickly and I was glad we didn’t have to go stake the horses after we ate. We did however still have to feed and water the horses. In order to water them we had to go to the creek, fill buckets, and bring them back to the corral. It was pitch black and the buckets were really heavy. It took two of to carry one when it was less than half full, then we filled smaller buckets and stumbled back and forth between the corral and the creek in order to top up the big buckets. By the end my arms throbbed and felt like they might be a little longer than before. I stumbled up the hill back to camp hoping like hell that there wasn’t anything else we had to do before bed.
Monday, October 6, 2008
The T-dot
I’m in Toronto now, crashing at my friend Hayley’s. Her and her roommates have been kind enough to take me on indefinitely. I’m going to do my very best to get out of here by the 15th though.
I spent most of the morning getting a cell phone and printing off my resume. I went to Kinko’s to print it, the only experiences I’ve ever had at Kinko’s have been with Claire, and they have always been terrible. Today, however, everyone was exceptionally helpful and friendly.
I spent the rest of the day walking around handing out resumes. Most of the people I gave them to seemed skeptical. At one small Italian bar called Drinx (which Hayley is convinced is run by the mob, which honestly is what made me want to work there) the woman who took my resume asked me if I was comfortable dealing with “all sorts of customers.” I said yes and she did that whole sideways glance thing to me. Sometimes I think that I might give off a really naive first impression to some people. Maybe I smile too much.
On College a canvasser for the Canadian chapter of Save the Children stopped me and I talked to him for a while. When it came up that I was looking for work he tried to convince me to apply for the same job he was doing. It turns out he works for public outreach, which is the same company I worked for when I was canvassing for greenpeace. I told him I’d only been able to bring myself to do his job for two days and then I’d quit. He really didn’t want to take no for an answer, apparently he has good intuition about these sorts of things. To prove this he told me to think of a number between one and ten, but he guessed seven and I was thinking four. He was friendly though. I guess I could do that job as a very last resort, but I don’t think it’ll come to that.
I spent most of the morning getting a cell phone and printing off my resume. I went to Kinko’s to print it, the only experiences I’ve ever had at Kinko’s have been with Claire, and they have always been terrible. Today, however, everyone was exceptionally helpful and friendly.
I spent the rest of the day walking around handing out resumes. Most of the people I gave them to seemed skeptical. At one small Italian bar called Drinx (which Hayley is convinced is run by the mob, which honestly is what made me want to work there) the woman who took my resume asked me if I was comfortable dealing with “all sorts of customers.” I said yes and she did that whole sideways glance thing to me. Sometimes I think that I might give off a really naive first impression to some people. Maybe I smile too much.
On College a canvasser for the Canadian chapter of Save the Children stopped me and I talked to him for a while. When it came up that I was looking for work he tried to convince me to apply for the same job he was doing. It turns out he works for public outreach, which is the same company I worked for when I was canvassing for greenpeace. I told him I’d only been able to bring myself to do his job for two days and then I’d quit. He really didn’t want to take no for an answer, apparently he has good intuition about these sorts of things. To prove this he told me to think of a number between one and ten, but he guessed seven and I was thinking four. He was friendly though. I guess I could do that job as a very last resort, but I don’t think it’ll come to that.
Day Two of Pack Trip
On the second day of the trip we met around six am and went to round up the horses. All but two were there. After we’d gotten the eight horses that were still in the field back to camp Linda and I rode out bareback to find the other two. One thing I didn’t mention before is that we put cowbells around the necks of the horses that are hobbled. You also want to try and stake/hobble the horses so that the camp is between the field that the horses are in and the ranch, this way if the horses decide to head back to the ranch you’ll hopefully hear them.
One of the horses that wasn’t with the herd was a paint, so we rode around listening for cowbell and looking for a patches of white in the trees. Eventually we found them, not very far from where the herd had been, and we herded them back to the camp.
After breakfast we went on a short ride up to a place called ‘cowboy cabin’ where there is an old cabin that cowboys used to use when they were grazing cattle in the area. The roof has caved in now and someone has placed some old tin and glass ‘artifacts,’ that were presumably inside the cabin in a line under one of the windows. We looked at the heap of wood for a little while and then rode up a little further to a small field where we ate lunch.
I think we were all pretty eager to have some free time. Clayton wanted to do some fishing in the lake, and Hanna and I wanted to go swimming. We managed to convince Vera, who wanted to take a five-hour trail ride, that we should go back to camp sooner and relax for a bit. Vera isn’t much for relaxing, I often felt like she wanted us to suffer, or not suffer, but she wanted us to understand how hard the job is. Which I get, but her attitude about the whole thing was frustrating.
Once we got back the camp we did some inventory before going to the lake. Just as we were about to go swimming some guests that we had met earlier in the week at the lodge showed up. It was funny timing because it appeared as if we were on vacation: swimming and fishing. The guides who were taking the guests out made a few cracks about how their guide school never had time to swim. The guides are like an elite group of people who are tougher than you. Still, it was nice to see some different faces and talk to some different people.
The water was pretty cold, but nice. Clayton caught a fish and threw it back. After diner we had to go stake the horses again. With the new group at the cabin now we had a total of eighteen horses to stake and hobble. We took them to a different, bigger, field. This field was more like a meadow, and flat, instead of slanted, and there was a creek off to the left. We started staking and hobbling the horses. It felt like some sort of fantasy world, the sun was setting, the field was completely yellow, and the horses were all hopping around like oversized rabbits grazing.
When we got back to camp the other group had made a camp-fire, and we sat around roasting marshmallows and listening to the guides swap stories.
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