Day two: Thunder Bay baby!
A brilliant beginning to the day—I get to have breakfast at a historic Winnipeg site with Keri, Devin, and their new baby Hazel. It’s toast, eggs and coffee at Salisbury’s, a franchised greasy-spoon diner of great renown in Winnipeg and owned in part by Burton Cummings no less (or so I’m told).
The drive begins beautifully. The snow is crisp and the sun is shining as I enter a rockier terrain with trees that break up the monotony of the landscape. It’s simply beautiful. Amid the preparations to leave and the hectic schedule at home, it’s blissful to just be in this space, appreciating one’s surroundings and witnessing an unfamiliar nature. The stillness and serenity is magnificent. It makes me wonder, can one really commune with nature while busting through it on a single-laned highway at 140km/hr? Why not?
It turns out that the CD skipping of yesterday was not an isolated incident. I’m relying mostly on the stereo—new CDs, books on tape, etc—to make the drive from Saskatoon to Quebec tolerable, interesting, possible! With about 10,000 more km to log on this journey, it’s more than a little disturbing to hear the stereo crapping out. . . at day TWO. The skipping becomes more frequent. Then the CD simply pauses, breaking up the narrative flow of the current book, Disobedience by Jane Hamilton. The story resumes, skips, pauses.
I tolerate this for awhile, engrossed in the story and desperate for distraction. But when the voices actually begin distorting, obscured by a strange static, I give up and turn off the stereo altogether. The timing is perfect.
The sun just inhaled her last ray and ducked beyond the horizon. The sky is clear and dark, and the moon is brilliant, making the snow in the ditches glow. I needed silence to appreciate this moment: the quiet, the dark, the moon, the sky, the night. I slip in behind a semi and let him watch for deer and moose as I relax into a steady, unhurried pace. Looking in my rearview mirror, I see nothing but blackness and the faint glow of my own tail lights.
I used to be scared of the dark. When I was really little, I had an ice-cream cone shaped night light that plugged into the wall, and I would stare at it as I drifted off to sleep. Why was I scared of the dark? What are children really scared of when they say they’re scared of the dark? I remember waking up in the middle of the night once, and the power was out. Without my ice cream cone beacon ensuring my safety, I panicked. I clearly remember crying out, standing on my bed, pressing my face to the window and looking into the streets, gasping for light as if drowning in dark.
A cigarette butt flies out the window of the semi in front of me, sending a spray of bright red sparks up from the pavement. No need to gasp for light here.
I arrive in Thunder Bay and make my way to Willa and Lloyd’s hostel, nestled in the tree-lined Lakeshore Drive just outside of town. The house is a bizarre bungalow, with living rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms that seem to grow in and out of each other, spreading out along a long horizontal, unpredictable path. As Willa ushers me through the hostel, the nostalgia is overwhelming—each room reminds me of the home my Ukrainian grandparents lived in when I was just a kid. Same laundry basket. Same thin wood door with pegs on the back where my grandma hung a huge assortment of beads. To a young girl, these beads were nothing short of magical in their brilliance and quantity and I loved the way they would clang against the door when it was moved. As Willa and I weave through the hostel, I tell myself to call my grandparents later but notice that it’s too late.
Instead I call my lover, check on things back in Saskatoon, listen to the voices I need to hear before drifting off to sleep tonight.
The drive begins beautifully. The snow is crisp and the sun is shining as I enter a rockier terrain with trees that break up the monotony of the landscape. It’s simply beautiful. Amid the preparations to leave and the hectic schedule at home, it’s blissful to just be in this space, appreciating one’s surroundings and witnessing an unfamiliar nature. The stillness and serenity is magnificent. It makes me wonder, can one really commune with nature while busting through it on a single-laned highway at 140km/hr? Why not?
It turns out that the CD skipping of yesterday was not an isolated incident. I’m relying mostly on the stereo—new CDs, books on tape, etc—to make the drive from Saskatoon to Quebec tolerable, interesting, possible! With about 10,000 more km to log on this journey, it’s more than a little disturbing to hear the stereo crapping out. . . at day TWO. The skipping becomes more frequent. Then the CD simply pauses, breaking up the narrative flow of the current book, Disobedience by Jane Hamilton. The story resumes, skips, pauses.
I tolerate this for awhile, engrossed in the story and desperate for distraction. But when the voices actually begin distorting, obscured by a strange static, I give up and turn off the stereo altogether. The timing is perfect.
The sun just inhaled her last ray and ducked beyond the horizon. The sky is clear and dark, and the moon is brilliant, making the snow in the ditches glow. I needed silence to appreciate this moment: the quiet, the dark, the moon, the sky, the night. I slip in behind a semi and let him watch for deer and moose as I relax into a steady, unhurried pace. Looking in my rearview mirror, I see nothing but blackness and the faint glow of my own tail lights.
I used to be scared of the dark. When I was really little, I had an ice-cream cone shaped night light that plugged into the wall, and I would stare at it as I drifted off to sleep. Why was I scared of the dark? What are children really scared of when they say they’re scared of the dark? I remember waking up in the middle of the night once, and the power was out. Without my ice cream cone beacon ensuring my safety, I panicked. I clearly remember crying out, standing on my bed, pressing my face to the window and looking into the streets, gasping for light as if drowning in dark.
A cigarette butt flies out the window of the semi in front of me, sending a spray of bright red sparks up from the pavement. No need to gasp for light here.
I arrive in Thunder Bay and make my way to Willa and Lloyd’s hostel, nestled in the tree-lined Lakeshore Drive just outside of town. The house is a bizarre bungalow, with living rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms that seem to grow in and out of each other, spreading out along a long horizontal, unpredictable path. As Willa ushers me through the hostel, the nostalgia is overwhelming—each room reminds me of the home my Ukrainian grandparents lived in when I was just a kid. Same laundry basket. Same thin wood door with pegs on the back where my grandma hung a huge assortment of beads. To a young girl, these beads were nothing short of magical in their brilliance and quantity and I loved the way they would clang against the door when it was moved. As Willa and I weave through the hostel, I tell myself to call my grandparents later but notice that it’s too late.
Instead I call my lover, check on things back in Saskatoon, listen to the voices I need to hear before drifting off to sleep tonight.
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