Canada Day and the End Of The Road

Canada had a bloodless fight for independence. Sometime in 1868 England decided to unite the whole of their fur trapping, logging brothers into something called "Canada" The British still had some control but having their own name was enough to satisfy the peaceful Canadians. It wasn't until 1982 that British Parliament finally cut the cord completely and now Canada's free health care, cultural exchanges like Rush and Joni Mitchell, legalized pot and such are their own responsibility.

Today finds me as far north east as you can drive...North West River, across the river from a reservation called Sheshatshiu. All the signs here are in two languages, English and something that is totally foreign to me...a native language. I'll try to interview someone who speaks it. Why am I here?
I'm here to find some Labradorite and the elusive wolf. I think I found some wolf tracks as they are around here. Then a red squirrel with no tail jumped onto my van and climbed down the side of the window looking for a way in. I could tell he was a male...he was that close. He was upside down hanging by a claw against my side window. Where there are squirrels there are wolves. Moose about here also but I haven't interviewed one yet.

North West River...where the rain falls and stops falls and stops all summer long until it turns to snow and then people come out of their metal Qwanset huts and start to fish and trap.

America's independence day is not celebrated here but my thoughts are with you all. I stopped at a closed park, empty. set up camp and heated some water on the wood stove for a sponge bath. Then people started coming all at once. The whole town of Happy Valley to this one little park which turned out to be the place they blow off the fireworks. I shook my head. So typically me to park in the one place I'd be on display. The next day I went down a one way road to the river.

Goose Bay

Eventful days in Goose Bay. Living in the lap of luxury as I await research news on my van dilemma. I'm actually so far away from everything that it would cost me more money to try to get back to NH without my van. So, I'm much better off doing whatever I can do to fix the problem with the shifting. I'm going to hunt for some labradorite rock as I wear my prospecting hat. Rain comes in all sizes here. I've been fighting the mosquitoes and no see-um bugs all week. No bear sightings. There are more moose in Labrador than people.
The trip to Nain will have to wait, I think. $500 to take the trip and sleep on a boat for a week. This is a low budget trip with high concept documentary. I still hesitate to get the interview footage because it's really testing the patience of these kind Canadian people who are off the beaten track. Borat is not known here. I met a Leghorn chicken farmer who hand builds canoes. His response to my wolf quest was indifference. Had I told him I was from the future, a future that is torn apart by climate deterioration and lacks all arctic wolves since their habitat floated south, he might've snapped. Still, that is the concept and I'm trying to work up the courage to interview an Inuit villager. Oh, what to do? Please keep the wolf in your thoughts.

Another Animal That Doesn't Put Dinner on your Table

I can't seem to get close up pics in focus. Damn 2004 digital camera! Maybe I didn't center the toad so the camera doesn't know what I wanted in focus. This is a toad I can't identify.

Muskrat Falls

Three teenagers tried to kayak these falls and only two were found. The third one is probably in the 100ft deep cavern under the falls doing cartwheels in his sleep.




I thought the chicken farmer had followed me...

Child Support?

My heart dropped when I read this email. My head went into overdrive as I wondered if my late night carousing had caught up with me.


I am sure your attorney already provided you with this information but you chose not to make the change.

Mail child support to

K. XXXXXX
XXX Black Point Meadows
Scarborough, ME XXXX

Attached are passport information that you need to have notarized and return to me. If you refuse or choose not to provide a reason as to why.


K. XXXX,
Maine Pretrial Services


Then I realized this was all a case of mistaken identity. Some other Oggy Bleacher knocked up the wrong lady.
Phew!

But biology has been on my mind lately. I think passing on genes has something to do with procreating, but I think that has become sort of irrelevant with 7 billion people. The species, if you care about it surviving, is doing ok. So, why have kids? The easy answer is sex. It's accidental. Mexicans don't generally use birth control and by 22 most women are pregnant. Their healthiest eggs are fertilized, they are young enough to deal with the kid or kids. I saw very very few disabled Mexicans and I'll bet this young birth age has something to do with it. Humans are wired to reproduce when we are around 17-20 years old. By the time a Mexican lady is 33 years old she has two teenage kids. That makes sense to me. If it weren't for birth control I'd have numerous lawyers from numerous states and countries emailing me nasty letters for child support I can't afford.

So, the act of sex is enough to quench my desire to reproduce? Not completely. Because I think there is something else going on and that only becomes apparent when you get old and gray and decrepit like myself. That thing is being able to see someone with genetically inherited eyes and hair (is anything as beautiful the hair of a child?) and skin and legs running and playing LIKE YOU ONCE DID. This becomes almost voyeurism but it is a kind of vicarious youth. You are ALMOST living your youth again. You can watch and enjoy a kid do things that your broken knees and bad eyesight will not allow you to do. And believe me, when you get old and your chestnut hair that was once the envy of all begins to gray or fall out then you will do almost anything to recapture that feeling of eternity youth affords. Even having sex with someone you don't really like so you can have a kid you can't afford and set him or her loose on society and enjoy the reflection back on your youth with a slightly different setting but mostly similar routines and dramas. It's pretty selfish but has managed to keep people on the planet for almost a million years.
I think that's what drives a species to reproduce beyond the carrying capacity of the environment. In a species like the wolf, the yearlings, ( the one year old animals (arctic wolves have life spans of a decade)) definitely leave the pack. There is absolutely no vicarious living for wolves. In fact, a mother one year will be chased out of the pack a year later but the new breeding female, sometimes her own daughter. There is no love lost with wolves. But with humans, this petty and nostalgic and dreamy hairless chimp, we want to relive something that was so pleasant and so we provide ourselves with kids to watch and care for long after the kids are actually mature enough to be chased from the den. I mean, 18 years? Are you kidding? I think I was chomping at the bit to leave town when I was 12. But the schools and family forced me to stay another 6 years to properly destroy me. Or was it they wanted to watch me and so I don't trust people who actually have nothing to offer me but pretend to offer me something when they are really reliving their wasted youth?

This is what I pondered when I went 1000 ft in the ground to tour the Churchill Falls hydroelectric plant. Let me tell you that the electricity of Canada WAS HARD WON. I mean, HARD HARD WON. The least of the worries was diverting water from a magnificently gigantic churchill river and falls (they are now a trickle in a huge gorge for a mile or two). No, the hard part was engineering 11 generators and turbines and transistors 100 feet in solid rock. I was real proud of my keyboard fix until I saw what was going on underground. Now I'm humbled. All the electricity I've used for two days is from this dam. Clean. Except for the diversion of the water and the resources used to manufacture the components and copper wire and the control stations. I wonder if the Piscataqua river will one day have a moving arm generator to harness the power of the water through the channel?
Gotta move on now. You engineers get working on those plans.