Back home in Tete Jaune Cache, British Columbia

NOT MY home, though it increasingly seems like a home away from home. I was here last summer on the iron piggy, here last month on my way to the Northwest Territories and Alaska, and now yet again, on my way back to New England.

Bob and Janey have the gift of hospitality. It’s not unusual for travelers to be camped on the lawn. Life here is relaxed, and fun, and interesting.

We had a wonderful meal last evening. Bob had gone fishing in the morning, caught three bull trout, a 1-pounder, a 5-pounder and a 10-pounder. The smallest one fed the three of us nicely, even with me going back for seconds. The big ones will go on the grill tomorrow when Bob and Janey plan to have family and friends over.

My belt tightened by two notches over the last two months, and my pants still hang loose. Time to poke another notch. I eat plenty on the road but it has a way of whittling you down to traveling trim nonetheless.

I slept 11 hours last night. Through a terrific windstorm and a bit of rain, I’m told. Not that I noticed, I was Zzzzzz…. Finally woke up two hours after the breakfast porridge and coffee were cold.

Got a shower, that was nice. It made the world a better place. And not just for me. Better in general. Good for the planet.

I hadn’t had a shower since…? Well, it may be more polite to express it geographically rather than mathematically, or chronologically: my last good scrub was somewhere up around the 61st parallel of north latitude. That’s the way to be safe out in the weeds in bear country, you know. Smell like a human. Bears don’t like that. Actually, no one likes that.

Anyway, I’m spiffy now, have run my clothes through the washer, hung them on the line. Life is good.

The view from my tent when I turned in last evening.

It’s nice to get back south to a part of the world that gets more light. It’s a different country once you get down off the Stewart-Cassiar and onto the Yellowhead Highway. Around Smithers BC everything starts to change, the valleys open wide, fences appear in the treelines, soon you see beeves at pasture, agriculture going on everywhere. Really nice down in the Bulkley River valley, the Fraser after that.

The life you see in the Arctic is tenacious, hanging on for all it’s worth. Down here in central BC life is abundant, springing forth everywhere you look.

The forest cover is tall, lush, so unlike the century-old stick trees struggling to live in a place where there’s nothing but tundra and cold seas to the north, and it’ll be getting dark soon.

Getting down to the places where the settlers said this valley could be a home… we’ll make our stand here.

Saw sheets of rain coming down up ahead when I rode through Moricetown, a First Nations community west of Smithers on the Yellowhead. It looked to be quite a blow and moving my way, east to west and packing lightning.

I pulled off the road into a gravel lot, just before a bridge over a creek. Couple of tractor trailers there, a dumpster… A man appeared in the doorway of a small ranch house about 100 yards away and shouted (what I think he shouted) “Do you need to get indoors?” I waved and said, “I’m good, thank you.”

A young man had died there at the bridge. In 2009, I think it said on the other side of the cross.

The dumpster had a metal roof over it. I backed the piglet under there when it was clear I had about a minute left before the storm was upon us.

An old dog came walking toward me, his neck low, intentions uncertain. In dimmer light I would have taken him for a wolf. He had that look.

His left-rear leg had been broken at one time, and set badly, or never set at all. It had fused and healed at an odd angle.

No way to tell if he was friendly. I was thinking he probably wasn’t. I didn’t want to hit him with the bear spray if he was somebody’s dog so I climbed up on the dumpster. Just then a terrific thunderclap and a flash of lightning dropped his belly to the ground. He slunk off and disappeared into the creek bed.

Waiting out the storm. It raged for a half hour, maybe 40 minutes. Then came a steady rain that went on for about that long as well.

No sense getting soaked with another 150 miles to cover before I’d feel like stopping for the night.

Another rez dog came over and took shelter with me. I didn’t bother with him and he didn’t bother with me, but my guess is he was friendly. Notice I didn’t get down off the dumpster to find out.

I camped in Burns Lake, BC that night. The town has a free campground. No water, no electricity, just a place where through-travelers can get off the road for the night. It was dark when I pulled in. A couple of sketchy types pulled in after I did, in a white pickup with enough front-end collision damage it wasn’t remotely legal to drive. Their left-front tire was half flat and they carried their camping gear in trash bags.

A few of the local shitbirds were drinking around a campfire down at the other end. They kept their hootin and hollerin to a minimum and I was soon off on my usual six hours of a road-worn, dreamless oblivion.

Now I’m here, down in the fertile valleys, among friends, enjoying their good company, catching up on sleep, eating their good food. I tried to contribute to the grocery fund today, Bob wouldn’t hear of it.

I ordered a new motorcycle chain and new sprockets today. The ones I’ve got are well-worn at the 17,000-mile mark; hard miles, through punishing wilderness gravel: the Trans Labrador Highway to Blanc Sablon, the Dempster to Tuktoyaktuk, the Dalton to Deadhorse. They don’t owe me a dime.

It probably makes sense to install new wheel bearings while I’m here, too. And a new bearing in the rear sprocket carrier. I’ve got those parts with me, carried them just in case a bearing gave up the ghost out in the middle of nowhere.

More scribble to come at some point, but for now, I’m here.

Tony DePaul, July 23, 2019, Tete Jaune Cache, British Columbia, Canada