Don't feed the Bears

So, here I am again perched at the beginning of a new chapter, at the eve of another leap into the unknown. Mikie’s gone back to the Hat, and I’ve spent my last days in Calgary with my friends. The last month has been full to the bream.

I spent a full month in Medicine Hat, Alberta – a small town, about the size of Armidale – building huge power-towers. The work basically involved piecing steel together with bolts; working  out in a field for 12 hours of a day, six days a week.  The days were long and tedious: lifting steel and tightening bolts in fields, but the pay was good and plenty of overtime to be had. Me and Mikie made the most of it anyways, with a few good adventures and a couple of rowdy pub crawls, a skate and a hitch, putt-putt golf, and hitting fastballs in the batting cages out of town.

At the beginning of last week, after work shut down for a week due to lack of steel, Isaac hitched out to meet up with us for a camping trip down to the lovely Cypress Hills National Park, down on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The park has the highest concentration of cougars in the world, so nights were a little on edge haha. It was an old makeshift kind of trip, which saw us take a couple of long hikes, suck baked beans and eggs off “rock-plates”, and lying on our back blowing out at the beauty of the Northern Lights. We drank so much Whisky that Mikie fell in the creek. Chipmunks and muskrats never stop working, and eagles fly high. It was a beauty out there.

After two nights out there we went back to good old Calgary for a couple of days for Yazid’s send-off party before he left Calgary on Saturday for a job up in Fort Mac.—a job “trading futures” for an oil company, straight out of uni. He’s landed a really sweet job, and he deserves it. He’s a hard working dude and a fucking legend to boot. A couple of other parties were had as well with most of my mates from Calgary (except for the Best Western boys, which I’m spewing about). Dunno if I’ll be back that way again… it was a sad old day packing my bags today, thinking about all those people and times. Calgary’s been my home. I loved it there; but a town’s only as good as the people in it.

But anyways, now I’m in Ottawa, On-ta-Rio. Arrived at midnight and found myself a comfy lounge, so I’m going to spend the night. Tomorrow I’ll have a scoot around and check the place out, even if I only have a day here. First thing Tuesday I go out to the bush to begin a couple of months of tree-planting. Going to be living out in the wild in Northern Ontario in a tent and getting off the grid for a bit. There’s money to be made if I’m good enough, too; but at 8 or 9 cents a tree I’ll be earning my bloody money, sure enough.

Meanwhile, Mikie’s gone back to stick it out for a little while longer in Medicine Hat, before maybe going back to BC in June to do a few months cherry picking. He’s got an interview tomorrow and is from the “cherry capital of Australia” (Young); so he should be a shoe-in.

After that, who know’s what’s going to happen or when we’re going to go… depends what happens in the next two months or so… Anyways, off grid I go, starting Tuesdy. Look after yourselves!