It was 7am, and I hadn’t slept.
I was involved in my practicum school’s 30 hour famine for the previous 12 hours, as a “supervisor” (ie: game-master). I brought in my old-school Nintendo 64 (circa 1995) for the students to play on (it was older than all of them), and otherwise we had maddening games of dodgeball and badminton, and built forts out of gym mats. It was a great send-off to us supervisors, most of which were student teachers.
However, we didn’t sleep.
So now the birds are chirping and the sun is rising up over the mountains to the East of Vancouver, and I have this dull feeling radiating in my head. Through the dullness comes a lurking thought:
Oh, God, I’ve got to drive for 7 hours, today.
My destination: The west coast of Vancouver Island — Pacific Rim National Park Reserve — and Ucluelet; a small fishing town, it has little in the way of surprises — just boat-loads of natural beauty…
With no rest or turnaround time, all of us student-teachers were expected to run off to our community field experience placements — some across the world. I was lucky: mine was only a few hours away by car. Some folks would have to deal with the airports, the jet-lag, and the culture shock — all in the span of 24 hours. Deal with it. Thanks, UBC.
My sister arrived in a rental station-wagon, to be our road trip caravan. We took off across the Lion’s Gate Bridge by noon and waved good-bye to the big city at Horseshoe Bay, sitting on the very sunny sun deck of the big white ferry and mocking seagulls that flew back to the pier. Ahead of us, across miles of open water was Nanaimo, and more importantly, the Island. I was excited to get away from Vancouver, for a while; the city drains the life out of me. So it was a refreshing breath of fresh air, both literally and metaphorically, up on that sun deck…
My sister drove through the lovely evening and I navigated our wild course through all the small towns I could convince her to drive through. Although we were pressed for time — we had to find a campsite before dark — I didn’t care; the journey is more important than the destination.
After a day of playing tourist and wandering through the small towns of Vancouver Island, we found ourselves driving west along Highway 4, and we just suddenly drove into the crown jewel of the Island…. Cathedral Grove. The Grove is a very special natural time capsule on the island. It’s a huge old-growth forest, with trees bigger than transports, and reminds us of how insignificant we are, on this Earth. Here are creatures vastly bigger, older, and more patient than we; here is time itself, grown into life.
We kept driving the wild, narrow snake-roads past Port Alberni, as darkness began to descend. My sister began to lose her cool. She hadn’t eaten, and was getting the vagabond’s sickness: the fear of placelessness. When darkness descends, the untrained human mind recoils at the prospect of not having a destination, a place, a purpose. It is a little death, where the blackness of night, the void, reminds us deep in our subconcious that we will die one day. And so we hope to find a place, before then.
I’ve had this sickness during many of my hobo-travels, through North America and Europe. It still grips me every now and then, as night falls in a foreign city and there is no bed for me to lay my head. Homelessness takes you. A fear, a total and debilitating anxiousness, creeps up your spine and into your mind, and you cannot calm your nerves, no matter what you do — unless you find a bed. It’s horrifying, but also, it’s humbling. It reminds you that you are not a special and unique snowflake, and that you have no predestination towards comfort and the decadence of the Western ideal. No, you are alone. And no one cares about you, here. You are alone, and you have to decide how to be.
We prayed, and after a while, we arrived. We found a campground, far longer down that winding road than we had expected: we were just outside Ucluelet. We quickly made camp, my sister and I, in this swamp. It may have had a sign, but this campground was only just passing as one. It was great to work as a team, as we did. It was a culmination of our upbringings, my sister and I; we each knew our duties, without needing to speak. It was simply done. This is the hallmark of a good guide. She made a fire and cooked while I set up the tent and foraged for more wood in the darkness. I wondered if my placement for this CFE would make use of these skills….
************
The next day, after a cold night, brought rain. The rain stayed with us, and I was hoping it was not a token of things to come…
I was set up in an old, small duplex — one of many. Tall, grey, plywood buildings arranged in a tight complex, only slightly more civilized than a cabin. I didn’t mind one bit, though — I love simple living.
The 8-plex
This was the dreaded second day after an all-nighter. Tiredness filled every muscle and joint. I passed out early to wild dreams of beaches and wolves…
*************