THE EXPEDITION Chapter 10: Things from Left Field (Section 1)

In which she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers 

Date: May 11, 2019

From Tompkins to Gull Lake 25 km

We left early and walked slowly. Gull Lake was 25 kilometres away, but it was supposed to be an easy road and a nice day, and there was a campground there.

The snow was well and truly gone and things were growing. We’d stop to take walks into the greenery, looking for bugs to chase, but there weren’t any, so I took photos of flowers and skies. I still wasn’t managing to get stuff online very well, and will never get the hang of selfies (and don’t want to!), but it was fun. Photographing makes me see things another way.

There was so much dead everything all around. Not just the usual spring pre-resurrection state, but dead. Gone. Expired. Ex-trees, ex-bugs, ex-critters, ex-ponds, and things formerly known as meadows. The ditches and verges had more garbage than growth. The air was full of exhaust and noise. Looking up, jet trails crisscrossed the sky more often than not.

I was getting negative about it and waxing poetic, not in a good way. It didn’t help that there was an inconvenient combination of steady traffic and uncooperatively unsheltering shrubbery. Bathrooms are lovely, but I don’t expect them to be constantly available. I refuse to use a plastic bottle or bag (depending) and leave it on the roadside. But a tree or a bush or some tall thick grass or even a small geographical feature is always much appreciated. Any of those would have been welcome right now but none were forthcoming. A sign had been promising the appearance of bathrooms for several kilometres, but when we got there, said bathrooms were not only closed but not even reachable.

The site was a small golf course, I think, but it looked like it hadn’t been for quite some time. There  were a lot of boards and locks and chains and fences, and only a few sparse trees. There was also a  young man who’d pulled off the main for a cell phone conversation. I’d rather do my business alone,  and wasn’t quite sure what to make of being along on a side road with an apparently somewhat intense  and not very happy stranger, so I wandered around ostensibly walking Mr Myrtle (though he was  certainly making the most of the best dog walk ever). We sat and shared and egg salad sandwich  someone had given me earlier, and I ate one of the apples sent from the Caphe in Tompkins.  

As I crunched and waited, a funny-coloured sparkle caught my eye. Winking up out of the bone-dry dust of this dead Saskatchewan golf course on a gravel road nowhere near water was a bright yellow fishing fly with a tiny orange eye. It was a tiny explosion of happy-face coloured fluff, with memories of water, and promises made of contradictions and possibilities.

As I tucked its hook securely into the safety flag of the trailer where it would catch the sunlight, phone man finished his conversation. He got back in his car and slowed down to politely check if Mr Myrtle and I were alright. Satisfied that we were, and that we didn’t think he was scary, he rolled back out to the highway and left us to pee in peace.

When I finally found a gravel road labelled “Gull Lake”. I was glad to get off the main in spite of the trouble it would take to haul ourselves down this road. Gravel is truly nasty with this kind of caravan. By the time we had to cross the train tracks into town, the scooter was so fed up she blew a tire.

I hadn’t seen a soul on this long access road, but sure enough, someone came along just as I resigned  myself to some impromptu, in situ, tire-mending. He loaded everything into the back of his pickup truck and us into the  front and took us the last few blocks to the green treed campground in the middle of town. He was  such a nice guy, and totally got the whole climate issue, and loved what I was doing. He gave us a  quick tour on the way so we’d be able to find dinner and find a quicker – paved – way out to the  highway in the morning. f I’d continued around the next bend in the highway, I would have come in that way, and saved a tire but lost meeting a good person.

The campground was actually closed, but they left the entrance and a pair of bathrooms open. Two giant RVs were having a reunion sort of thing, so we didn’t feel like we were sneaking in or anything. I unpacked the bike tools and the compact lightweight footpump and got Sam’s wounded tire fixed before pitching the tent. Then the world famous climate gypsy puppy and I took her for a (slow and short) spin around (a small piece of) the town. It was Sunday, and Mothers’ Day, but a cheery Chinese/Canadian restaurant was open and I forget what we had, but it was fresh and healthy and I felt so much better afterwards.

#GullLake #WalktoWakentheNationexpeditionbook