THE EXPEDITION Chapter 5: Pit Stop
- Ann Cognito
- Mar 5, 2022
- 8 min read
In which Ann is rescued by Eva Luna Date: the rest of April 26, 2019
From partway to Suffield, to Medicine Hat ~10km walking, ~60 km riding
All that was percolating in my head as I walked, and I looked forward to having time to write these stories so they could wander and roll around too. Stories do have lives of their own, and that’s often made me think about how life really is a story. Isabel Allende’s stories taught me that, and her beautiful tales and tangents are as much of my writing influences as was my narrative inquiry guru Jean in university. Thinking, feeling, finding, writing, living… it’s all sides of the same thing. I found myself wandering through my mental volumes of Isabel’s first few books as storm warnings started coming up on my phone and all around me.
We stopped at one of those roadside parking lots with bathrooms and bins. I’d meant to try to reach Suffield, thinking it’d be a day like the past few, with cooperative geography and weather, but apparently the weather decided it had other plans. I did consider pitching the tent right there, but it didn’t feel like a very good idea. Enough of my online support group felt similarly that I figured we’d take a break for about an hour and then keep going to Suffield, or whatever obliging spot might turn up, whichever came first, which probably wouldn’t be Suffield if the wind kept pushing all wrong and so hard.
Nobody passing through here was interested in talking much, so Mr Myrtle took me for a bit of a wander, and after a snack, I leaned on the trailer and MMS leaned on me and we nearly dozed off.
We got back on the road, but it kept getting harder to manage the scooter and trailer, and Mr Myrtle was even more disconcerted than me. Drivers of wobbling big rigs were waving me away from the road with worried looks, and the wind had already taken the other half of my granola bar, my sunglasses(they help calm down the busy-ness of the world, not just the brightness), and my toque, as well as my screaming green safety vest. I was really upset about the vest – the high visibility green vest, because I was doing a green thing, and also so as not to be associated with the Canadian version of the yellow vest movement gathering angry steam out west, had been hard to find. Most are yellow. They just are. Green’s hard to find, and I liked it. I was a lot less visible without it, and the storm was coming faster than I could make it to the next good place to stop.
An awkward caravan like ours takes a long time to catch someone able to oblige. A couple of very happy mellow guys in a small aromatic beater stopped to wish they could lend a ride, and did lend a good bit of much appreciated encouragement in word, signature, hug, and combustible forms. Then a big old 1970’s van pulled over and a young woman named Eva Luna offered us a ride to Medicine Hat so we could find somewhere to wait out the storm.
The van was named Frank; I forget why. Eva Luna was named after one of her mother’s – and her own, and most definitely my own – favourite fictional characters, in an early Isabel Allende novel of the same name. The present and quite real Eva Luna had come from overseas to make an epic road trip and wasn’t any more used to people recognizing her unusual name than I was to meeting the namesakes of my fictional heroines, so we both decided it was one of those fortunate meetings arranged by the universe.
We treated ourselves to East Indian dinner at a well-reviewed and comfortable nearby restaurant where we had the entire dining room and staff to ourselves. We ordered (and ate!) way too much beautiful food, and talked and talked and by the time I’d gotten in touch with my place to stay, we were all (Mr Myrtle included, he had a bit of naan and an egg) full and tired and glad to be able to stay in touch online, because there’s so much more to talk about and who knows when or where you’ll bump into people again?
We blew a tire while finding the home of the nice young man who’d rescued us a few nights earlier – not in all the days before, but now, while mindfully using a nice paved crosswalk with lights! Fortunately, with a family-sized herd of bicycles and whatnot, Spence was a whiz with tires. The next morning, with his advice, his help, and his air compressor, Sam (because she’s a Toucan scooter, and my easily amused sense of humour couldn’t resist; it’s short for Samantha, though, because she’s a she, like sailboats are) was good to go.
His wife reminded me so much of a sweet young woman I’d sold a wedding dress to years earlier that I still wish I’d asked about it, but either way, she’s a kind and interesting person I wish I could have talked with more. They have two very sweet and brilliant children, and a lovely yard with perfectly nice space for the tent, but it was so cold they decided they’d feel better if we stayed indoors. With such a young family, though, and little publicly consultable background or personal experience yet to my undertaking, I felt we’d all sleep better if Mr Myrtle and I camped. We compromised, and I pitched our tent in a clean warm garage/workroom, blessed to be out of the weather and safe.
Dates: April 27 – 29
Medicine Hat
In the morning, we were to meet up with with someone I’d been getting to know through Extinction Rebellion. We’d only talked online, but quite a lot, and he’d been following and supporting the walk since it was barely an idea.
En route to the A&W where we were to meet, we attracted a lot of attention and inquiries. One man came to have a coffee while I waited for my friend, so he could hear the story thus far. Upon hearing my safety vest had blown away, he jumped up and disappeared for five minutes. When he came back, he presented me with a brilliant orange vest even more visible than the one I’d lost. We’d talked a bit about the yellow vest movement gathering angry steam out west, and how hard it was to find a non-yellow vest, and he remembered he had this one at home. He stayed a while longer and we all had a great conversation about the crisis and about activism, and I hope they stayed in touch. He gave me his aunt’s name and number because she has a campground not far off my future route, and although we didn’t get there, it was kind, and I’ll pass his helloes to her here.
So now you know where this vest came from!
We couldn’t actually stay with Glen; much to his chagrin, his condo wouldn’t allow Mr Myrtle. There were campgrounds around, but he’d arranged for us to stay with friends of his for a couple nights till the storm was done and the roads safer. Peter was the local provincial NDP candidate, and his wife Gwen is a brilliant researcher. They settle MMS and I into a very comfortable spare room, where we caught up on sleep and getting clean. It was such a great visit, one of the many times when I wished I could stay and get to know people, or be able to stay in touch better with everyone.
Peter was the first political person to actively recognize and support what I was doing. A few really great Green Party folks were following and supporting on Facebook, but Peter was an actual human being, being an actual physical part of the mission. That meant so much to me, and I wish I could have talked more (and more sensibly) with both him and Gwen about so many things directly and indirectly related to the climate crisis and what they both do.
We had lovely meals and such good talks and even got Sam to a bike shop and had her brakes fixed properly. The young man who’d provided emergency repairs after the Cluny incident had done well, especially considering the limited resources he had to work with, but it was good to get things completely right again. The folks at Gravity made time for us and gave us a friendly deal, and threw in a bunch of really good energy and hydration stuff that serious cyclists use, like those Nuun tablets with electrolytes. You’re supposed to drop them in your water bottle to make a fizzy drink but it’s way more fun to have your water first and then suck on the Nuun tablet like a giant healthy adult Pop-Rock candy.
Peter is very well connected, because of his position, and they’re good connections because he does a lot of good himself. He put me in touch with one of those connections, a journalist who decided we were a story worthy of squashing into her very busy schedule. Peter brought Mr Myrtle and I to her office, and then emailed her some of the photos he took as he dropped us off on the now sunny and not snow-covered highway a little way outside the city to continue walking (after we figured out how to put the caravan back together and how to adjust a couple bits in the process). That story reached so many people, and I even got to meet some who’d read it.
Three news stories felt like some sort of benchmark, and it felt like a validation checkpoint. It made the walk a continuing saga to the world beyond my own small (albeit it growing, and traveling) piece of the world. That small virtual collection felt like it held more than my artists’ portfolio ever had. It was verifiable confirmation of what I was doing; people could now look up me, and the walk, online and find a bunch of information. It was part of building legitimacy, to hold the awareness and ideas I was trying to help grow.
Interviews, and public speaking and quasi-public speaking and all manner of variation on those were an indispensably important part of the walk for those reasons and more. I knew that, and I didn’t try to avoid them. I even actively sought them out. But I really am a hermit, and I’m a little bit autistic, with anxiety and panic issues, and I’m not good at people-ing. Interviews and public speaking can easily and suddenly turn me into a senseless and babbling pile of nerves spewing soggy handkerchiefs and tissues. Mr Myrtle helps very much with that, but sometimes it happens. I did explain that possibility briefly when starting interviews, and I’d been drumming answers into my head so that if I got overwhelmed or panicked or dissociated or something, I could rely on my semi-autopilot responses to make a bit of sense. It didn’t make it easier, but it made it work a little better, I hope. At any rate, thinking that made me feel better about doing the interviews, and most of the journalists and reporters I met were so good at what they do that they more than made up for my awkwardness. Editing is also a good thing.
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