1. North
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Traumatized and demoralized
I fled into the north
Heading to Dawson City to visit Tony’s sister
We had a few hundred dollars and a bag of weed
Journeying in my orange VW Thing
As we drove further north
The car became a curiosity, a rare thing indeed
Pulling conversations from the taciturn
As we watched gasoline prices exceed our imaginations
One night, while there still was night
On the Stewart Cassiar highway
We came around a bend and were stopped by a wall of gravel
That seemed impossibly high and wide
So we began to prepare for a long wait
Got out the Stoned Wheat Thins
Some cheese and a summer sausage
Figuring it was time for sustenance
When the wall was Moses’d
It parted
Bright lights shone cosmically
A D12 dozer was our rod and our staff
Parting the chaos of gravel mounds
With the smooth dexterity of a pastry chef
We followed
Looking more than a little ridiculous to grimy goliaths
Who you just knew only drove trucks
American ones
And probably didn’t eat Stoned anything
We were ejected into the blackness of beyond
Heading straight up the map
Through mountains of gravel
Northward we travelled in unhindered light
To a log cabin on the banks of the Klondike
The driveway was twenty miles long
Shared with wolverines and moose
And if it took time to get there
It was a place to feel at home
Secure in the knowledge that door to door salesmen
Would never bother to knock
We walked the wooden sidewalks of Dawson City
Avoiding the tourist trappings of Diamond Tooth Gerties
We drank sudsy drafts at backstreet bars
With wild eyed seekers
Big city retreaters
One day we impossibly piled a dozen new friends into the car
Drove to the Midnight Dome
Where we shared the last few joints and a pint of rye
Surveying the small outpost in relentless wild
Sensing possibilities beyond the horizon
So we made some possibles happen
Drove the Dempster to Eagle Pass
Where a full moon rose over our rough campsite
Then made way for the northern lights
Dancing starbright with the grace of a Bolshoi ballerina
We whistled them closer until we were covered in magic
Looking out across the arctic circle to the top of the world
We danced across the tundra
Past the dwindling line of pecker poles
Hopping from hippy head to hippy head
Forded icy rivers that ran with the speed of the chased
Rubbed shoulders with grizzlies and the grizzled
Whose independence was declared through the intensity of the gaze
As the summer wore on forest fires raged
Until the plumes crept over the next ridge
And choppers buzzed our lonely cabin
So we walked a few hundred yards up the twenty-mile driveway
Discovered a command centre
Staging ground for firefighters who could always use help
So we signed up and up we went
Commuting to the smoke where we strapped piss pumps to our backs
Grabbed shovels and watched as timbers candled
Hoping for the wind to shift in time for lunch
Since we had never eaten as well as in that rough camp
Or gotten quite so dirty
Blacker than a Welsh coalminer
Soot that found its way through clothes to every inch of untanned skin
To be scrubbed the next week at the metered shower in town
Since the woodstove and hauled Klondike water only barely sluiced
The top layer leaving us a dismal gray
But we made a few bucks and beat the fire back
Flew like warriors in Bell Rangered wonder
Over undulating mysteries
To see the sea of trees saved for another season
A season we wouldn’t experience
But left to the iconoclasts and the lonely
Those who could drift no further
Yet could wield an axe and feed a stove
So when the leaves turned and frost arrived
We turned tail and went south
But a piece of my soul remains buried in the Klondike
Part of the motherlode of the riches of my life
2. Alberta
The first challenge was to fence a quarter section
160 acres
There was a tight budget so that meant recoiling downed wire
Of the fence we were replacing
Pulling staples and hammering flat the salvageable ones
Assessing posts for rot
Turned out that the convertible Thing was a handy platform
Sledgehammer blow by sweaty blow
For driving treasured new tamarack posts securely into the ground
Which we grew intimate with
Since our lodgings turned out to be a teepee
Nestled in the rolling flat lands of northern Alberta
We worked with the last family of a hippy commune
To keep their dream flickering
As we restored the back forty fence
Learnt the rhythms of this sullen prairie
Sacrificed a glade of trees for timbers for a barn
When you peel the bark off trees with drawknives
You can smell their death
Almost an offering in the crisp autumn light
At least we’d like to think so
Then came harvest and stuking the oats
An itinerant thresher arrived like a Rube Goldberg fancy in action
Hay wagons and itches filled dawn to dusk days
Next weekend the old Ukranian farmer from up the road
Oversaw the raising of the barn
He was barely literate
But knew what needed to be done
So did the dozens of others who we’d seen at the gas station
And the diner
Or not at all
But impossibly the walls rose
Chinked into place
And if it wasn’t quite finished by Sunday evening
It was damn near quite enough as we all said
Breaking bread on long trestle tables in the yard
A few days later the vegetarian era ended abruptly
When Ralph, gentle Ralph the pig
A Charlotte’s Web kind of pig
Radiant pig
Met his doom graphically
Tony missed out on some really great meals
So he volunteered to crank the separator during dinner
Until the memory faded
One day a strange car drove up
Full of aboriginal youth
They wanted to check out the teepee
Having never been in one before
We said sure
Brought out whatever offerings we had
Booze and tokes
Which were warmly received
Reciprocated
As we shared the fire and laughter
Drank into a gentle inebriation
We learnt swear words with great delight
When one of our new friends tried to leave
Couldn’t find the door
We laughed
Then we all went outside to piss under the bright stars
Marveling at the moment
A few weeks later I was given a length of two by four
Dropped off at an intersection at some ungodly early hour
Told pay attention, they’ll be here in an hour
Make sure you turn them that way
Use the persuader
Turned out the orange Thing
Or maybe my crazed look
Was enough to turn that herd
I didn’t need to smack some bovine upside the head
Thank Christ, as I remarked
To some farmer who passed me a flask a few minutes later
We learnt the art of waking up cold
Having to build a fire with one arm quickly thrust from down filled warmth
To last night’s drunken pile of kindling which is almost not enough
But desperation is a good teacher
Living in a teepee in northern Alberta
As fall met winter
We met our match
And the prairie winds blew
3. McMurray
We knew we were in trouble
When we couldn’t even get a room at the Heartbreak Hotel
Which wasn’t on lonely street
But we felt lonely enough in the construction dusty hive
By the second day we had jobs
Laying pipe in the tarry clay
A one-armed foreman aimed a ruby-eyed laser down the run
Impressing us with advanced technology
We laboured rough and hard
Drank the nights dry at the Peter Pond hotel
Driving back to camp drunk
I gambled on which of the three bridges swirling in view
Was the real one, and won that bet
When the crew was laid off a couple of weeks later
Nobody panicked
Just got new jobs
In our case working for a masonry outfit
Building a warehouse in the cold
The site was tarp swaddled
Propane heaters roared
Inside it was shirtsleeve warm
Outside the snow came down and ground froze up
We discovered frostbite
Slopped pails of cement up and down scaffolding
Going from furnace to frozen like a menopausal matron
One day as wet snow blanketed everything
I had to hold long lengths of metal trusses for the roof
Perched on a flimsy skyhold
While welders arced the other ends into place
Electrical charges raced across and up my arms
Each jolt a nail driven deep
On weekends we’d drive back to the farm
Remembering the dream of that vestigial commune
In the cold light of a short day
Where tires freeze flat and if you can start the car
The wheels go clunk, clunk, clunk for the first mile or so
In order to start cars on an unwired farm
We learnt the art of placing coffee tins with kerosene soaked rags
Under oilpans and setting them alight
Which left time for a second cup of instant coffee
Which I’d drink while looking out the window
Hoping to not see more orange than I wanted to
As winter deepened the summery convertible became even more of a joke
I’ve known warmer refrigerators in my time
There were snowdrifts on the floor that didn’t melt
Until we hit the Coast
After high-tailing it back home for Christmas
With a few hundred bucks in our jeans
And unaudited revenues of memories made
Whose interest is still compounding
Even today
David Trudel © 2013
Journey – A Triptych
1. North
Traumatized and demoralized
I fled into the north
Heading to Dawson City to visit Tony’s sister
We had a few hundred dollars and a bag of weed
Journeying in my orange VW Thing
As we drove further north
The car became a curiosity, a rare thing indeed
Pulling conversations from the taciturn
As we watched gasoline prices exceed our imaginations
One night, while there still was night
On the Stewart Cassiar highway
We came around a bend and were stopped by a wall of gravel
That seemed impossibly high and wide
So we began to prepare for a long wait
Got out the Stoned Wheat Thins
Some cheese and a summer sausage
Figuring it was time for sustenance
When the wall was Moses’d
It parted
Bright lights shone cosmically
A D12 dozer was our rod and our staff
Parting the chaos of gravel mounds
With the smooth dexterity of a pastry chef
We followed
Looking more than a little ridiculous to grimy goliaths
Who you just knew only drove trucks
American ones
And probably didn’t eat Stoned anything
We were ejected into the blackness of beyond
Heading straight up the map
Through mountains of gravel
Northward we travelled in unhindered light
To a log cabin on the banks of the Klondike
The driveway was twenty miles long
Shared with wolverines and moose
And if it took time to get there
It was a place to feel at home
Secure in the knowledge that door to door salesmen
Would never bother to knock
We walked the wooden sidewalks of Dawson City
Avoiding the tourist trappings of Diamond Tooth Gerties
We drank sudsy drafts at backstreet bars
With wild eyed seekers
Big city retreaters
One day we impossibly piled a dozen new friends into the car
Drove to the Midnight Dome
Where we shared the last few joints and a pint of rye
Surveying the small outpost in relentless wild
Sensing possibilities beyond the horizon
So we made some possibles happen
Drove the Dempster to Eagle Pass
Where a full moon rose over our rough campsite
Then made way for the northern lights
Dancing starbright with the grace of a Bolshoi ballerina
We whistled them closer until we were covered in magic
Looking out across the arctic circle to the top of the world
We danced across the tundra
Past the dwindling line of pecker poles
Hopping from hippy head to hippy head
Forded icy rivers that ran with the speed of the chased
Rubbed shoulders with grizzlies and the grizzled
Whose independence was declared through the intensity of the gaze
As the summer wore on forest fires raged
Until the plumes crept over the next ridge
And choppers buzzed our lonely cabin
So we walked a few hundred yards up the twenty-mile driveway
Discovered a command centre
Staging ground for firefighters who could always use help
So we signed up and up we went
Commuting to the smoke where we strapped piss pumps to our backs
Grabbed shovels and watched as timbers candled
Hoping for the wind to shift in time for lunch
Since we had never eaten as well as in that rough camp
Or gotten quite so dirty
Blacker than a Welsh coalminer
Soot that found its way through clothes to every inch of untanned skin
To be scrubbed the next week at the metered shower in town
Since the woodstove and hauled Klondike water only barely sluiced
The top layer leaving us a dismal gray
But we made a few bucks and beat the fire back
Flew like warriors in Bell Rangered wonder
Over undulating mysteries
To see the sea of trees saved for another season
A season we wouldn’t experience
But left to the iconoclasts and the lonely
Those who could drift no further
Yet could wield an axe and feed a stove
So when the leaves turned and frost arrived
We turned tail and went south
But a piece of my soul remains buried in the Klondike
Part of the motherlode of the riches of my life
2. Alberta
The first challenge was to fence a quarter section
160 acres
There was a tight budget so that meant recoiling downed wire
Of the fence we were replacing
Pulling staples and hammering flat the salvageable ones
Assessing posts for rot
Turned out that the convertible Thing was a handy platform
Sledgehammer blow by sweaty blow
For driving treasured new tamarack posts securely into the ground
Which we grew intimate with
Since our lodgings turned out to be a teepee
Nestled in the rolling flat lands of northern Alberta
We worked with the last family of a hippy commune
To keep their dream flickering
As we restored the back forty fence
Learnt the rhythms of this sullen prairie
Sacrificed a glade of trees for timbers for a barn
When you peel the bark off trees with drawknives
You can smell their death
Almost an offering in the crisp autumn light
At least we’d like to think so
Then came harvest and stuking the oats
An itinerant thresher arrived like a Rube Goldberg fancy in action
Hay wagons and itches filled dawn to dusk days
Next weekend the old Ukranian farmer from up the road
Oversaw the raising of the barn
He was barely literate
But knew what needed to be done
So did the dozens of others who we’d seen at the gas station
And the diner
Or not at all
But impossibly the walls rose
Chinked into place
And if it wasn’t quite finished by Sunday evening
It was damn near quite enough as we all said
Breaking bread on long trestle tables in the yard
A few days later the vegetarian era ended abruptly
When Ralph, gentle Ralph the pig
A Charlotte’s Web kind of pig
Radiant pig
Met his doom graphically
Tony missed out on some really great meals
So he volunteered to crank the separator during dinner
Until the memory faded
One day a strange car drove up
Full of aboriginal youth
They wanted to check out the teepee
Having never been in one before
We said sure
Brought out whatever offerings we had
Booze and tokes
Which were warmly received
Reciprocated
As we shared the fire and laughter
Drank into a gentle inebriation
We learnt swear words with great delight
When one of our new friends tried to leave
Couldn’t find the door
We laughed
Then we all went outside to piss under the bright stars
Marveling at the moment
A few weeks later I was given a length of two by four
Dropped off at an intersection at some ungodly early hour
Told pay attention, they’ll be here in an hour
Make sure you turn them that way
Use the persuader
Turned out the orange Thing
Or maybe my crazed look
Was enough to turn that herd
I didn’t need to smack some bovine upside the head
Thank Christ, as I remarked
To some farmer who passed me a flask a few minutes later
We learnt the art of waking up cold
Having to build a fire with one arm quickly thrust from down filled warmth
To last night’s drunken pile of kindling which is almost not enough
But desperation is a good teacher
Living in a teepee in northern Alberta
As fall met winter
We met our match
And the prairie winds blew
3. McMurray
We knew we were in trouble
When we couldn’t even get a room at the Heartbreak Hotel
Which wasn’t on lonely street
But we felt lonely enough in the construction dusty hive
By the second day we had jobs
Laying pipe in the tarry clay
A one-armed foreman aimed a ruby-eyed laser down the run
Impressing us with advanced technology
We laboured rough and hard
Drank the nights dry at the Peter Pond hotel
Driving back to camp drunk
I gambled on which of the three bridges swirling in view
Was the real one, and won that bet
When the crew was laid off a couple of weeks later
Nobody panicked
Just got new jobs
In our case working for a masonry outfit
Building a warehouse in the cold
The site was tarp swaddled
Propane heaters roared
Inside it was shirtsleeve warm
Outside the snow came down and ground froze up
We discovered frostbite
Slopped pails of cement up and down scaffolding
Going from furnace to frozen like a menopausal matron
One day as wet snow blanketed everything
I had to hold long lengths of metal trusses for the roof
Perched on a flimsy skyhold
While welders arced the other ends into place
Electrical charges raced across and up my arms
Each jolt a nail driven deep
On weekends we’d drive back to the farm
Remembering the dream of that vestigial commune
In the cold light of a short day
Where tires freeze flat and if you can start the car
The wheels go clunk, clunk, clunk for the first mile or so
In order to start cars on an unwired farm
We learnt the art of placing coffee tins with kerosene soaked rags
Under oilpans and setting them alight
Which left time for a second cup of instant coffee
Which I’d drink while looking out the window
Hoping to not see more orange than I wanted to
As winter deepened the summery convertible became even more of a joke
I’ve known warmer refrigerators in my time
There were snowdrifts on the floor that didn’t melt
Until we hit the Coast
After high-tailing it back home for Christmas
With a few hundred bucks in our jeans
And unaudited revenues of memories made
Whose interest is still compounding
Even today
David Trudel © 2013
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Filed under Poetry
Tagged as aboriginal, Alberta, back forty, blank verse, creativity, Dawson City, Dempster Highway, dreams, environmentalism, farming, farms, fencing, Fort McMurray, free verse, Klondike, log barns, memoir, Midnight Dome, northern lights, oil patch, oilsands, poetry, quarter section, social commentary, tarsands, teepees, The North, wildlife, winter, Yukon