Day 26: Down and out in Shaunavon, Saskatchewan

I write this from the Stardust Motel in Shaunavon, Saskatchewan–a medium sized prairie town 75 miles from the Montana border.

I took a shower and washed all my clothes, which are now draped over the shower rod and dripping water onto the bathroom tiles. “Gilmore Girls” is on the TV, and I can faintly here the deep voice of a man in a long conversation in the adjacent room. I am in bed, naked except for my spare pair of underwear.

Although I embrace the comforts that the Stardust provides–the warmth for my fingers to finally stitch together my torn clothing, a sink to wash my pot, and a fridge to keep my dinner of mozzarella cheese and pepperoni cool–I lay here in bed in a state of self-pity.

After I picked up my food package in Richmound, SK, I continued south at a furious pace. I was determined to get through Saskatchewan, Montana, and South Dakota as quickly as I could, leaping over latitudinal hurdles with vigor and determination so that, when winter finally hits, I’ll be hiking in the relatively warmer climes of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

I’d been moving fast, with several 20+ mile days under my belt. The chafing on my toes had mostly healed, and while there was one lingering blister, my feet were no longer the insurmountable problem they once were. I did, though, begin to develop new chafing, this time around my heels, which was uncomfortable, but the variety of anti-fungal creams I generously spread over them seemed to quickly bring a halt to the fungus’s expansion.

Mostly I navigated by map and compass. I am following a preexisting underground gas pipeline, next to where the Keystone XL will be. The path is sometimes hard to follow because the pipe is underground and there are markers indicating the pipe’s presence when it crosses roads or power-lines. So, to find my way, I use my compass over the barren prairie, heading almost perfectly SE. When I reach the next road, I find that I’ve navigated well, as I’m not too far off based on where the power-line or roadside indicators are.

For these last few days, though, I’ve had a nice, clear, straight path. Another pipeline (this is pipeline country, remember) called the Vantage Pipeline, which will transport ethane from North Dakota to Alberta, is currently being constructed. So, for several days, I had a dirt path to walk along, allowing me to stuff my compass in my pocket and focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

My only major anxiety, at this point, had been the cows. My terrain roughly consists of: 1/2 fields for hay, soybean, or wild grass, and 1/2 cow pasture. The cow pastures are often miles wide and long, so it’s been pretty easy to stay away from cattle that are clustered across the land in groups typically. But there have been several instances where I had little option but to walk right through crowds of cattle. For the most part, the cows are merely curious, or curious and scared, inspecting me from a safe distance. But there are other times when they are too curious, and will come right up to me. Unsure of their intentions (because I am altogether unfamiliar with cows), I’ve retrived my bear spray on a number of occassions when the cows have gotten too close for comfort. Two days ago, I had to find a way through a forest filled with black cows. I studied every noise nervously, thinking of them less as the docile bovine creature we imagine, and more like velociraptors, beasts hunting me from my blind spots.

Normally I zip through cow pasture with a brisk gait; speed and stealth and concealment has been the name of the game so far. But then I felt a tightness in my left shin, that, over the next few hours, would become unbearable pain. Each step felt like I was carrying a cannonball in my flesh. It felt like my bone was breaking off and would soon slice through my skin.

I was far from town, so I set up my tent in cow country, which I would normally never do, but I simply didn’t have the strength to find a better campsite. That night, I took my first pill in perhaps 6-7 years that night (not including a Duke paid research drug experiment a couple of years back). It was an ibuprofen, taken to reduce inflammation and help me manage the pain.

The next day, my shin was far worse, and I limped for the whole day. Sometimes, when I got going, I could continue my sluggish pace for a while. But once I stopped, it was a struggle just to get back on my feet. My goal, at this point, was to get to Shaunavon, SK, the nearest town, where I might find help and a place to rest.

Yesterday, I staggered into town, dirty, limping, smelly. I was only able to do half the mileage I’d been doing, and with far greater discomfort.

I camped out in the town’s RV lot, which is closed down for the year, but no one stopped me from setting up my tent. The next morning–today–I went to the pharmacist’s where I bought shoe soles to help absorb the shock of my footfalls, as well as a bottle of ibuprofen, which I’ll have to take fairly regularly. Now, I can hardly walk to the bathroom, let alone across a farmer’s field with haste and a 30 pound backpack.

The cause of my injury is obvious: I’ve tried to hike too hard too fast. Before this trip, I thought that I might have a rare gift for hiking long miles, which I’ve been able to do on many week-long trips on hiking trails and in the Alaskan backcountry. But those were all week-long trips, and my body and mind, on this trip, have been unprepared for this longer, more demanding hike. I’d never had to deal with blisters or chafing before, but only because, after the seventh day, I got to lay around in bed on the eighth and ninth and tenth days.

My shin splints, also, have resulted from walking many miles on pavement, and because I’ve yet to take a full day off after 15 days of hiking. Hubris, pride, poor preparation, a chronic sense of urgency: these are the vices I must quickly conquer if I wish to get to Texas.

Even though I’ve been walking along the flat and rolling prairie, it seems I’ve come upon a dangerous precipice, which I can see just ahead. It’s a great cliff that descends into a bottomless abyss. I’ve found the edge of my physical limits. And I don’t like the view one bit.

***

Mysterious prairie holes, supposedly home to foxes, but I’m skeptical. They’re all over the place, and a major hazard for ankles.

My first food package on the hiking portion of my trip. Richmound, SK.

Richmound, SK

This cat followed me for a quarter-mile.

Can you espy the coyote?

More chafing/fungus problems.

Pipeline path for the Vantage pipeline dug out.

Lots of pipes…

I try to hide in trees when I camp at night, but these three were the only trees I could find that evening. Sometimes, looking across the land, I won’t see even one tree.

Marshland I had to walk around. The trees on the left were infested with black cows.

Camping in cow country. I’ve become very observant of cow habits, and while I knew I was in cow country, I could tell from the degradation of the manure, that no cows had been here in a long time. There was however a beaver which flopped its tail twice that night.

There’s fucking snow already

Day 21: The Ogre and the Leprechaun

Thank the lord for good feet!

This is what I’ve been saying aloud, jubilantly, for the past three days. Finally, I’ve been able to put some major miles behind me, completing three 20+ mile days in a row with little difficulty. And while I still have an unwelcome blister beneath the middle toe of my right foot, my feet have recuperated nicely, giving me much-needed reassurance in my body’s ability to hike long distances.

With feet toughened and my sickness, abated, I hiked south along Country Road 895 out of Oyen, then walked for the rest of the day over rolling prairie. A man and a woman on an ATV, seeking a few sick calves in their herd, saw me and drove over. This marked the first time, in nine days, that I was caught trespassing on someone’s land. I had my map and compass in hand, and my walking sticks in the crook of my arm, so I thought I at least looked like a hiker. “I’m sorry if I’m walking on your land,” I said to them. “Oh don’t worry about it,” the man said with a smile. I asked him where I might find water, and he said not until the Red Deer River, which was 10 miles away. He offered to go back to his house, four miles away, and get me some, but I didn’t want him to go through the trouble. I made due with the liter of water I had (amazingly, I find myself content to drink only 2-2.5 liters of water a day), and walked over more rolling prairie for the rest of the evening.

The prairie is fine ground to walk on. The terrain, though rolling, provides a good flat landing spot for each footfall. There are few thorns and briars, few snakes (though there are said to be rattlesnakes in the area), few bugs (at this time of year), and neither swamp nor talus slope to slow my gait. Apart from the rare cactus plant (hardly bigger than a compact disk) and the mysterious–and potentially leg-breaking– “prairie hole” (home to some burrowing animal), I cannot think of better ground to walk over than the Alberta prairie.

I walked over the prairie until the Red Deer River, a flat, sluggish river, but wide and ultimately uncrossable. I knew there was no way I could walk or swim across it with my gear, so I took a detour off my pipeline path so I could walk along a bridge near the town of Blindloss, several miles to the east.

The Sand Hills came out of nowhere. One second I walking over prairie, startling a pair of gray foxes; the next, I was walking amid a hidden wonder of the world. The Sand Hills were steep, furry mounds of grass that, in the dusk light, glowed pink and red. They were round, bulbous gumdrops, sculpted Napoleon hats, shaggy and half-wild. The steep hills, all sprouting tall grass, formed a canyon wall, opposite another canyon wall, and in between was a dry water drainage called a coulee. The mounds, as they stretched to the river, lessened in size, but maintained their plump contours all the way down to the flat valley floor.

I scoured my mind for an analogy, and the closest I could come were bare desert hills, made of sand and rock and ornery bush. But these were not so barren or uninviting, and to compare these hills to anything would be to wrongly insinuate inferiority. I was in a prairie mountain range, beautiful and one-of-a-kind.

In the morning, I crossed the bridge to Blindloss, where I hoped to fill up with water because ahead of me I had another long trek over desolate country with little chance of coming upon a homestead.

The town was creepy and unsettling, like several other half-abandoned prairie towns I’ve passed through. The school was boarded up, several homes looked to be in disrepair, and when I asked for water, a municipal worker said, “This isn’t a good town to get water. It’s bad water here.” He gave me a bottled water and suggested I go knocking on doors to fill up the rest of my bottles. Soon I found another man who let me fill my bottles from a giant plastic canister of water.

He was a trucker, and he asked about my trip. I explained I was going from Hardisty to Texas, and said, “So your following the TransCanada Pipeline, are you? Are you an environmentalist?”

For the most part, I’ve kept my thoughts about oil and the pipeline to myself when talking with others. I am traveling through pipeline country and I do not wish to offend the people I talk to by criticizing something that pays their bills and is probably a big part of their lives. Plus, I don’t want to have to have such conversations over and over again. So I tell everybody–as I told this guy–that I’m out to learn as much as I can. Which is true. While I will not be pro-pipeline or pro-Tar Sands by the time I reach the Gulf Coast, I have in fact embarked on this trip to gain insight and nuance.

Yet I thought there was something disturbing about his question, “Are you an environmentalist?” The question implied–and correctly so–that there people who care about the environment and those who don’t. He asked the question as if I identified with some uncommon sexuality. So are you one of them erotic-vomiting transexuals?

Why aren’t we all environmentalists? Caring about the environment should be as ordinary and common to mankind as having limbs. So are you one those people with arms and legs? We live in a funny age if there are people who do not care about the water we drink and the air we breathe, let alone a planet that’s warming at a discouraging rate.

“Yes, I’m an environmentalist! I care about the fucking planet!” I should have beamed proudly. Instead, I sheepishly muttered something about just wanting to be on a long walk, which was true, too.

I hiked over farmland till I got to the Middle Sand Hills, now drenched from hours of rain and battered by hail. Luckily, I happened upon a campground at the Saskatchewan River, where I laid out all my wet stuff under the protection of a pavilion.

In the morning I head off, crossed the border into Saskatchewan–Saskatchewan!!!–and walked around the stinking cauldrons of McNeill, an metallic oil base of some sort with three towering pillars, each spouting red fire. As I got closer to it, I thought I’d see nothing but a bustling industrial center of security guards and oil men, but the whole place looked empty. It was within eyeshot for almost two hours, and I saw only one truck go through it.

I took a quick detour to the town of Burstall, where I hoped to fill up my water bottles and catch up on emails.

The iPad, so far, has proved indispensable. I still have some last-minute book-making duties to attend to, and having the iPad, for that reason alone, has been hugely beneficial. A cover designer has proposed a cover, and I need to be able to provide input and make suggestions about the subtitle and whatnot. Also, a lawyer, hired by my publishing company, has read the book and I must make sure that none of my characters or corporations mentioned can sue me or the publishing company. And finally, I must seek back-cover blurbs from well-known authors. I sent a few letters/emails out to my favorite authors, shamelessly asking if they’d like to read my book and, perhaps, supply a blurb. Naturally I felt quite awkward doing so, but doing so through mail or email does make it easier to so boldly ask for a favor from a complete stranger, who you, no doubt, greatly admire. And it’s easier since I have no “in” with literary circles in which I may awkwardly happen upon one of them.

I sat in a bar in Burstall, with a pool table illuminated by a dim bulb, and pictures of baseball players on the wall. I came to work on book-stuff, and the only the person in there was an old man playing a slot machine.

I ordered a Macho Burger with fries. Soon four workers ambled in. They were all in their forties, except one younger guy, my age, who was clearly upset about something, holding his head in his hands. The older guys tried to cheer him up. “That’s Babe Ruth,” one said. “And he was a fucking orphan.” I wasn’t sure what his logical tract was, but I admired the effort. One of the gruffer men, a short, but stout, worker of supposedly Irish descent, who calls himself “the leprechaun,” asked me what I was doing. I said I was walking to Texas. “What are you, crazy, man?” he asked. “A little.” I said.

“Was that you on the highway?” asked the younger guy perking up. “I thought you were a Native vagrant,” he said to uproarious laughter.

The leprechaun asked me why I was hiking and I said because I thought it might give me something to write about. “We got a writer, here,” he said to the boys. “This feller here,” he said pointing his friend, who called himself the ogre, “This feller here has been drinking since he was ten! Ten! Put that in your fucking book!”

“I’m not sure if that’s going to make it into my book,” I said politely. He kept talking, but I had to focus on my work. Every minute he’d say something to his trio of friends, look over at me and say, “Put that in your fucking book!” followed by laughter all around the table.

“I got beat up in a bar by two drunks,” he yelled. “Put that in your book, too.”

I’d responded with polite laughter and smiles until then, but now my face remained steely as I was insulted by the threat. “I’m just playing with you, man,” he said. “I gotta do that to my friends. You’re in the circle now.”

He came over and whipped a $10 bill at me, which floated down and rested on my keyboard. “Be careful out there he said. Watch out for the ghosts,” he said. “The ogre and the leprechaun.”

While there was a moment where I was sizing up my competition and thought that a barroom brawl might make for entertaining reading, at no point did I feel threatened, as I was just surrounded my tough-talking, though harmless, drunks, who were probably too wobbly to land a direct hit anyway. Still, the road began calling me with an unusual urgency, so I packed up my things, filled up my water, shook hands, bumped fists, and took off for the road, to Richmound, SK, where I write this now.

Can anyone tell me what this is?

The Sand Hills!

Red Deer River

Pipes outside town of Blindloss.

McNeill

Sandy Point campground

Saskatchewan.

Day 17: Oyen, Alberta

As I sat on a toilet seat in the boys restroom at a public school in Consort, Alberta, I thought for the first time that I might fail to accomplish my goal. My feet were a mess. I looked at them and ran my fingers over crusted red scars rubbed raw across my toe knuckles and the tops of my feet. Underneath most of my toes I had blisters. It was excruciating to walk.

I went to the local pharmacist and he, an old man who sounded like he knew what he was talking about, explained that it wasn’t chaffing exactly, but a fungus, perhaps athlete’s foot. He recommended two creams and a sort of deodorant stick to roll atop the blisters that would reduce more chaffing. I dropped $30, and probably would have given him every dollar I had for some relief, and hope.

The principal of the school, meanwhile, asked me to give a short presentation to all the twelfth graders (about 8 students), and the local newspaper, the Consort Enterprise, interviewed and took pictures of me.

My fifteen minutes of fame already over with, I took off down the road around 4 pm, only to stop to camp at the nearest cluster of trees, maybe 2 miles down the road, because my feet couldn’t handle any more. In my tent I cleaned my wounds religiously and generously applied the creams, hoping that a long night’s rest would hasten my recovery.

The next morning, my feet still hurt, as if they’d been sunburned, but they were clearly in better shape than the day before. I walked along Highway 41 toward the town of Monitor, where I found–finally!–the actual route of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The XL will run alongside the Keystone Pipeline, which was built in 2009. It was a welcome sight, and–between the discovery of the pipeline and my recovering feet–I felt like the odds were turning in my favor.

There are many many oil and gas pipelines in the area, but for some reason, the Keystone is one of very few depicted on the maps I printed, which will make navigation through Canada so much easier. The Keystone pipeline runs underground and there is no visible sign of a pipeline beneath the ground, however at every road crossing their are markers (like the one below) indicating its path.

I walked the pipeline over barren prairie, occasionally coming upon an abandoned home or ramshackle farming equipment, slowly sinking into the ground. I approached one such home, and yelled “hello!” hoping to find someone to ask for water. A dog sprinted from the porch into the weeds and I heard no call back, only disquieting silence. With the overcast clouds, the prairie suddenly took on an eerie, haunted quality. I felt like a mysterious character in a Bronte novel traveling over the health, swarthy and perhaps misunderstood, assigned some calamitous, tragic fate. For most of the day, I could see no roads, homes, or even planes in the sky, only the distant powerline stretching to seemingly nowhere.

Desperate for water, I hiked to a road, and walked to a small farm. A man on an ATV rolled up to me and asked me what I was doing.

“I’m on a long walk,” I said. “I’m headed to Texas.”

“That does sound like a long walk,” he said. “Any reason why Texas?”

“Well, I’m following the proposed Keystone XL route,” I said looking behind him to see that the original Keystone pipe ran through his land.

“That pipeline is the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.

Before the oil company built the pipeline, he and several other farmers got together and got the company to up their compensation by 30 times their original offer. “It’s a big boost to the local economy,” he said.

He invited me over for supper. While his wife cooked up hamburgers, he explained more about the pipeline and how they plan on building the XL this coming summer. I asked him what flag was up on his pole, a mostly red one with a British symbol in an upper corner, and he told me it was the Canadian flag used in WWII. “Then the liberals came into power in the 60’s and changed it to what it is today,” he said, adding, “Around here we shoot liberals.”

I wasn’t worried about being shot though, as his kindness and generous nature were readily obvious. We talked for several hours about his daughters, who’d all moved to Saskatchewan, his love for flying, and the pros and cons of organic farming. “Ninety-nine percent of farmers want to be good stewards of the land,” he said. “We care about the bees and bugs, and we don’t like to see them go. But we have to make a living, too.” And to make a living, he had to, like many of the local farmers, spray his fields and hurt the land.

He offered me his RV for the night. Their dog, Lou, a big golden retriever, was out harrassing the prowling coyotes. I began to feel slightly ill, so I went into his trees to use the bathroom. I squatted and Lou eagerly scarfed up what I pushed out.

The next morning, I continued south along 41, not on top of the pipeline path exactly, as I wanted to keep my feet dry as they continue to recover. Now, I’ve reached the town of Oyen, after two successful 20+ mile days.

While my feet are healing nicely, I begin to feel an illness overtake me, from what cause I’m not sure. The back of my throat is sore, I have a hoarse cough, and pints of green mucus gush from my nose every hour. In an A&W bathroom, I blew my nose into a sink and blood oozed out.

But ill or not, I’m happy to be walking on good feet and in a clear direction, south and then southeast, to Saskatchewan.