Daily Excerpt: Travels with Elly (MacDonald) - from chapter 2, Alberta
Excerpt from Travels with Elly (MacDonald) -
from chapter 2, ALBERTA
“If we hope to preserve our way of life, the first thing we must do is rediscover our respect for the land, the water, and the entire natural world. And if we do manage to regain that respect, then we must make sure that human beings never lose it again.” (Quote from the late, The Honorable Dr. Lois E. Hole, displayed on a plaque at the Lois Hole Centennial Provincial Park in St. Albert)
Shortly after crossing the border, we entered Crowsnest Pass, site of the devastating Frank Slide. In the early morning of April 29, 1903, a mountainside came thundering down in the darkness, burying most of the town of Frank and killing 90 people, the highest death toll from any slide in Canada. Massive boulders, remnants of the slide, remain piled 30-metres high on both sides of the road. An Interpretation Centre provides personal stories of survivors and dynamic, hands-on educational programs. To forewarn residents and prevent such a tragedy in the future, the government has established a state-of-the-art monitoring system on the remaining mountain that can measure movements as small as the thickness of a penny. Further east, a cadre of giant propellers turned stealthy in the breeze, generating electricity for surrounding communities. This wind-turbine farm is ideally situated to take advantage of strong westerly winds that funnel through the mountain pass. Reportedly, environmentalists have raised concerns over its aesthetic impact, sound pollution, and deadly effects on migratory birds. Unfortunately, as long as consumers require energy, some degradation of the environment appears to be inevitable, barring the discovery of alternative forms of clean energy.
Perhaps the self-sustaining life style of Shelly’s friend in the Kootenays is indeed the solution for a cleaner, greener Canada. In fact, David Hadwin outlined a similar although somewhat more radical strategy shortly before felling the golden spruce: “Dismantle society as we know it, abolish all currency and religion, and remove all men from power. Replace the status quo with small, agrarian villages run by women and restricted to pre-industrial technology. The sole purpose of these matriarchal communities would be to repair the damage wrought by the past two thousand years of male-dominated civilization.”
Sandy thought it was worth a try. I wondered if living in a trailer in an agrarian village would diminish that feeling of being on holidays! Would not the world be a better place if each of us made just one small sacrifice to reduce our carbon footprint?
Sandy and I have occasionally been asked how we justify our nomadic lifestyle from an environmental standpoint. Our typical response compares our energy usage now to when we lived in a house. Fewer materials are required to build a trailer than a house, less fuel is required to heat or cool it, and less energy-wasting devices, such as lawn mowers and snow blowers, are required to maintain it. Our truck uses diesel fuel instead of gasoline, which requires less energy to process, and our annual mileage is about the same as the combined mileage of our previous two cars. We also use our bicycles for short trips when in a campground.
What hasn’t changed is our penchant to recycle and to not buy new clothing and appliances if older items are still serviceable. We take cloth shopping bags into grocery stores to reduce the need for plastic bags, and we buy Canadian, preferably local, rather than imports, when possible.
Could we do more? Certainly—and we will when the Holocaust occurs, prompting our move to New Denver! Several things about Alberta are noticeably different from British Columbia.
First, the sky is bluer, almost navy, and the small white cumulous clouds are flatter, as if their bottoms have been shaved off.
Second, partially accounting for the stratified clouds, the land is mostly flat toward the east, a feature we never noticed when we lived here. Only after being surrounded by mountains for five years did this prairieness become evident.
Third, houseflies are much more prevalent in Alberta. On the coast, we can leave our doors and windows open, and only the occasional insect enters. At our southern Alberta campground, flies zoomed in every time the door opened.
Perhaps the expansive herds of cows we saw along Alberta’s highways had something to do with the large numbers of flies. Sandy, who had spent many summers on her Uncle’s dairy farm, regularly reminded me about the difference between male and female cattle. To me, all cattle are cows. To her, only females are “cows.” Males have other names like bulls or steers. She’s correct, of course, but it doesn’t matter: they both attract flies, and that’s the point here. Whenever Buster spotted a fly in the trailer, he shifted into attack mode, riveting on and stalking the doomed insect until he knocked it out of the air and into his mouth with a couple of swift whacks. Except for the fly, it was a win-win situation: Buster got his exercise and protein, and we had one less fly to shoo.
Sandy’s sister Margot and her husband Randy invited us to park in their driveway during our visit to Calgary. For the next week, we did mostly family things, including a picnic along the Elbow River in honor of their mom’s birthday. When we got to the picnic site, I was pleasantly surprised with the diversity of cultural groups: Hispanic, East Indians, Aboriginals, Afro-Americans, and Italians interspersed with white Anglo-Saxons. Canada has a tradition of being a melting pot of cultures, another reason I choose to live here. In my opinion, diversity produces strength in nationalities just as it does in gene pools. Geneticists call it “heterogeneity” and encourage crossbreeding to reduce the incidence of traits harmful to offspring. For example, in-breeding of show dogs can lead to hip dysplasia, breathing problems, tumors, and a host of other undesirable traits. In terms of nationalities, Canada supports policies that are accepting of people from other countries, ultimately increasing the strength of its cultural fabric.
Margot is a superb cook and we thoroughly appreciated her home-cooked meals, followed by some friendly games of Bid-Euchre. Randy and I golfed twice and each time, a rare event occurred. A lady in our foursome made her first hole-in-one; the next day Randy made his first in 50 years of serious golfing. To put this event into perspective, some pro golfers who play almost every day have never gotten a hole-in-one in tournament play. Witnessing two in two days—unbelievable! Since Randy and I have both had a hole-in-one, we made a friendly wager of $100 for whoever gets another first, with credible witnesses of course.
A 3-hour drive north to Edmonton took us through prime farm and ranch land with herds of cows on both sides of the highway. Some may have been males, but even Sandy couldn’t tell at highway speeds. Dogs reportedly have an average vocabulary of about 200 words. Elly, we’d like to think, is above average. She definitely knows the word “cows.” Whenever we said, “Look at the cows” she’d sit bolt upright in the back seat, jerking her head back and forth until she saw one. She then focused on another, and another, until the herd was gone. She did the same when we said, “Look at the horses.” I should mention that she behaved remarkably similarly when we said, “Look at the hay bales,” so we’ve not sure she was capturing the essence of farm animals. Of course, I know a hay bale from a cow; you can’t get milk from a hay bale!
Sandy and I had the comfortable feeling of returning “home” as we passed familiar landmarks driving to our campsite in St. Albert, a bedroom community of Edmonton. We allocated a month to visit friends, some of whom we hadn’t seen since our departure six years ago. Time passed quickly. I golfed a fair bit. Sandy and Elly visited friends, both human and canine. One day, Elly romped through a park with some of her old buddies.
. . .
American Bookfest Best Books Award Finalist
For more posts about Travels with Elly, click HERE.
For more posts about Larry MacDonald and his books, click HERE.
For more book excerpts, click HERE.
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