[I wrote this in short. I was too busy looking in all directions while driving through the forest.]
Woke up. Swept the large, greying wooden deck. Delicious breakfast of eggs, homefries, fresh fruit & apple juice. Waited for the natural gas service man. Drove Forestry Trunk Road: a narrow gravel logging road which meanders through the dense coniferous backwoods of Alberta. The hills roll high.
Valleys of open riverbeds. Old rivers snake and saunter. Felled trees show their twisted roots torn from the earth. Grass grows high where the forest breaks.
We saw where forest had be scorched by nature. Tall black minarets. Some stand, some lay. All are defeated. Featureless from a distance. Up close, charred scales. Young pines sprout in their absence.
We saw where forest had been ravaged by man. Some open planes bore nothing but forgotten boughs and branches. Others contained trunks piled high. 40 feet into the air. No bark, no branches. I stood under one pile and wondered why they’d been left behind. No trees new trees grew here anymore.
Saw many animals:
A Great Grey Owl. Dark with white spots. Took flight as I gazed upon it. 5 foot wingspan. A majestic raptor.
Several deer. They jump in front of the car. Puck [Patsy’s thigh-high German Shepard/Husky/Wolf cross] is in the car. He sets his feet up on the back seat peering out the window in halting anticipation as the deer bound off into the bush without his pursuit.
Wild horses. Maybe a dozen. They ran free. Didn’t fear the vehicle. Some grazed on grass in a wide, green valley. Few trace us as we pass, throwing a line of sand high in our wake.
We saw more wild animals than we saw men. Fewer than a dozen trucks drove by. No passengers. A large, seemingly out of place grater gave way to us. We closed in on the mountains for a brief time. The road bent us away from them again. Four hours through the timberland.
Caroline. A logging town away from the trees. Stop in a saloon. Only locals inside. Looks like a legion hall. We buy beer. I overhear a story of a man who told another his breath smelled “like he had dog-shit for breakfast”, then offered him chewing gum. The man threw a punch into the Carolinian’s face. The Carolinian then proceeded to smash the other’s head into a door 6 times. I caught no more of the conversation.
Left Caroline. Took township roads to the cabin. Arrived late. Dinner at 22:00. Turkey sausage, ratatouille with chicken, mixed greens, corn on the cob. Two games of Scrabble. Bed.
[It’s really not that short…]
