so far

Many experiences even 6 days into my trip. I was walking around high river one night hen I found a cart that pulls behind a bike and since my bags are way to heavy to carry I loaded everything into this cart and started to walk west. I have made it to black Diamond so far and hope to be in Canmore by the end of the week. Long hot days walking down highways and random nights by little rivers have been the bulk of my experiences so far. It is hard...very hard. I don't know anybody even though there are many people around and I am quite lonely. Not knowing anything like where I can eat and sleep is quite demoralizing but I fel like I am gaining something of some potential worth from all this. Highlights have been a sip of a bottle of port that Brody bought me every night before I go to bed, meting this couple in high river- a guy who has hi english degree and one of the best bookshelves I have ever seen, and random coffee shops every now and then.- Nat

travels

Well already the first day has passed and I have some stories to tell. Took a bus to Calgary then made my way down to High River (a small little town about an hour south of Calgary). It is quite nice here although there is a lot of wealth from Calgary and that black stuff that oozes out of the ground here. I was walking around last night looking for a spot to pitch my tent when this man pulled me aside and said I could stay in his workshop over-night. He is into product design which as far as I can tell is a fancy name for a small scale architect. Anyway he showed me this old camper that he redid. It is one of those ones that look like a bullet- all silver and round- and is fairly roomy. The wonders he did with this thing were incredible- he made it look nicer then many houses I have seen with very modern style and lay-out. Curved shelves with intricate cut-outs, a bed with what I swear was a bear skin on it, a steam shower, those fancy stoves that are flat and have the elements underneath, a pull-out mini-put floor and much more (including surround sound and a large flatscreen tv). Anyways it was quite inspiring and beyond anything I have ever seen in a camper. I told him that I lived in a van for couple of years but it wasn't even remotely close to anything like that. I am doing well and found a really nice campsite for the night. I will stay here a couple of days and then keep heading west. - Nat

exhausted

I ran into a couple of hitchers today- heading out to the Okanagen- going to pick that fruit. I am soon to join their leagues. Last night I went to Regina had lots of sushi, played some pool and watched a movie. A good evening- things I am going to miss. Who knows and that is the troubling part- the uncertainty of the future. I suppose I could have never been certain before about the future because well...its the future. It still seems even more acute now, even though I can rely on many things like sun, trees, breathing, thought etc... It still seems like I am forbidding all recognizable things for the unrecognizable. It would be as if for some reason I was flipped upside down and my feet was in the air and my head was what I hopped on to get around. Sure things would be different and I would have no way of gaging things but when it comes down to it they would be the same things. I would still be living in he same world just upside down- so this is the way the world will appear to me soon. Only 3 more days until I "head out" and I can't wait because it scares me -Nat

Reading......again

I picked up a book by Will Aitken, he has worked for the CBC the BBC, and opened the first gay and lesbian bookstore in Montreal. Needless to say he has a good history as far as prerequisites for writing go. The book is written from the perspective of a women (from Alberta) who goes to japan to teach english...and follows her adventures among the foreign (in more ways then one) race. Such adventures include eating food that tastes like her own skin, growing a pearl in her forehead that she can emit light from, random sexual encounters with the stereotypical small Asian penis, and falling in loe with the local pop-star; Oro. The novel is called Relia but I am going to have to cut this short because my lap-top is dying I will disappear into the abyss of the world without cyber connections. Farewell- Nat