by Neil Peart
After a decent meal of thin chowder, good baked salmon, and a maple chocolate parfait, I escaped to the comfortable chairs of the Rundle Bar for a coffee, a cognac, and a cigarette (ah, those “C” words!), looking out at two rocky cliffs and a forested valley under a low ceiling of clouds. The pianist was arpeggiating melodramatically on the theme, “Memories,” from one of those Lloyd Webber barrels of schmaltz, and I heard a great opportunity for him to segue into Debussy’s “Arabesque,” my favorite of the cocktail-piano repertoire, but he missed my telepathic request.
I had considered stopping in Banff for two nights, but I was already disenchanted with that idea, and considered my options. I remembered that an artist acquaintance, Dan Hudson, lived in the nearby town of Canmore with his girlfriend Laurie. I’d only met them once before, at a party in Toronto, but for several years I had lived with one of Dan’s paintings (a life-size quartet of Canada geese walking over a background collage of actual family photographs, with an overlay of jet fighters drawn in blue lines), and a few years before I had commissioned him to do a cover painting for a Rush retrospective CD (appropriately titled, Retrospective).
With the aid of directory assistance I called Dan, and he invited me to visit on the following day, a Sunday. I rode down in the chilly sunshine on the Alberta side of the mountains to the small town of Canmore and parked my mud-spattered bike outside Dan and Laurie’s little house on a tree-lined street. Not only would I end up spending an enjoyable day and night with them, but I would carry away several inspirations for my immediate future.
Crowding into the cab of their pickup, we first went to visit Laurie’s ailing horse at a nearby stable, then drove up into Banff National Park to the trailhead in Johnston Canyon. Under a clear blue mid-September sky, Laurie took their dog on a more leisurely stroll while Dan and I hiked rapidly up the trail to the waterfalls and the mineral-tinted pools called the Inkpots, talking furiously about Life and Art the whole way. Dan supplemented his unreliable income as a painter by writing and photographing for snowboard magazines, and he told me of his adventures into remote parts of British Columbia and Alaska. His knowledge and taste in art were as accomplished as his execution (one telling moment came when we were driving along in his pickup and trying to remember some artist’s name, and Dan told me to open the glove compartment and look it up in his “pocket art encyclopedia” — that kind of thing impresses me). And he could cook too. After creating a wonderful meal of mushrooms and oil on bread, pasta with smoked salmon, fruits, and vegetables, and a bottle of Barolo (my humble contribution to the feast), he showed me his garden-shed studio, some of his recent paintings, and slides from his snowboard adventures.
As for the inspirations I took away with me the next morning, chief among them was the realization, glimpsed back at Muncho Lake and in Vancouver on the Grouse Grind, that hiking could be as engrossing and soul-soothing as motorcycling. I began to consider lingering for a day or two sometimes and getting out into the woods on foot, and that tied in with a recommendation from Dan and Laurie that I visit Waterton Lakes National Park, on the border with Montana’s Glacier National Park, and stay at the Prince of Wales Hotel. Dan also recommended a back road through the Kananaskis region of the foothills, and it proved to be a perfect ride: some gravel, some paved, and all very scenic, with mountains to my right and prairie to my left. I saw a young bull moose, some mule deer, and even a few bison, and when I rode into the streets of the small community of Waterton Park, inside the park, flocks of bighorn sheep were cropping at the lawns. All around was a high, majestic landscape of trees rising steeply in deep green brushstrokes up the sides of gray, craggy peaks, all under a bright sun and blue, blue sky.
The Prince of Wales Hotel was a huge, half-timbered lodge on a treeless promontory above the lake, and I was fortunate to get a room near the top of the building, with a tall, old-fashioned window looking out over the forested shore and glittering expanse of calm water, right down to Montana. At an elevation of 4,000 feet, the air was cool, clear, and delicious, and I opened the window wide, drew up a wooden chair before it, and sat sipping at a glass of The Macallan while drinking in the magnificent view. Before I went to dinner I booked in for a second night, and made some plans to keep me busy and “unreflective” for the following day.
In the morning I rode down to the village wharf and joined a cruise around the lake in a sightseeing boat. The park ranger spoke on the boat’s PA system as we cruised slowly along the shore of lodgepole pines, cottonwoods, trembling aspens, and larches (what we in the east called tamaracks, I learned), and she directed our collective gaze to the various scenic attractions, including a 20-foot-wide swath of cleared forest that marked the international boundary, and a slope of tumbled rocks called a “talus,” composed of larger rocks than what I had learned to call a “scree.” When she pointed out a black bear, the boat tipped as everyone moved to the shoreward side to see it.
Apparently, black bears and the even-more-fearsome grizzlies were plentiful in the twinned parks, and she gave us some tips on how to behave with them. Planning a hike for that afternoon, I paid close attention to her words. First of all, don’t feed them (“A fed bear is a dead bear”), and — perhaps obviously — try to stay out of their way. Apparently the thing was not to surprise them, so she recommended not hiking alone (which I could hardly avoid) and making lots of noise. I decided to try singing — that should scare them off, judging by the usual human response to my attempts at vocalizing.
After a satisfying oil change in the parking area behind “Pat’s,” perhaps the perfect little gas station, garage, and general store, and a visit to the laundromat across the street (glad to notice that my maintenance concerns gave priority to the machine!), I rode the scenic loop to Cameron Lake, then to the trailhead for a hike to Backiston Falls. Stowing my riding gear in the empty luggage cases, I changed to jeans and walking shoes and headed down the narrow woodland trail along the river. As I walked, I sang every song I could think of, mostly Sinatra-type standards like “I’ve Got You under My Skin,” “Gentle on My Mind,” “The Shadow of Your Smile,” “I Can’t Get Started,” and, appropriately, “Old Man River,” and it seemed to work: I never saw a bear.
However, another kind of predator was about. I sat on a rock beside the stream and listened to its music, like a whispering crowd, and watched two gray jays in a lodgepole pine, thinking about what a nice rhythm that line had, “Two gray jays in a lodgepole pine,” when I saw two women approaching, one in her mid-30s, the other perhaps twice that. I thought idly that they looked like a spinsterish schoolteacher travelling with her mother. When they got closer the younger one chirped, “Hello again!”
Confused, I could only guess that they must have been on the boat trip, and I said, “Um, hello.” She moved closer, staring into my eyes, and said with sprightly enthusiasm, “You must be riding that gorgeous BMW!”
I liked my faithful steed a lot, but I knew it was anything but pretty, especially to a more “delicate sensibility,” and I felt that nervous discomfort again.
“Well, I wouldn’t call it gorgeous, but it’s reliable and trusty.”
Had I been quicker of wit and charm I might have added, “Like me,” but I am seldom that suave, and I was too rattled by yet another encounter with my seemingly irresistible allure, still uncomfortable with the strange aura I seemed to project, the radiance of my Air of Tragedy. Shrinking away, I gave them a smile and a wave, and slunk back down the trail, singing for the bears. Or perhaps not for them, really, but against them.
Back in the parking lot, I changed back into my riding gear, and as I searched my crowded belt-pack for the keys, my fingers got caught up on the jumble of wallet, journal, note pad, pen, cigarettes, and lighter. I had a sudden burst of frustration and started talking to my things, “Now stop messing around, all of you, or — I’m taking you all home!” When I realized what I was doing, I laughed out loud. There could no longer be any doubt; I was losing it.
Back at the Prince
of Wales I decided that instead of drinking alone in my room I’d go to the bar, and while I sipped a Glenfiddich and admired that wonderful view over the lake, I became part of another scene of spontaneous friendliness among strangers. The park ranger on the boat cruise had mentioned that compared with Banff or Lake Louise, Waterton Lakes National Park received only a tenth the visitors, and that definitely helped to increase its appeal for those who did visit, and made it possible for them to appreciate not only the scenery and wildlife, but each other. Another positive factor in the prevailing mood of the hotel itself was that it would be closing for the season in two more days, so there was a relaxed atmosphere among the staff, and a kind of camaraderie among the guests about sharing the “Last to Leave” Club.
Seeing my binoculars on the table in front of me, an Englishman pointed out a bear on the meadowy slope of the far shore of this narrow part of the lake, and as he went out, I passed the location to other patrons in the bar, even lending them my binoculars to look at it, and as in the Lighthouse Restaurant back in Haines, Alaska, a wave of shared conversation and mutual appreciation rippled through the crowd.
Back at the bar after dinner (for the “Three Cs”), the bartender poured me a huge glass of Remy Martin cognac, smiling as he said, “End of the season.” I asked about the music he had been playing that afternoon, and learned that it was the soundtrack from Swing Kids, a movie I remembered Selena had liked, and now he was playing another nice CD, a live album by Counting Crows, followed by a more traditional Irish group called Irish Descent. The Prince of Wales Hotel was definitely winning my coveted five-star rating, and the same went for the park itself.
Still, this locale was haunted by ghosts too, even some new ones. My brother Danny told me on the phone that night that our old family dog, Nicky, who had been in the care of my parents, had contracted a tumor of some kind and they had decided to “euthanize” him. Under the circumstances, this news didn’t strike me too severely, in comparison to my other losses, but still; it was another loss. If I could have felt sadder, I would have.
The previous night I had left my window open to the night air until about 3:00 in the morning, when I had woken up shivering. I dashed out of bed to pull down the window, then huddled back under the covers, noting that my little keychain thermometer read 10°, or about 50 Fahrenheit. The second night, however, it wasn’t the cold that woke me in the night, but a strange, loud noise outside my window, a high, raspy kind of Rhee! sound.
Suddenly awake, I heard it again and felt a tense shiver that was more than the cold night air. Once again, Rhee!, like the scream of a gull. It seemed to be coming from outside, very close by. I had seen ring-billed gulls soaring around the lake that day, but why would a gull be outside my room under the high gables of the hotel at one in the morning? My fingers wandered over the bedside lamp until I found the switch, and when I turned it the light shone through the screen and illuminated a large, pale owl sitting upright, the way owls do, right outside my window. (Later, I looked it up in my field guide, and identified it as a short-eared owl.)
The strange thing was that this nocturnal raptor wasn’t screaming its challenge and warning to the night air, but right at me — like Poe’s raven, perhaps — and now it sat calmly regarding me from the railing, just a few feet from the foot of my bed, for perhaps half a minute, and I felt seized by a mixture of wonder and primal fear. Then it turned and disappeared on silent wings.
“Whoa!” was the best I could do in terms of a verbal response to such a bizarre apparition, for this apparent messenger from the spirit world was much more unnerving than the two cute seals in Burrard Inlet. I thought of the title, I Heard the Owl Call My Name, from the novel by Margaret Craven, and remembered that in that story the call of the owl had symbolized Death approaching for the one who heard it. I felt another involuntary shiver.
Then a wry shake of the head and eyes rotating upward, “This is getting too weird.”
We suspend our disbelief
And we are not alone
MYSTIC RHYTHMS, 1985
Chapter 6
THE LONELIEST ROAD IN AMERICA
Try to hold some faith in the goodness of humanity
NOBODY’S HERO, 1993
In my experience, the small, out-of-the-way border crossings between Canada and the United States suffered from a multiple-personality disorder. Most often the officer would ask a couple of questions (Where you from? Where you going?) and send you on your way. Sometimes they would ask about the motorcycle and your travels, just to be friendly, or if they were a little curious. However, on rare occasions the under-employed customs officers in these little nowhere places seemed to go a little “psycho,” and decide to make a federal case out of it.
From Waterton Lakes National Park, I was planning to visit Glacier National Park, just over the border in Montana (the other part of what was touted as the “Waterton Glacier International Peace Park”). But as I looked over the map I noticed that Fernie, British Columbia, where my friend and fellow “Rushian,” Alex, was born, was just to the west. Wouldn’t it be fun to send him a postcard from there? It was only about 500 miles out of my way (a mere scenic diversion), and offered a southerly route back into the Rockies I’d never travelled before, over the Crowsnest Pass. From there, I could follow the meanderings of Highway 3 to the euphoniously named Yahk, cross the border into Idaho, and make my way east again to Glacier.
The Idaho Panhandle was a somewhat infamous corner of the United States, where survivalists and white supremacists were known to gather and live “off the grid.” I thought it might be interesting to ride through that region, so I picked a dot on the map with the crossed-flags symbol of an international frontier, and went for it.
Even the most innocent person feels nervous before a border crossing, and the closer I got to this one the more I thought of possible sources of “hassle.” Before setting out, I had asked Sheila to get me a set of credit cards under an alias, John Ellwood Taylor (a fine “bluesman” name, I thought, made up of Jackie’s last name, my own middle name, and the most ordinary of given names), to help preserve my anonymity in motels, restaurants, and gas stations. To a law-enforcement mentality I imagined those might appear suspicious. Plus I carried a few “emergency sedatives” (in case I got stuck somewhere!) under a prescription Dr. Janette had written for me back in Vancouver, and she had discreetly written it under the alias. So that could be a problem too.
Just before the small building which housed the United States Customs and Immigration facility, I stopped to remove my earplugs, then rode up under the overhang and turned off the engine. A uniform with a hangdog face leaned toward me and asked if I had anything to declare, and when I said, “Two cartons of Canadian cigarettes,” he directed me to pull over on the other side of the building.
Inside, a younger, deadly serious officer informed me that they had had “incidents of hostage-taking,” and he ordered me, in a stern, militaristic tone, to remove my jacket slowly and empty all my pockets (he was suspicious of the little plastic tube for my earplugs, and a dry-cleaning receipt).
Then he said, “Pull your shirt tight and turn around to show me that you’re not carrying a weapon.
“Okay, sit down over there and don’t get up or move around unless instructed by an officer. I am now going to inspect your vehicle.”
Intimidated? I guess I was. Ordinarily, when submitting to any such inspection at any border crossing in the world I would demand to be present, but I was so shocked by this level of paranoia I just sat there nervously and worried about what he was going to find. A few minutes later he came in holding my wallet in his white “search gloves,” and demanded that I verify its contents. Then, 10 long minutes later, he returned, stripped off the gloves, and charged me $2.40 for “excess cigarettes.” Man.
Later I would note, “Nice day until fascist border crossing.”
And it had been. Earlier that day, on another cool, sunny September morning, I had travelled west to the Crowsnest Pass,
pausing at the site of the Frank Slide, where in 1903 the side of a mountain had roared down in the middle of the night (why do landslides and earthquakes always seem to happen in the middle of the night?) and buried most of the little town of Frank, killing 60 people. I stood on the elevated field of rubble and thought about those people, trying to imagine the enormity of that event, and thought again, “ghost town.”
Like Nelson, Fernie was a small mountain community built partly on hard labor (mining and logging) and partly on outdoor recreation, for it was surrounded by mountains and lakes that offered both winter and summer activities. As I cruised the half-quaint, half-prosaic main street (the practicalities of hardware and work clothes, the play-toys of snowboards and bicycles), I decided the best place to find a postcard which said “Fernie” on it would be the drug store. Sure enough, a few minutes later I was sitting on my motorcycle, parked on its centerstand, writing a postcard to Alex.
Concerned only that the name “Fernie” appear on the card, I hadn’t really paid attention to the picture, but before I started writing I noticed the caption at the top: “Ghost Rider.” Turning it over, I saw a photograph of a lenticular cloud trailing off the peak of Trinity Mountain. Ghost Rider was apparently the local name for this atmospheric phenomenon.
Now, it must be explained that Alex and I shared a particular mode of writing to each other in “Moronese,” and with the pen in my left (wrong) hand I started scrawling, “Eye em thuh gost rydur.” Then I stopped, my head jerked back, and I thought, “Whoa, yeah! — I am the ghost rider!” The phantoms I carried with me, the way the world and other people’s lives seemed insubstantial and unreal, and the way I myself felt alienated, disintegrated, and unengaged with life around me. “Oh yes,” I thought, “that’s me all right. I am the ghost rider.”