Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

by Neil Peart

  And speaking of winter in these parts, don’t it look fine out there? You know it does, with snow all over the trees and all, and it’s interesting to reflect that all the places I’ve seen in the past four months, however beautiful, have only served to make this look better. It’s “The Place,” you know? I know you do.

  Amid all the excitement I felt about getting back here, one little black doubt kept nagging at me: what would it be like to face it all emotionally again? To look at all the photographs around here, the stuff that fills this place, and the place itself; to see their faces all the time, wherever I looked, in frames as well as in memories. (I may have told you all this on the phone, but it bears recounting, for my own sake, if not yours. And you’re my captive audience, after all, so you have to read whatever I write. And whatever my brother writes too!)

  Well, what seems to have happened during this longish interval of time and distance is that I’ve reached one of those stages along the “Grieving Road.” There is a pretty well-defined series of “phases” you go through (I used to know all this stuff in detail, from reading all them Grief Books over in London, but I’ve wisely let much of it flow out of my head), with various steps through dominant Shock, Disbelief, Denial, Anger, and that. Finally, you’re supposed to reach Acceptance. (Not to be confused with Happiness, Peace, or Resignation.)

  Anyway, “Acceptance” seems to be where I’m at now, for when I first came into this house and looked around at the photos of Jackie and Selena, the words that came into my head were, “I know.” That’s all. Not that I can really “accept” it, or necessarily live with it, but at least, “I know.”

  That’s something, I guess, and to that degree, I suppose the “Healing Road” did its job. I’ve just started to look over some of my journal entries from early in the trip, and find myself, at that time, just hoping I’d be able to wander around until Xmas, and maybe wander down through Mexico and Belize, and, in what was then the far-distant future, get back here for the prime of winter. That plan actually worked out, I can say now, in both an outer and an inner sense, and now I’ve just got to work my way through Phase Two.

  As with Phase One, I’m not sure exactly how it’s all going to work, but I’ll use the same modus operandus: no pressure, no obligations, but just try to get myself through the days as divertingly and healthily as I can. Now is another “Danger Time,” of course, when I could easily slip into Evil Ways, so I’m keeping an eye on myself. That’s why I’ve been keen to get out on the snowshoes and skis, and I hope to get into some kind of a regime with cross-country skiing, working up to a good long ski at least three times a week. Not only would it keep me busy, but my “level of fitness” could use some picking up too.

  Anyway, I’ll be trying to keep myself occupied in non-destructive activities, and hopefully I can get interested in doing something around here, like getting back to the writing thing. But again, no pressure, no obligation. I’ll just start typing up my notes and sorting out the material I’ve collected, and see how it goes. Up to now, I’ve been spending an hour or so in the morning here in my office, just sort of dabbling at things, and I’ll see where the keyboard takes me.

  That’s another thing to get used to — typing again, after being “Mr. Freehand” in my journalizing and letter-writing for such a long time. But I do like it. My typing is not only neater than my printing (forget about writing), but I also find that I do communicate much more spontaneously like this, for I know anything that comes out too stupid can be fixed up later! But both are good, I guess. Depends on yer soy-cum-stances, don’t it?

  But yeah, lots to do, alright. The guest room and the front hall are still stacked with boxes, with more yet to come from Toronto, so there’s always plenty of that kind of sorting-out to do. My old office here, which is now “annexed” to the upstairs loft of the Selena Memorial Library, is a terrible mess. I’ve only begun to nibble at the accumulated mail and stuff, though I did find a good letter from you after I spoke with you, and that was nice.

  I was distressed to hear you’ve had to forego the companionship of that amiable young African-American chap, Reginald, for I’m sure it had been frightfully jolly to converse with him in the “colorful” manner you describe. Really breaking down those cross-cultural borders, what?

  Why, one might discourse at great length and depth about such common enthusiasms as those great old minstrel shows. So charming, with all the humorous characters in blackface, singing and dancing so winningly. Or that Sammy Davis Jr; such a great entertainer. And the toe-tapping music of those nicely dressed Motown singing groups from the wonderful ’60s. Indeed, in moments of candor such as might well overcome two such soul mates in their shared incarceration, one might even be tempted to share one’s own experiences of “getting down” in the “neighborhood” with the “brothers.”

  And I say! No doubt in the natural manner of this verbal intercourse you would even find occasion to utilize such delightful verbs and adjectives as “boogie” and “jive!” Ripping good fun, I’m sure, and it is to be regretted that you have lost such a quaint and diverting companion.

  [Later that same day . . . ]

  Well, I’m just back from a long bushwhack on snowshoes, way back in the woods across the road. I remember that you and I once snowshoed around the perimeter of the “Hunderd Aker Wood,” but I don’t think I ever dragged you farther back into the bush, from the northeast corner, into the timber concessions and Crown land. A few winters back, I was able to get through there and connect with some logging roads, used only by occasional snowmobilers in winter and hunters in the fall, and make my way all the way to the Aerobic Corridor. However, a few summers’ growth since then, and, especially, last year’s famous Ice Storm, have pretty well blocked that trail, so today I took a pair of twig-clippers out there and had a go. In a couple of hours of plodding, bending, and fierce snipping, I cut perhaps two million sumac sprouts, plus countless other “whippy” bits of growth, but I’m still mired in a dense thicket back there. Next time I’ll have to take the handsaw with me, for there are a number of fair-sized trees bent right over the trail.

  But that kept me harmlessly occupied for a couple of hours, and on the way back I cut across the land, over the frozen surface of Stinky Lake, where Danny and I had blazed a trail a few days ago (our tracks all but obliterated by last night’s heavy fall), following the siren song of a distant chainsaw. Pierre and Keith were working on the other trail, clearing the largest deadfall from the property line at the far end. We never got to it last summer, for just clearing the main trail across the road took four of us a whole day, but I asked them at least to get rid of the biggest trees on the trail, so a guy could get through without having to go over, under, and around them.

  And so homeward, to heat up a can of delicious pork ’n’ beans, then another short session at the desk. I’ll just finish up this letter and get it sent off to you today, which will be a good excuse to go out. One thing I’ve already learned about trying to start the cross-country ski program is that having an errand to run is a good excuse to go for a ski, and going for a ski is a good excuse to get an errand done. This may work!

  Anyway, that’s all today’s big news. Be advised that yesterday I sent a package to you with two books, a money order for a couple hundred huitlacoches, and two photos I thought you might like (since they feature you, of course). I’m not sure if you have any place to keep things like that where you are now, but I thought I’d send ’em along anyway, in case you did.

  Otherwise, you know what to do, I don’t have to tell you. Just like on the ski lift, “Keep Your Tips Up!” Or, as your lamented former friend and “Funky Home-Boy,” Reginald, no doubt advised you, “One must accept these quotidian events in a refrigerated manner, my consanguinary brother, do you understand what it is that I am saying?”

  Fight the Power, Brother The Ghost Rider

  [Letter to Lesley Choyce, a prolific author and the founder of the company, Pottersfield Press, which published my fi
rst book, The Masked Rider]

  Jan. 15, ’99 Lac St. Brutus, Que.

  Dear Lesley,

  Well, here I am, back home in the woods again, where I surely belong, and I’m glad to say that it’s just the way I’d been dreaming about it, day and night, for about the last two months of my self-imposed “exile.” A true and righteous blizzard is raging outside, the air so thick with snow you can’t see across the lake, and it’s drifting around in whipped-cream peaks on top of the more than two feet which has already fallen since my arrival (Dec. 28th). The temperature has stayed around my “winter optimum” (-10°C) [14°F], though it got down near -30°C [-22°F] a couple of nights, which gave me a good excuse to fire up the old woodstove.

  Sure, I’ve got a furnace and everything, but the woodstove is part of my “emergency preparedness” program. CBC-TV in Montreal, whence I get my daily weather info, won’t let anyone forget that exactly one year ago was the big Ice Storm, and though this area wasn’t the worst hit (and though we were in London at the time), the power was out here for about 12 frigid days. That’s why I have a woodstove. And a generator. And a four-wheel-drive car. And snowshoes.

  And that’s why every Quebecker knows you must always be well supplied with emergency supplies of booze and smokes!

  So, I’m slowly easing into whatever kind of a life I’m going to have here. A guy can’t take off and spend four months as an irresponsible saddletramp without arriving home to a certain amount of chaos, but of course there’s a certain amount of chaos inside me too, so it . . . balances.

  [A recap of my travels and the “acceptance” theory]

  . . . so, after four months and 46,000 kilometres [28,750 miles], four countries, six provinces, two territories, 11 American and 17 Mexican states, maybe it took all that just to say, “I know.” That’s enough for what’s behind me, I guess, but I just hope it’s enough for what’s ahead of me, you know?

  Well, in the immortal words of The Brain [in the cartoon show “Pinky And The Brain”], when he clobbered Pinky and Pinky asked him “What’d you do that for, Brain?”

  The Brain answered sagely, “Time will tell, Pinky. Time will tell.”

  Selena and I used to love those guys.

  I did quite a bit of reading in my travels, which included a lot of background on where I was travelling, especially books about the American deserts, but that led me some interesting places. Do you know of the American writer Edward Abbey? I discovered his Desert Solitaire in a National Park Visitor Center, and became a total fan immediately. The Monkey Wrench Gang, The Brave Cowboy, and many more of his fictions and nonfictions were soon riding along in my bags, as I travelled through the West he writes about with such love and understanding.

  My interest in Jack London has also grown into a complete admiration for masterpieces like The Sea Wolf, Martin Eden, and so many great short stories.

  [The tale of my visit to Jack London State Park, and about London’s sad end]

  He and his wife Charmian seem to have loved each other well, and had many adventures together, and he certainly had an interesting and successful life, and yet none of it was enough to keep him alive. Or her either, for that matter. It made me sad. A lot of stuff does.

  But as I may have intimated in my postcards (which I’m glad you received; along the way I wanted to let a few people know that they were alive in my thoughts, and that I was still alive in theirs!), out there on the Healing Road I did stumble across some important moments of Truth and Beauty.

  It was the simple things: a sunrise ride across Saskatchewan from Neepawa, Manitoba, where I’d taken shelter the previous night from a late-August thunderstorm, and now the Sunday-morning road was empty and endless and still shiny-wet, reflecting the clear sky and the rising sun behind me. Or riding past the lakes and forested mountains along the Alaska Highway, and passing a family of caribou, a black bear, or a bald eagle. Gyrfalcons above the tundra on the Dempster Highway to Inuvik, grizzlies in Alaska, whales cavorting beside the ferry which carried me down to Prince Rupert. Highways, landscapes, wildlife. Once again, concentrate on the essentials.

  Another important process which had to go forward during this journey was that of reconstructing myself. I expect that job will continue for awhile. Needless to say, my foundation has been shaken so profoundly that even now I have no idea about such rudimentary notions as “who am I?” and “what is life?” I used to know these things, or feel that I did, but at the bottom of my soul there’s a sense of rejection toward whatever was.

  The elemental “faith” in life I used to possess is completely gone, to the extent that I now carry the built-in assumption that whatever I used to do was probably wrong (it didn’t “work,” after all), and thus every little element of my former life, behavior, interests, and habits, was up for re-examination.

  So, I came back to reading, bicycling, motorcycling, rowing, and bird-watching, and found them good. Now I can add snowshoeing and cross-country skiing to that list. And watching it snow. Oh yeah — and letter-writing.

  During the journey I kept a pretty good journal going (like reading, it’s useful when you’re travelling alone, especially in bars and restaurants) and I’ve ended up with three volumes of “Ghost Rider” notes (Canada, U.S., and Mexico/Belize), though I haven’t started transcribing them yet.

  Anyway, thanks again for your good wishes along the way, and know that I am now ensconced in my snowy domain (yahoo, just look at it snow!), feeling my way through the days. For now I plan to be here for the next couple of months, at least, save for one reluctant trip to Toronto which I’ll have to make at some point, to deal with matters medical, dental, financial, legal, and all fun things like that.

  Let’s both look for an opportunity to get together sometime soon; I’d like that. Maybe you’ll be in Montreal (just an hour from here), or we’ll both be in Toronto, or, come Springtime, maybe one day you’ll look down the road and see a distant apparition of red paint and black leather, as the one-and-only Ghost Rider comes a-riding your way . . .

  Bye for now,

  Your friend, NEP

  [Letter to Mendelson Joe]

  Jan. 19, 1999 Lac St. Brutus, Que.

  Dear Joe,

  Well, I’m here, and I’m alive.

  (Let’s start with the essentials.)

  For at least the last month of my self-imposed exile, that’s all I wanted — to be here and to be alive. It was a long journey down that ol’ Healing Road, and of course, it ain’t over yet. Not hardly. In fact, I guess it begins again every day. Well, I’m here and I’m alive. Start with the essentials.

  For a couple of weeks in early December, I travelled around Baja California, which I did enjoy a lot, then took a ferry over to “mainland” Mexico, to some of the places where Brutus and I had ridden a few years back. Despite the inevitable frustrations of travelling in a “struggling” country, I do like Mexico, especially the people.

  For one thing, they understand about music. Aboard that overnight ferry I took from La Paz to Mazatlán, I noticed there was taped music playing in the dining room, a live band in the bar, a “CD jukebox” blaring at the stern, and even when I stood up by the bow to look at the moon rising above the still waters of the Sea of Cortez, there was rhythmic Latin music floating out from the bridge. Music is everywhere, all the time, and very often in the towns my spirits were lifted by live music. In the main squares, mariachi bands, marimba bands, dance bands, and solo violinists and guitarists roam around, entertaining the people and receiving their willing contributions.

  And also, nearly all the music is Mexican, even the pop music, and considering Mexico’s status and location (a former Mexican president once remarked, “Poor Mexico: so far from God, and so close to the United States”), it’s remarkable that the youth in particular have escaped the pervasive reach of that Amerikan-Disney-ghetto influence.

  In the “native” communities of the western U.S. and Canada, and even in the far north, I would see the local youths out “cruising,�
� packed into a tarted-up old car with the doors breathing in and out to the booming bass of inner-city rap music. Probably the big beats and angry rhymes of the “ghetto gangstas” do express the universal frustrations of “disaffected youth,” but for the Inuit kids as much as for the Mexicans, the imported stuff is certainly in a “foreign language.”

  How great for the Mexican people that they’ve got their own music, and that it’s part of such a strong culture. Even in the most heinously overdeveloped resort towns, with their Hard Rock Cafés and Planet Hollywoods, I’ve found there always remains a Mexican town, if you know what to look for. Even in Puerto Vallarta, one of the most “ravaged” of all the Pacific Coast beach resorts, I was able to find the narrow, uneven backstreets, the quirky old church on the open square lined with street peddlers’ tables, and right in the middle of the tourist strip of souvenir shops and bars along the seawall, a live-music show, full of joy and life, entirely performed and attended by locals.

  I probably mentioned in my previous letter that Nature has been an important source of Truth and Beauty for me lately, and throughout my travels I’ve been especially drawn to the birds. It worked great on my hikes, of course, carrying a little field guide and binoculars, but even as I rode along on the motorcycle, I learned to glance at, say, a hawk on a roadside post, and memorize the field marks: medium-size, yellow-billed, body barred in brown-and-white, tail white-edged, black primaries. Then I’d look it up later, and be able to identify it, scientifically, as “some kind of hawk.” As a kid of seven or eight, my ambition in life was to be a “professional bird-watcher,” and I may finally have reached that goal.

  Last summer, when I set out on my journey, I was driven by a sense, or a hope, that motion would be a good “diversion” for me, especially compared to sitting here and stewing in my own bile, but I had no idea just how important it would be. Some mornings I would wake up freaking and sad and lonely and desperate, but as soon as I got on the bike, the world would first contract, to the size of the machine which carried me and everything I needed, and then it would expand, to the wide new world of highway, landscape, and wildlife coming at me.