Chapter 4
The Golden Horseshoe
Back on the
QEW, I pushed Melawend up to 55 miles per hour and there still throttle to spare. We actually passed a car – a silver Mercedes. I had taken my time in passing, admiring the
elegant lines of a car that was also a moveable affirmation of its owner – I have arrived.
One of my long-term goals was to own such a car.
A man in a business suit, impeccably groomed with silver hair, a moustache and
designer sunglasses, drove this one. As
Melawend and I came along side, he looked over, smiled in surprise, and then surprised me
with a thumbs up.
We were
passing large orchards of cherry, peach and apple trees.
We rolled by vineyards that were not yet green.
We were riding along the fertile plain between the Niagara Escarpment and the south
shore of Lake Ontario – one of Canada’s major fruit belts. Ninety percent of Canada’s wines came from the
vineyards of Niagara Peninsula and I knew the names of some of the big wineries: Andrés,
Jordan and Barnes, as well as the estate wineries such as Hildebrand and Reif. I knew I would not be around for the annual
festivals – the Niagara Blossom Festival or the Niagara Grape and Wine Festival
– but it was inspiring to think I would soon be scootering through the vineyards of
Europe.
Where the
highway hugged the shore of the lake, I saw the distant huddled mass of Toronto on the far
shore with the sky-needling CN Tower, the world’s tallest freestanding structure,
prominent. Toronto would mark the first
overnight stop of the odyssey and, though somewhat a city hater, I was anxious to be
there.
Near Grimsby,
a cantilevered turn in the escarpment reminded me of that great Hawaiian travel cliché
– Diamond Head – a destination on the last overseas stop on the journey. We’ll
make it there, Melawend. But as if somehow
hiding the truth from Melawend, the time, distance and obstacles that we would have to
surmount before reaching the real thing troubled me.
Traffic
thickened as Melawend and I entered the industrial corridor that began past Stoney Creek. In Hamilton, we motored toward the Burlington
Skyway over the entrance to Hamilton Harbour. To
my left, I saw the flat brown industrial morass of Stelco, the steel factory complex that
sprawled along the shores of the harbour. It
had the look of a bombed city that was smoldering, yet still functioning, with battered
ships at its moorings. I detected the
rotten-egg odor that reminded me of other passings when the stench became so bad that you
pitied the people who lived in the run-down homes on the north side of the highway. But maybe what I was smelling this morning was the
exhaust of a big ancient semi that had just wheezed past us.
I was
concerned that we would encounter strong winds at the top of the Skyway – and they
were – but Melawend ploughed through easily. Down
we went into the busy urban web that wrapped around the west end of the lake, unbroken
from Burlington through to Oshawa, about 50 miles away.
My timing was bad – commuter traffic was heavy.
What I hated most about urban sprawl was the insidious tangle of converging
multi-lane highways with their feeders, collectors and express lanes, especially when you
were trapped in the gridlock of “rush hour” – the term was an infuriating
contradiction that reinforced my disdain of life in a big city.
I welcomed the detour
into Oakville to see Dan Tyndall, owner of Hiker’s Haven. Put Dan on Younge Street in Toronto and you might
have taken him for a musician in a struggling band. He
was youthful, tall and lean with long brown hair, a gaunt face and eyes that flared when
he spoke with you. Dan was a shrewd
businessman who had taken a $2,000 investment and built a successful adventure gear
enterprise. His main store here on Kerr
Street was comprised of two adjacent two-story houses that were crammed with everything
from the finest-quality backpacks to kayaks. The
Canadian Everest Team had even approached him for gear.
We talked in his cluttered, low-ceiling office.
“…then
the scooter fell onto the patio.” What a
hassle to just to get under way.”
“Far
out,” he said. “Man, I really envy
what you’re doing. It’s a
dream.”
“Thanks
for helping out, Dan.”
“No
problem. We’re glad to be part of
it,” he said. “Let’s get those
extra supplies.”
Photo: Tom on Melawend with sponsor Dan Tyndall, owner of Hiker's Haven, at the
Oakville, Ontario store.. Photo by Thomas Martin Smith.
Dan had
already loaded me up with a Eureka! tent, a Luger sleeping bag, a backpack, boots, and all
manner of camping supplies. Now some
incidentals were added as well as several Hiker’s Haven T-shirts and sweatshirts. In return for his sponsorship, I was to photograph
locals in various places around the world, wearing the Hiker’s Haven logo.
“Far
out!” were the last words he said after we had taken a few publicity shots in front
of the store. I wondered if I was “far
out” of my mind.
Back on the
QEW, traffic was thick but it moved swiftly. Though
Melawend could maintain 55 miles per hour easily, most vehicles passed us. When huge transport trucks came along our left
side, we were first pushed to the right, then sucked back along side, close to that
ominous high wall of steel and row of massive wheels that threatened to grind us under.
I had a great
respect for truckers for they were often more skillful and courteous than the average
motorist. They were like a huge family of
independent landship captains, brothers and sisters bound together by their common
vocation. You knew the air was alive with
their CB radio chatter, something for which I had been very grateful when my car had
broken down in the wilds of Northern Ontario. I was comforted by a gut feeling that they
and their counterparts overseas would be a reliable source of help if need arose.
I began to
relax even in this horrendous flow and I drew imagery from it. Melawend and I left the QEW via the 403 next to the
Ford plant in Mississauga. This bypass took us
to the 401, the main east-west highway in southern Ontario.
Coming down the ramp onto 401 East, near the Lester B. Pearson International
Airport, there was a great merging of traffic, spread across many lanes. I felt like a tiny red corpuscle flowing in a mass
of converging arteries, heading for the heart of Toronto.
Sitting there on a little heavy-laden scooter with thundering transports, trucks,
busses, RV’s, cars and vans squeezing you into the fast flow. Opps! Clog ahead, slow down – there was enough
pressure to give my own heart a nasty workout.
I was relieved
to pull off into Agincourt, which was part of the City of Scarborough, (now part of the
mammoth amalgamation that is new Metropolitan Toronto).
My cousin Diane greeted me at her home with her usual bear hug. She could easily have been a devotee of Dr. Leo
Buscaglia, the world-renowned lecturer on love and the benefits of hugging. Diane’s hug felt so good after the day’s
run. With her children Stacy, Steven and Ryan,
we shared a potluck dinner.
(I had the good
fortune to share some wonderful correspondence with Leo Buscaglia after my world journey,
including a Christmas card – a photo card with Leo dressed in a Santa Claus outfit. Leo’s universal gift was love.
Sadly, Leo died on June 12, 1998.
But he lives on through his books and through a highly informative website
maintained by his publisher, Slack Incorporated, entitled: "The World of Dr. Leo
Buscaglia" – www.buscaglia.com )
Then I left to
make a visit that I had dreaded for months. Freed
from her load, Melawend was more responsive as we sped to another part of Scarborough. My daughters Melanie and Wendy, eleven and nine
years of age, came down from their high-rise apartment, accompanied by their friend,
Angela. I took them for rides and photos. It was a fun time that floated on unspoken feelings
of imminent parting. It came – sad, and
ladled with promises to keep in touch. “Watch
your mail,” I said with my best composure. Lots
of hugs. Then I was gone. On the way back to Diane’s place, streetlamps
and the warm lights of homes became blurred points of light in the dark.
Diane and the
kids left me with more hugs and well-wishes as they left to visit family in Fort Erie,
letting me stay the night in their home. That
first night of the odyssey was spent stretched out on the self-inflating Taymor Insulmat,
wrapped warm in the Luger Elite sleeping bag on the floor of Diane’s recreation room. As I drifted off, I felt the swirl of emotions I
had experienced the night before, compounded by the parting with loved ones. But I was overtaken by exhaustion, more
psychological than physical, and I slept soundly.
I had reached
the outer limits of the region that was most familiar to me.
Though I had traveled through much of North America, this area had been my nucleus,
and there had always been feelings of security and comfort when I returned to the familiar
roads that led to Ridgeway (the same feeling you get when the aircraft you're in touches
safely down on the runway of your local airport).
With any
lengthily trip, there had always been an anxiety in the departure, the desire to get to
the destination quickly. This trip, my first
outside the perceived security of North America, was to be The Journey of a Lifetime. If I had had the money or sponsorship, it would
have been much easier to get Melawend and myself onto a jet at Lester B. Pearson
International Airport and simply fly to England and truly get this journey underway. But I had only six hundred dollars seed money. I wanted to go around the world by staying on the
ground as much as possible and I wanted to include part of my own country. And besides, what was the rush?
In that
anxious yet carefree mood, I left Diane’s home the next morning and headed east on
the 401. I had reorganized the load and
lowered Melawend’s center of gravity, making her more stable and responsive. In my mind I played John Williams’ theme to Raiders of the Lost Ark. The music seemed to uncover intense feelings of
purpose and freedom. And somehow it made it okay to also be an adventurer. Even under this heavier load, Melawend felt more
solid and powerful. My growing spirit was
spurred, This is it! It seemed to further validate that
go-with-a-gut-feeling that Grandpa Darby would have approved of, that same feeling I got
when I first sat on this little Honda in Peter Lapp’s showroom. I had a sunny day, the open road, a peppy scooter
and a whole world of adventure ahead of me – the world seemed alive with promise. I was on my way!
(If only I had known what lay at the end of this run to the
Atlantic…)
For all its
liberating speed, the 401 was just another featureless swath across the land, the boring
benign expressway from here to there. It was
my jet stream out of Toronto. I had avoided
rush hour and traffic moved quickly. When I
reached Oshawa, the northeastern extremity of The Golden Horseshoe, I knew that I was
leaving it all behind.
Oshawa was
Canada’s counterpart to America’s Detroit. I
didn’t see the huge General Motors plant but I imagined the hordes of lunch
pail-toting workers, the groomed and scented administrators, the swift jerking arms of
robots, the blinding spray of sparks – the routine of industrial mass production. I thought of the little scooter I was riding,
imagining it as part of some workday’s quota in some mammoth Orwellian complex in
far-off Japan, being formed, assembled, stamped and conveyor-belted out the door, just
like a zillion others like her, reduced there now to a few bytes in a labyrinthine
computer database. But in leaving Oshawa
behind, I knew that my very life depended on this little machine – and I sincerely
hoped that the workers and robots that had assembled Melawend had had a nice day when she
was born.
East of
Oshawa, the traffic thinned out dramatically. At
last, I had left the workaday world behind – my world would be whatever surrounded
me. I had my own project. I was my own boss.
I could choose the direction of my efforts. I
was free!
And now I was virtually alone on the highway.
That feeling
of freedom was fine for a while but the wide swift emptiness of the 401 left me feeling
lonely and very far from any glorious destination. I
craved a gentler speed, mellow winds and closeness to the land and to life – people,
homes, shops, trees nearer the road, and the tranquility of the shore.
I took an exit
to route 2 – The Heritage Highway – and immediately found that bucolic serenity
in the leafy shadows that danced over me and the road, and in the cozy homes and yards
that merged into the preserved 19th century charm of Walton Street in Port
Hope. It was Sunday; there were few people
around. I made for the waterfront and rested
in a park by the man-made harbour. I dug into
my tiny galley and made lunch of peanut butter and jam on rolls that Diane had left for
me. I sat of one of Melawend’s running
boards and chowed down. There were people
eating in parked cars. A young couple walked
by, pushing a stroller that held an infant that was wrapped in a pink blanket. A sailboat was alongside the light beacon at the
entrance to the harbour, heading out into Lake Ontario.
I soon had
company. I flicked hunks of bun to a few
freeloading seagulls that had ventured near to me. More
flicked pieces drew more gulls, from God knows where.
Some landed while some circled low overhead. Soon
I was the center of a screeching, fighting, defecating flock. Guano bombs fell with abandon. My squabbling companions only confirmed the
loose-bowelled reputation of the genus sometimes known as “shit hawks”. Though
the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull was
one of the inspirations of this journey, it was sometimes difficult to relate that
wonderful bird to this more familiar encounter with his species.
It was time to
go.
As I was
leaving Port Hope, I saw two boys who were standing by the edge of the road, waiting to
cross it. The smaller boy had his head down
and started to cross too soon. The taller boy
grabbed the little boy by the shoulders and pulled him back.
In my rear view mirror, I saw them cross, the older boy leading the younger by the
hand.
In Cobourg, I
admired the stately lines of Victoria Hall, the masterwork of Canadian architect Kivas
Tully, built in 1860 and opened by the Prince of Wales.
I saw its high clock tower, the carved Cleveland freestone, the speaker’s
balcony and the imposing columns topped with Corinthian capitals. The magnificent building had been built in
anticipation of the greatness Cobourg never achieved.
If I had gone inside, I would have seen the courtroom that was modeled after
London’s Old Bailey. The classic
building did remind me that I was on my way to England and that I had to keep moving.
In between
lakeside communities, I took in the green beauty of the Northumberland Hills – farms
and orchards and rolling treed land. In a
pasture of waving grass, a dark brown stallion stood by a fence near the road, as a breeze
swept its longhaired mane and tail.
Though the sky
was postcard blue, I thought of a note that Diane had left for me: “Don’t drink
the rain water – radioactivity in rainwater.”
I was what, maybe 5,000 miles from little place in the Soviet hinterland, in the
north central Ukraine, whose name had suddenly spurred the world’s environmental
consciousness – Chernobyl. It had been
15 days since a reactor core had melted down in an antiquated nuclear power plant and had
belched out an insidious cloud of deadly contaminants to be borne on the vagaries of the
winds. Rainwater in Ottawa was found to
contain six times as much radioactive iodine as was acceptable for drinking and so our
government had issued a warning not to drink it. Fine,
I could live with that, but tell that to that horse, and to all the cats and dogs and
other animals that lapped at rain puddles. And
didn’t children sometimes forget what their parents told them not to do?
I looked at
the beauty that surrounded me. I glared at the
sky on the easterly horizon, probing the blue for the slightest hint of discoloration,
almost defying rain to come down. Radioactive rain? Bastards! But who was actually to blame?
I thought of
Mr. McLeod, one of my high school teachers and a part-time scientist, talking angrily
about the “greenhouse effect”. I had
been hearing about air pollution and water pollution as long as I could remember. And how long ago was “Earth Day”? The abuses just seemed more defined – ozone
depletion, rainforest destruction, chemical waste dumps, and so on. There had been a lot of index fingers pointing at
faces and places. And everywhere, middle
fingers were pointed upwards. I wondered,
where was it all getting us? It seemed one
might as well wet the finger and test the air.
Of course it wasn’t that simple
or one-sided and I knew positive efforts were being made.
I was all in favor of the preservation of the integrity and individuality of
nations, but it seemed to me that as masters of the earth we were going about it all wrong
– we were not unified enough in regards to global concerns. It seemed nations had their own agendas. They had secretive little groups of scientists who
were huddled in remote compounds and were manipulated by self-serving politicians, while
they tinkered with dangerous technologies. I
knew there were international organizations out there coordinating some efforts but that
it was not nearly enough. There were too many
spoilers in a world still fractured by hatreds, greed, envy and rivalry. And if they won, the world just might go to hell,
becoming its own bodybag.
I rode
absently for a time, as when you have driven between one place an another and arrive but
can not remember what you did or saw along the way. (Scary, isn’t it?) But my thoughts had depressed me and had pretty
much blown my high spirits of the morning to, well, I wasn’t quite There, but I was
now suddenly in Trenton. I remembered visiting
my cousins here when I was a boy. Melawend
and I were now passing the fences of CFB (Canadian Forces Base) Trenton where my Uncle Bud
had served his last hitch in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
When I saw a fat dull green transport plane on the tarmac, I remembered Dad telling
me of Uncle Bud’s heroism in World War II, having piloted his plane and crew safely
back to base after the plane was riddled with gunfire and he was injured. Dad lamented that war had ended before he was old
enough to enlist.
There was
something ominous about a military base – a reminder that the specter of war was a
still a possibility. But having known only
peace in my life, it seemed wasteful when huge defense budgets could be better utilized
elsewhere (as in the U.S. where a fraction of its annual defense budget would pay for a
healthcare system that would cover every American). However,
when you got your daily news, you knew that military bonfires were still popping all over
the world. And though you were far removed
– and safe – from the “action”, you were very glad to have those folks
in uniform who were ready to put their lives on the line for peace. Melawend and I rode slowly past the airstrip on the
left and the barracks on the right where there were clothes on the lines and toys in the
yards. These were real people too, with
children and parents to worry about them if they were called into action in remote places.
I wanted to
call Mom – it was Mother’s Day. Though
she lived on Vancouver Island, about 3,000 miles to the west, the take-it-for-granted
wonder of the telephone would make it seem like she was in the next room. Heading east through Canada, I felt I was merely
going out the side door at the opposite end of the house.
It wasn’t that simple or as good – I could not give Mom a hug over the
phone – but it was, as the phone company ads repeatedly said, "the next best
thing to being there." I stopped at a
roadside telephone booth.
“Happy
Mother’s Day, Mom!”
“Tom! Thank you, dear.
Where are you?”
“Napanee. How is everything there?”
“Oh,
fine,” she said. We talked of Don and
how the island’s dampness was bothering him. We
talked about their cats and dogs – the stay-at-homes and the wanderers, and in
particular about their little black poodle, Don’s sidekick, Angus. We talked about flowers blooming in their yard and
work yet to be done around their new house. We
talked about the day-trips she and Don were planning to make. Then we talked about the journey.
“You’re
not going to Libya, are you?”
“No,
don’t worry about that, Mom.”
I had thought
of cutting south through Spain, hopping over the Strait of Gibraltar to enter Africa via
the Arab world in fabled Morocco. I would
travel the hot, bald head of Africa to the Nile to see in part what it was about this
desolate region that had been dominated by the tank forces of Field Marshall, “the
Desert Fox” of the Third Reich. I would
be passing through Tripoli.
War, for me,
had not been much more than news on TV and games played in my youth. I remembered singing the lyrics, “From the
Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli…” with Robert and Stuart Hadden and
Bobby Adams. We loved playing war together;
the Haddens had all the great toy weaponry. The
real battles, however, were between the brothers Hadden.
When a fight started, Bobby and I usually found neutral ground and watched.
“I got
you,” Stuart would say to his brother from behind a tree. “You’re dead.”
“No
Stewy, I got you first,” Rob said from his prone position on the lawn behind some
makeshift barricade.
“I got you first!” Stuart said.
“Damn it,
Stuart, I got you first! Now smarten up and play dead!”
I was hunkered
down closest to Robert and could see the rage in his face.
Robert’s glasses always seemed to have white tape across the bridge. He was the elder brother and he took no guff.
This would go
on a minute or two and then they would be out in the open.
They would throw down their plastic guns and go into full-blown hand-to-hand
combat. There might be a bit of blood. Robert’s glasses would be broken. The fight would end either after another shouting
match or when their father, an American veteran of World War II, would come out of their
house and break it up, sometimes forcefully. Robert
and Stuart would have to go to their rooms. Bobby
and I would have to leave. War could be fun,
but when it got out of hand it could sure ruin your day.
Mom’s
concern was based on recent events. Less than
a month earlier, the U.S. had launched an air strike against Libya, bombing military
targets at the home of the country’s leader, Colonel Moammar Khadafy, who President
Reagan called “a mad dog” and Egypt’s then-president, Anwar Sadat had
described as being "100-percent sick and possessed by the devil". Libya had long-been suspected of providing a haven
and training ground for international terrorists. This
attack was the culmination of events that had precipitated largely from the hijacking of
the cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian
terrorists last October and from the synchronized massacres at airports in Vienna and Rome
on December 27, also at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.
More recently, there had been the bombing of TWA Flight 849, descending at 10,000
feet into Athens airport. The blast ripped a
nine-foot hole in the fuselage, sucking four people out, including a seven-month-old baby
– bodies falling to earth as Greek shepherds watched.
This had happened a week after the U.S. and Libyan forces clashed in the Gulf of
Sidra.
Europe and the
Middle East were under fire. There had been
bombing in Madrid by Basque ETA guerillas; rioting, burning and looting by disgruntled
militia and citizens in Cairo; hijackings out of Athens airport; bombings in Paris; the
constant bombardment of Beirut; and no one was forgetting Leon Klinghoffer, the
69-year-old American who died when he was thrown off the Achille Lauro with his wheelchair near the Syrian
port of Tartus.
Travelling
around the Mediterranean had become a risky venture, too risky. Pacific Cruises of Los Angeles had pulled the Pacific Princess, TV’s Love Boat, from its Mediterranean runs, berthing it
in Seattle for Alaskan cruises. Thanks also in part to a low U.S. dollar, tourists were
fast-canceling their European travel plans and booking to rediscover North America. If you were American, or looked like one, it was a
good time to stay home.
“You be
careful in England,” Mom said. “Especially
around London.”
To the Arabs,
particularly to those in the terrorist camps, the forever-meddling British had done it
again. The U.S. had stood virtually alone in
its economic sanctions against Libya. European
leaders generally pooh-poohed sanctions as ineffective.
But their response seemed based on self-interest – they bought Libyan oil and
Libyans spent four billion dollars in their markets on virtually everything, including
weaponry. When it came to the draw, it was
the British who provided the air bases for the American F-111 bombers that attacked Libya. Now Britain was considered a prime target for
retaliation.
British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher got lots of appreciation from President Reagan but the Brits
were repaid with The Big American Stay Away, which would affect the two million people who
worked in Britain’s tourist industry. In
TV interviews, Thatcher indirectly told would-be American tourists in their homes that
they stood an equal chance of being struck by lightning as being killed by terrorist
reprisal in Great Britain.
I reassured
Mom and promised to keep in touch. But as I
rode out of Napanee, the whole Middle East quagmire bothered me. Why couldn’t Arabs and Jews get along or at
least co-exists without shedding each other’s blood?
I felt sorry
for the Jews, feeling that they had been perhaps the most persecuted race in the world
since their bondage in Egypt. Were they
resented for being rather astute money handlers? Hitler
had blamed them and exploited them for Germany’s economic woes. Even in turn-of-the-century America, prejudice had
induced Jews to get their higher education in British universities. Arabs and Jews were at each other's throats in the
Middle East.
I had been
also prejudiced before my first contact with Jews. That
first contact came some years ago when a large Jewish family from Toronto drove up in two
expensive cars to my humble antique shop. Indeed
the bald patriarch “jewed” me down on each of several items the family had
selected to purchase. Fair enough. But then he calmly requested a further discount if
they purchased the lot. I declined,
withholding the thought: You cheap son-of-a-bitch. He just shrugged and began to lead his flock away. I swallowed it – I really needed the money.
(In retrospect, that was my problem, not his. But
regretfully, that was my reaction at the time. At humble antique shops like
mine, most customers would haggle with the owner over price regardless of cultural or relgious background. I
certainly would. The Jewish people I would meet later in the journey and in the
years afterward were among the friendliest and most helpful people I met.
Unfortuantely, ethnic slurs perpetuate prejudice. I had not known that
"jewed" referred to Jews. It seemed akin to "chewed" - to take a
bite out of you, in this case, your financial resources. But I later learned that
"Jew" is also a derogatory colloquial transitive verb that is defined as "
to swindle someone or bargain
someone down. eg. "He Jewed me down." It appears to have
originated from Jews' supposedly extortionate practices as moneylenders in the Middle Ages.)
On the other
hand, Arabs scared the hell out of me – though I had never actually met one. Since earliest memory, I had held Hollywood images
of an ancient people with cloaks and daggers – Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. To me, they were fat sheiks with veiled harems
locked away in their remote sand-swept palaces. They
were marauding Bedouins and black marketeers. They
were shifty-eyed, balloon-lipped, bearded cutthroats who would slit your windpipe on a
whim and shout, “Allah!” And the
only non-Arab hero they had was, ironically, British – Thomas Edward Lawrence –
“Lawrence of Arabia”.
My image of
Arabs had not changed much, except that they now augmented their daggers with bombs and
AK-47’s. They wore military fatigues or
flowing white headcloths and drove around in armored Mercedes with darkened windows. They bought Soviet weapons and American real
estate. Corrupted by the sudden massive wealth
of oil, they had become arrogant powerbrokers, manipulating one superpower against the
other for their own malignant purposes. They
bred terrorists and arms dealers and harbored the most dangerous fugitives and fanatics.
Which is to
say that I knew diddlysquat about Jews or Arabs. Or the Middle East, for that
matter. I was not sure I wanted to know, given
the propensity for violence there. The Middle
East – birthplace of Christianity, Judaism and Islam – was, to me, all desert,
fire and blood. I remembered vaguely from some
history class that the British were, in large measure, responsible for drawing the current
dividing lands in the sand. But it would not
be until I reached the Nubian Desert that I began to sense the plight of the Palestinians;
or Khartoum that I would learn just how deep in the Arab soul resentment festered toward
the British, Jews and Americans; or Nepal that I would sense in a Jewish heart the pain of
persecution.
(I
apolgize to anyone of any particular race, religion, culture, or political persuasion that
I might offend. I'm just writing honestly of my attitudes at the time.
Ignornace is not bliss! Nor is it an excuse. For now, you are still traveling
with an ignorant man, but one who is also quiet an optimist.)
The sun was
getting low behind me so at Odessa, I left the Heritage Highway and scooted up 401 East to
get near to Ottawa before nightfall. I was
going to look for a farm on which to camp but I chickened out. It just seemed awkward for a national of a
developed country like Canada to ask a fellow resident for a free campsite – perhaps
they would think I was a hoodlum or a fugitive. (That was the way I felt then.) But I was also tired and didn’t want to get
into a long explanation of what I was up to when I had not yet accomplished anything.
I became the solo
guest at the KOA (Kampgrounds of America) in Mallorytown.
The campground was being readied for the season’s opening but the Greek
proprietor, busy with paperwork, hardly looking at me, said, “Camp anywhere you
like.” I paid the seven dollars, wrote
out my own receipt and he signed it.
It was windy
and cool in the late afternoon. I picked a
spot in the long grass by a little hummock that was flanked by trees and set up the green
Eureka! Promo Dome tent for the first time. I
wiggled the shock poles through the nylon sleeves and anchored them in their pins, giving
the tent form. The wind gave it life. The tent suddenly billowed and flew skyward like a
bird until I wrestled it to the ground and tethered it.
I set out some of my gear, so new that it had that disinfectant smell of a
new car. I took a self-portrait in the midst
to preserve the virginity of my journey. I
secured Melawend under her black nylon cover, crawled into the tent and slept peacefully.
One of the
loveliest ways to wake in the morning if you are camping alone is to sound of birds
singing nearby and young leaves clapping in a light breeze and to the sight of tree-branch
shadows playing on the sun-brightened walls of your tent.
My nose was the only part of me that was cold.
I somehow felt rewarded for surviving the first night out by this blissful
awakening.
The anxious
part of me wanted to continue the easterly run to the Atlantic. That would have been the easier thing to do but I
felt a diplomatic duty, if only to my enterprise, to go to the political seat of my
country.
Chapter 5
Capital Wonders and
Blunders
YOUR feedback is important!
(It is the
main reason I'm doing this.)
As you read
the story, please send an e-mail to me with any
questions or comments you have.
For example,
What things in the
story do you find useful to you? What is your opinion of the writing?
Do you find the story entertaining? Informative? Motivational?
Back to
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dear Reader,
Now for the
somewhat boring but fundamental part...
Copyright
Notice & Agreement
Here is what you can
and cannot do with this story, website, photos, etc.:
Copyright © 1984 - 2008 by
Thomas Martin Smith. All rights are reserved.
All text and photographs, and associated HTML code - on this website or on any other
website where they have been used and in any other form they take or place they exist -
are protected by Canadian and International Copyright Laws, and may not be copied,
reprinted, published, translated, altered, hosted, or otherwise distributed in whole or in
part, by any means without explicit written permission from me, Thomas Martin Smith,
currently of Victoria, BC, Canada.
You are
hereby permitted to retrieve, print, and store a single copy of any part or the entire
book (IN THE LONG RUN: A Hopeful World Odyssey) contents as made available here,
for personal use only. This permission does NOT extend to producing hard copies or
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(4) resale, or (5) any uses other than personal use. Nor does this extend to making
the book contents available yourself (for example, you may not post or distribute in any
way any portion of IN THE LONG RUN: A Hopeful World Odyssey or this website on
your website or any other website, bulletin boards, nor by in any place or by any means
online or off-line - without written permsision from me.)
This Copyright Notice &
Agreement supercedes the Copyright Notice on this page: http://www.melawend.com/copyrigh.htm
In other words, if you want to do
anything beyond what is permitted here, you must contact me first and receive my written
permission.
