There is something truly Albertan about loving trips to the BC Rockies. We don’t know why and we recognize that (most of us) wouldn’t want to live there, but they’re tied to some strange longing. I still get the wanderlust itch on certain cold autumn nights.
My first road trip (I was 18) was to Vancouver for a Guns N’ Roses concert. This trip involved a near death with a propane filled trailer unhooking into oncoming traffic, six packs of Export A Reds to stave off sleep deprivation, and the album Appetite for Destruction playing non-stop for the entire twelve hours. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the band didn’t show up, and instead I also got to be in my first riot. They’re not what I imagined. Rather than throwing beer bottles at the riot cops, it was mostly filled with fireworks and tearful bro-hugs. If you would’ve told me that my first rite of passage into adulthood would’ve involved Axl Rose and a bottle of tequila, I probably would have said, “hell yah.”
I’ve traded in my tequila, bell-bottom jeans, and greasy long hair for red wine, dress pants, and my writing hats. But, the mountains haven’t changed for me. I’ll look out of my balcony and that raw “hell yah” feeling comes over me. Sovereignty’s just a half days drive away after all. Sometimes, when I’m writing, I’ll even rent an overpriced Banff hotel just to be a little closer. I’ve gotten to the point now where I don’t even complain about the harrowing moose decals grinning from the Banff shops on every toque, scarf, and pair of pyjamas.
I’ve worked with dozens of non-Canadian student travellers in my youth. They’d ask me to describe Canada, and not once did I describe the isolation of the oil and gas Alberta towns. Not once did I describe the fuzzy barley, the golden wheat, or catching grasshoppers on the northern rigs where I grew up. I, hater of the cliché, hater of the melodrama, would dip into the faint memories of a trip out west and wax poetically of the beauty of the Canadian wilderness.
Maybe it’s just the nostalgia. Maybe the mountains are just my way of holding onto that devil-may-care greasy haired guy from my youth. I still have fond memories of the red, green, and yellow crickets. I can even remember their scaly legs jumping out of my hands, but there’s something special about the place where you first tasted freedom—even if the most eloquent thing you had to say at the time was, “hell yah.”