Drift and Hum

By Robert O. Martichenko

Drift and Hum is a captivating debut novel about the kite ride of life and dealing with obstacles along the way. The story is told through the eyes of Sam, a 50-year-old South Carolina man who reflects from the present day back to his Canadian childhood to make sense of all of the challenges and universal entropy he has faced. His journey includes

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karmack Publications LLC
• Release date: Jan 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9780997030815

Book preview

DriftandHum_Cover_FINAL_FRONT.jpg

Drift and Hum

By Robert O. Martichenko

© 2015, Karmack Publications LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

Drift and Hum Disclaimer

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Every effort was made to be factual and respectful where actual names, events, or places are used to support this work of fiction.

ISBN: 978-0-9970308-0-8

Author Photo: Corinne Martichenko & Denis Drever Photography

Publishing Consultant: Martha Bullen

Book Development Support: Marcia Jones

Professional Copy Editor: Carole Boyd

Book Design: AuthorSupport.com

Cover Photo: Larry Allan

Acknowledgements

Dedicated to my wife: My warrior of entropy

Written for my daughters: Listeners of my stories

A completed project with my friend RVK: Beaver Brother

With infinite thanks to GOW: Prospector, Mentor, Coach, and Uncle

In Memory of IBG: My childhood friend

In Memory of JLH: My father-in-law

In Memory of WTM: My father

Sam’s Poem of Poems

The Cremation of Sam McGee

By Robert W. Service

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.

Why he left his home in the South to roam ‘round the Pole, God only knows.

He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;

Though he’d often say in his homely way that he’d sooner live in hell.

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.

Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.

If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;

It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,

And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,

He turned to me, and Cap, says he, "I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;

And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:

"It’s the cursèd cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.

Yet ‘tain’t being dead—it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;

So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains."

A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;

And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.

He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;

And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,

With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;

It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,

But you promised true, and it’s up to you to cremate those last remains.

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.

In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.

In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,

Howled out their woes to the homeless snows – O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;

And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;

The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;

And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;

It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the Alice May.

And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;

Then Here, said I, with a sudden cry, is my cre-ma-tor-eum.

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;

Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;

The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;

And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;

And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.

It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;

And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;

But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;

I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I’ll just take a peep inside.

I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;

And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.

It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm—

Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.

Robert W. Service – Yukon, Canada (1874-1958)

Day Well Spent

I’d really like to take a hike

Around a lake I’ve never seen

One without a person about

So I could wander while I dream

Then in time, perhaps I’d find

Some friends for company

We would talk, and go for walks

Many different lives we’d see

The Beaver Brothers, Lake Laberge, 1983

PART 1

Finding True North

Retreat

One two three

Is really pretty easy

ABC

Isn’t that tricky

But when I try to go farther

I find it starts to get harder

So I retreat back to the simple things that I know

Sam, South Carolina, 2015

DAY 0

South Carolina

I DON’T WANT TO DIE. Not like this anyway, so I need your help.

Good. I needed to get that out of the way right away.

I want to get better. That much you need to know, so please don’t lose confidence in me. I need you to have faith. It’s important that we keep faith because I absolutely intend to get better, and I believe I stand a pretty good chance. It will be helpful to me if you believe as well.

In the spirit of complete transparency, there is also something else you need to know up front. I’m not crazy. That much I know for sure. A few others know it as well, and I even have a doctor who will validate this for us. With that, I’ll be the first to admit that I have a few things I need to work out. Yet, who doesn’t have a few things to work out, right? Truth be told, I think I’m really just a person who needs a bit of a break from it all as it’s been quite a ride lately, and I think a short break from everything will prove helpful. I’m sure you know how stressful things can get as nobody is immune to life’s challenges these days. Nobody is immune to the ups and the downs so sometimes a person just needs a complete break from it all. That’s me at this point. I’m one of those people, and the timing is perfect too, as my fiftieth birthday is right around the corner. It will be good to be rested for the next half-century.

I know I’ll get better as this is just a small mid-life detour. At least that’s how I’m looking at it anyway, and it’s proving helpful to view the situation through this lens of improvement.

My getting through this is how my doctor views the situation, and a few friends of mine see it that way as well. They’re great people, and I think you will like them. They were worried about me recently and did the whole intervention thing. That was quite the scene – talk about getting it all out there. My friends are amazing. Having close friends is an important part of life, and frankly I wouldn’t be where I am today without them. But please don’t let where I literally am today confuse this last comment. I’m actually in a good spot in general. In fact, I’m considered very successful by most standards. I just need a bit of a break. Life is like flying a kite, and I guess you could say I caught an unexpected gust of wind.

The good news is there’s no real time constraint for my visit here. It’s not as if I’ve been committed. I can leave whenever I want, although my doctor is suggesting I may want to rest for a few weeks at a minimum. This seems like a long time, but I’m committed to do what is right as the status quo is not practical and progress needs to be made. I’m on a break from work, no worries there. My team has everything under control, and it’s very comfortable here at the hospital. So in totality, all is fine. No doubt there are a lot of people in worse shape than I am.

I’m sure you’ve gathered I’m in a hospital, or should I say, a hospital of sorts. It’s more like a country club for people who need a rest and is a great example of premium health care services. If you need to take a break from it all, and if a hospital is a part of that break, and you have money, then this is the place to do it. In fact, right now, I’m looking at the Atlantic Ocean on the South Carolina coast. It’s the beginning of July, so of course it’s hot and sunny. I don’t mind the heat as I know too well what the alternative is. I know about cold because I grew up in Canada. Not just Canada, but in the northern part of Canada, so it will be years before the sun of South Carolina thaws me out even though I’ve been here since 1984. That’s over thirty years of thawing, and I’m still not done. The true north will do that to a person. Frozen is frozen, just as dead is dead.

I can see waves hitting the shoreline from my spacious room, and sometimes I watch the ocean from my private deck or through the window over my writing desk. The tide is currently coming in, and it will be a six-foot tide today, just about average for the South Carolina coast. I prefer a rising tide as I’m feeling it’s more appropriate for my current situation. Falling tides are certainly a part of life as well, and we need to embrace them, but right now I prefer a rising tide. Directly in front of me is the Atlantic in all its vastness, and to my right, to the south, is one of many South Carolina rivers that flow into the ocean. The rivers are fantastic because you can see the speed of the water flowing as a result of the tidal currents. I learned a long time ago never to underestimate the force of natural currents as they are much, much stronger than you imagine.

I’ve had the privilege of travelling to every state in the USA, and South Carolina is by far the most beautiful in my opinion. It also happens to be where my family and I live. In fact, I’m not far from home right now. I’m Canadian by birth, but I became an American citizen a few years ago. That was quite the process, and I was honored to become a citizen. My wife Sophie and son George are both American born – they are my true red, white, and blue Americans.

My doctor and I are friends, so I just call her Doc. The informality helps create an environment for progress to be made. We have known each other for over ten years as we are both part of the local professional community. She is a board-certified psychiatrist and very good at what she does, as well as being Sophie’s friend. I know she’s a good doctor because I’m a trained psychologist. Considering my profession, I recognize the irony of my current state.

I haven’t worked as a practicing psychologist for some time because I’ve been building a business. That is, I was up until I took this self-imposed time off. Apparently I’m pretty good at what I do; at least that’s what my employees and customers tell me. Doc is trying to get me back to work so I’ll get out of this funk. She believes getting back to work is the remedy to my ills, and others agree. My employees want me back to work so we can continue with the positive momentum we’ve been generating, and my customers want me back so they can continue to improve their lives. I help people improve their lives, and once again, the irony is not lost on me.

My room is perfect, spacious and comfortable – all in a simple way. I’m looking for simplicity right now as simplifying your life makes it easier to relax and find peace of mind. Simplicity creates calming energy; complexity creates chaotic energy. Energy is important to me right now, in particular, positive energy. I have a bed, a dresser, and a nice writing desk with a lamp on it. My window looks over the ocean – it’s a great view. This is what I meant by this being a nice place, and while I know money isn’t everything, and it won’t buy happiness, it sure can help out when you need a break from it all. The ocean is a natural healer; the rivers and the ocean are my healers. The only thing I would remove from this room is the television. It’s a new high-tech flat screen with a thousand channels where many of the channels are the Talking Cable Heads’ shows. You know the kind – where a bunch of people aggressively spew their opinions on matters they know absolutely nothing about.

I don’t do so well with these shows, so I have the television unplugged, and I fight with myself when I get the urge to turn it on.

I’m working at the desk right now. When Doc and I aren’t talking, you can find me sitting on the beach or at my desk. My desk is where I write; the beach is where I think about what to write. Writing bridges the physical world and the mental world; at least it does for me. Writing allows me to synthesize all the complexity of my life into manageable pieces. Everything is more manageable when you chunk it into smaller pieces. I’ve always enjoyed writing, and I mostly write poetry and song lyrics. I’m the poet, and my musician friend Ray and I collaborate to bring songs to life.

I haven’t been the model patient for Doc as I haven’t exactly been a chatterbox. Psychology requires dialogue; it’s a cognitive therapy and requires communication between doctor and patient. It’s not as if I’m not talking to Doc. I’m just not talking about the right things. I know it, and she knows it, but that doesn’t change what I’m doing. I am ready to talk though, so I guess I just need to get warmed up a little. Doc told me to spend some time writing down my thoughts as part of this warm up, and I think that was clever. I would never have thought of it. I guess that’s why she’s here as the doctor and I’m here as the patient.

The real problem is I’m out of energy, but I need energy to get better. I know that. I’m also tired of being frustrated and angry, or being frustrated and angry is making me tired. I’m not sure which way it goes. Maybe it doesn’t matter what’s the cause and what’s the effect, because either way you end up tired. But I’m committed, and I’ll give it everything I have. I’m willing to try. Eat tree, Beaver! That’s my motto to my customers who are seeking my advice. I should try to practice what I preach, as practicing what you preach can go a long way. It’s hard, though. Giving advice and actually implementing your own advice are two very different animals. The former is much easier.

I suppose I should introduce myself. This would be appropriate since I’m asking you to stay with me. You can call me Sam, the name I’ve gone by forever, even though Sam is not the name you’ll see on my birth certificate or passport. I’ve never used my real name because I’ve always just been Sam. My friend Hats was the first to call me Sam. I’m named after Sam McGee, the character from the Robert Service poem The Cremation of Sam McGee. It’s my favorite poem. I really love the poem, and Hats loves the fact that I love it. He also believes I have a bit of the Sam character in me, so he started calling me Sam when we were kids. It stuck, and everybody, including my own family, saw the congruency as well. Everybody calls me Sam. Sam McGee is still my favorite poem, a classic in every sense; it’s simply the poem of all poems.

The master plan here is for me to get better, so I’m going to do this by talking through some issues with the Doc, and I’m also going to attempt to do some writing to organize my thoughts. I plan to share all of this with you as this is the only way any progress will be made. I’m going to do my absolute best to share everything you need to know, exactly when you need to know it, so you have all the information and background required to help me.

With that, here’s what you need to know at this point. Everything you are about to read really happened. I’m not saying I might not get a few things mixed up, and I’m not saying that everybody remembers it the way I do. I’m just saying that it all really happened.

I hope Hats, RC, and Ray can tell it their way someday as well because it’s really their story too.

OK then, buckle up, and let’s get started.

I hope you enjoy the ride.

Canada

The True North Strong and Free

CANADIAN CONFEDERATION happened in 1867. I won’t go into all the reasons why Canada finally became a country, but suffice it to say, there were many internal and external forces at play. Money and war are probably the two main categories; I guess some things never change. The word Canada means settlement or land when translated from its original First Nations’ language, so in summary, Canada is a very young country with a lot of land.

Chinook River, Manitoba, incorporated as a town fifty years after Confederation, with the reasons and forces for the town to incorporate being largely economic. That’s where my friends and I grew up. Chinook translates into a lot of things in multiple native languages, but the most common is warm wind. My favorite translation is snow eater. A Chinook is a warm wind that comes from the mountains in wintertime to warm up the surrounding mountain towns. This happens mostly in Alberta, so ironically our town does not get Chinooks. We’re a river valley town, and the Rocky Mountains are two provinces to the west. We do, however, get a lot of snow, and that’s why we like the snow eater translation.

Chinook River is on the Chinook River – no surprise here. The river is approximately six hundred miles long, or one thousand kilometers in the metric system. Its source is Lake Timagimi to the south, and it flows north into the Hudson Bay. Our town is almost at the halfway mark of the river, with the largest nearby city center being Winnipeg, Manitoba, a few hours to the southwest. Chinook River is a nice place to grow up because it’s a good place that’s filled with good people. A lot of people have done well there. I hope you get a chance to visit one day to form your own opinion.

RC, Hats, Ray, and I have been friends forever as there has never been a time we did not know each other. With varying background stories, our parents all arrived in Chinook River to support the mining and logging that takes place in our hometown, and all four families were established in town before we were born. I have no idea how we all first met, where it was or when it was, and our parents have no idea either. We’ve just always known each other; I guess true friendships are like that. They just are.

Chinook River is considered northern Canada. This is a differentiator because Canada is much larger than most people realize, and there are big differences among Canadian cities and towns. For example, you can’t compare Toronto and Chinook River. This would be similar to comparing Mobile, Alabama, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. It can’t be done.

The first and main differentiator is that Chinook River is cold. My friend RC still lives there. In fact, he’s a police officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP. He’s the Staff Sargent of the division – the big boss. Even though he still lives in Chinook River, he always complains about the cold, mostly because this is the Canadian way. Regardless of what the weather is, it’s very important to complain about it. This is easy to do in Chinook River because normally it is just really cold. Global warming is not a term anybody in Chinook River understands or believes.

I once asked RC why he still lives in Chinook River, and he said because that’s where his job and family are, and that he wants to grow old and die there. I asked him when that would be, and he responded, Probably in about an hour, right after I freeze to death. It was forty degrees below Celsius and Fahrenheit at the time. At forty degrees below, it doesn’t matter what scale you use, it’s all the same. Forty below is where the scales meet. Frankly, I don’t even know why we bother saying forty below. After thirty below it should just be called really, really cold. To me, that explains the situation better because everybody understands really, really cold.

Chinook River is not big or small population-wise. It’s small enough that you can know a lot of people but big enough that you can have your space when you need it. You don’t get crushed, but you don’t go it solo either. It’s a very cultural place, with amazing language dynamics – people speak the two official Canadian languages of French and English, and the local aboriginal First Nations people still practice the art of their native tongues. It’s pretty neat when you stop to think about it – Canada is a unique country, and my friends and I are proud Canadians, even though Hats and I have spent most of our adult life in the USA. Irony is a funny thing.

The town is a lot like other northern Canadian towns. Because of our two official languages, we have both French and English schools, and I suspect it would be this way even if it weren’t the law of the land, which it is. The town has a downtown core – municipal buildings, one hospital, several hockey arenas, one curling rink, a Canadian Legion, and multiple churches. The United Church of Canada is the church we attended growing up.

Another interesting point about Chinook River is that it’s bigger in area – land mass measured in hectares – than New York City and Los Angeles combined. This is because the town started as a mining town. We are into everything to do with minerals – gold, copper, nickel, silver, and all things involving valuable rocks. When the town was established, the founders made the town as big as they could in case a new mine was discovered in the future, which proves that Canadians like their tax bases as much as the next country. The result of this is that when you’re heading into town, you will come across the sign that says, You are now entering Chinook River, but don’t get too anxious at the wheel as you will drive another half-hour before you actually hit the town center. It can confuse first-timers who think somehow they missed the town, even though it’s up ahead another fifty kilometers, or thirty miles.

Did you know that approximately eighty percent of the Canadian population lives within a two-hour drive of a border with the United States of America? In Chinook River, we are over six hours from the closest border. Did you know that over fifty percent of the population of Toronto, Canada’s largest city, was not born in Canada? In Chinook River, almost everybody was born in Canada, most probably at Sacre Coeur Hospital. Those not born in Canada came to the country years ago when they decided that the land of really cold was better than the land of the communists or fascists. I guess really cold is better than really dead. To be sure, Eastern European cultures mixed with the French, English, and First Nations do form an interesting union. The people of Chinook River have a sense of history and are survivors and hard workers. This makes sense because northern towns are full of hard physical work and consequently, embrace hard physical workers. Hard work is a survivor’s trade mark.

Canada has a few global stereotypes. People outside of Canada identify Canada with hockey, cold, snow, beer, and the saying, ‘eh?’ This is reasonable as Canadians love to play hockey, winters are very cold with lots of snow, and of course, the beer is the best. But the story is much deeper and richer than the puck on the ice, the mercury in the thermometer, the height of the snow bank, or the beer in the cooler. Here’s the part many people don’t know about, and this includes a lot of new Canadians living in southern Canadian cities. Winter nights may be cold and short on sunshine, but they are still and quiet and create an aura and feeling that meditation experts would die to replicate. Summer days and nights are nothing short of spiritual. Picture a sunset that never ends but only fades into a sunny shade of grey. It is the feeling of glory to be had and felt forever. Chinook River is where I grew up. It was a good place to grow up, and I’m happy I grew up there. Not that I always felt that way, though, as there was a time I was not thrilled with the town. Again, the irony is not lost on me.

Here’s what you need to know about saying ‘eh?’ Canadians are officially peacekeepers from a global-affairs point of view, so Canadians want to keep the peace. As peacekeepers, we do not want to seem assuming or display characteristics of arrogance or rudeness, and the delivery system and technique to accomplish this goal is to turn statements into questions. We do this by ending sentences with ‘eh?’ This is the Canadian weapon that disarms people around the world, and this is why young Americans put Canadian flags on their backpacks when they travel through Europe.

Here’s how it works. Suppose you are a total dumbass, and I want to call you out on it. Instead of calling you a dumbass and risking a fight, I would simply say, You’re a dumbass, eh? The onus is now on you to verify you are in fact a dumbass, and in this situation I am not the antagonist but rather just the supplier of a relevant question for a given situation. Even after having been in the USA for over thirty years now, I still use the ‘eh?’ technique regularly. It’s very effective.

RC, Hats, Ray, and I, friends forever, were all four born in 1965 at the Sacre Coeur Hospital, the only hospital in our town at the time. (The French Catholics got to name it, but that same year the English Protestants got to name the curling rink. It was a fair trade off.) All people born in 1965 are part of the changeover from Baby Boomers to Generation X. We don’t fit into any of the generational profiles. We are the lost souls, we are unique, and we are proud of this little detail. When Hats, Ray, and RC were made God used new and unique molds, and the molds were broken after their birth. God does that between generations: a set-up year where the newborns don’t fit any stereotyped category.

As RC would say, the four of us are tight as bark on a tree, and we are as close as can be in any variation of the group of four. We are tight, whether all together, in a combination of a group of three or all the variations of groups of two. It’s just always been that way. We take great pride in our friendship, so we treasure and protect it at all cost. When we were young, we understood this implicitly without understanding why we felt this way, and as we got older and life started to happen, we learned the importance of our bond. Friendship is a non-renewable resource because you simply can’t make new childhood friends. You either have them or you don’t, and we have them. We like that, and it’s recorded at the top of the ledger on the balance sheet of our lives.

Our first twelve years of friendship were filled with the simple fun of being young. We were typical Canadian boys living in the far north in that we watched hockey on television, and we played hockey on indoor rinks, outdoor rinks, ponds and roads, and in our basements. We had mini-sticks for the last. We went to school, actively participated in winter, and really enjoyed our summers. We played our music and determined who could command what instruments best. We talked, argued, dreamed, explored, and developed our visions and hopes for our futures. Everything was perfect. We were kids and the universe allowed us to be kids.

The spring of 1977 is when our story really got started, as the spring of 1977 is when we developed the plan for the Lodge. In hindsight, there is no question that this was a pivot point for us as brothers.

DAY 1

South Carolina

Colors of the Day

I CATEGORIZE MY DAYS as Red, Yellow, or Green. It’s my measurement system to know whether I’m on the road to recovery, and I’ve told myself that seven Green days in a row means it’s time to go home, and twenty Green days in a row will mean I’m probably ready to get back to work. Doc likes this approach as it’s objective, visual, and easy to administer. Today is starting out as a Yellow day, which means it will probably end as a Yellow day. I’ve noticed my attitude in the morning has a significant net effect on my entire day. This is something I need to work on.

A Yellow day is a day that I’m feeling very anxious but able to keep my anger controlled. Yellow means anxiety Yes, but anger No. You see, I suffer from anxiety and anger issues. While Doc seems to talk about them in combination and relation to each other, I don’t see them as related at all. At least they don’t feel related when I am in either state of emotion. Anxiety to me is nervousness and worry. It lacks self-confidence behind it. Anxiety is the outside world coming into your world where you are scared of the world and all that’s in it. Anger is different. Anger has self-confidence behind it. Anger is outward where you take your world to the outside world, where you are no longer scared of what’s in the world. With anger, you just want to crush everything with your fists. That’s why anger is so dangerous. Anxiety and anger together form a very strange union, and most of the time, you don’t know whether you are coming or going.

Today is a Yellow day, and I’m completely exhausted because I had a dream last night that felt as if it lasted my entire lifetime. I woke up with the sheets tightly wrapped around me and I was shivering from cold and sweating from heat at the same time. I felt as if my feet were in the freezer and my head were in the oven.

In my dream, I was the lead weatherman for what I understood to be the largest global television network in existence. The essence of the situation was that I was the most important and most watched weatherman on Earth. It was my job to report on the weather from all parts of the world, and I was very important – a celebrity in my field, famous beyond measure.

I started off updating people about the weather on each continent. There were seven summaries in all, and each continent had blue skies and sunshine. I was very confident; I felt good about my position in life and profession; I was the go to man for the weather, and people trusted me. Then I received a report from my assistant that had the weather for all the countries in the world. There were almost two hundred summaries in all, and it took me over an hour to go through each one. Each country had severe thunderstorms, but this didn’t make sense! How could all the countries have severe thunderstorms when all the continents have blue skies and sunshine? The whole did not equal the sum of the parts.

Then it really began to unravel. My assistant came over to the news desk and handed me a report that had the weather for every city, town, and village in the world. There were over one million places I needed to report on, and I began to panic as I recognized it would take me weeks or months to get through the list. As I started to scan the list, I noticed that every city, town, and village was experiencing hurricane force winds. My panic started with my heart rate going up; I started to feel shortness of breath and everything started to seem as if it were in slow motion. I could see people’s lips moving, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. There was no sound at all, and nothing made sense. I felt as if everybody in the newsroom and all viewers in the world were staring at me and looking for answers. Although I didn’t know how many people were watching me from their television sets, I sensed it was the whole world.

Then my assistant came up to me and handed me another report that was so big it would have fit into five dump trucks. It was the weather report for every single person in the world, with no fewer than seven billion names. Everybody in the studio was looking at me as if to say, It’s your responsibility to tell us what the weather is in the personal space of everyone on Earth! I started to read the first few names, but my panic had turned to fear and I had no breath to speak. I couldn’t utter a word. I wanted to run from the studio, but my legs would not work, and the only thing that would work was my eyes. I started to scan the names of people on the list, and every name had a report of category-five tornados heading directly at that person. I started to file through the pages, and the same tornado warnings were beside every name on the list. Suddenly, I felt responsible for warning everyone on Earth to take shelter. But where would they take shelter? Then I started to hear voices coming through the camera, and it was all of the people on Earth blaming me for the tornadoes that were about to hit their personal space. There were hundreds of different languages all telling me I was responsible for their impending doom, and I understood each language and responded in it. I tried to beg for their forgiveness, and I wanted them all to know that I believe intrinsically in blue skies and sunshine, just like the forecast for the continents. I was screaming for them to trust me again and to allow me to fix everything.

Then I woke up exhausted. So I went for a walk on the beach hoping the day would get better, doubting that it would.

Canada

Spring 1977

The Lodge

CANADA IN 1977 was an interesting place. Prime Minister Trudeau was still in power after a blockbuster 1974 federal election, and he was busy dealing with the economic and energy crises of the mid-1970s. The Beaver had recently been named the national symbol of Canada, barely beating out the Moose; the metric system implementation was in full swing, and we were all trying to switch from miles to kilometers, with some of us never quite making the transition. Down in Quebec, the provincial legislature passed Bill 101. This was The Charter of the French Language, which is a law making French the official language of Quebec. It had many broad implications and over a million unintended consequences, and the jury is still out on whether the law was a good idea.

The Toronto Blue Jays played their first Major League Baseball game, and they defeated the Chicago White Sox nine to five at Toronto’s Exhibition Stadium. Most people believe the only reason Toronto won was because of the snowstorm before the game, giving Canadians a sense of pride, even though very few of the Blue Jay players were Canadian. Most were American and freezing their asses off alongside the Chicago team, not that we cared much either way as the four of us didn’t find baseball very interesting. Hockey is a sport, baseball is a game, and there is a big difference.

On the music scene, the Rolling Stones Tour came to Toronto, and the RCMP greeted them by raiding Keith Richards’ fancy hotel suite while he was sleeping. They seized over twenty grams of heroin, close to five grams of cocaine, and a bunch of narcotics paraphernalia needed to consume the heroin and cocaine. Nobody believed Richards was actually sleeping. Instead of sending him to jail, they made the Stones play a benefit concert for the blind in Oshawa, Ontario. This all seemed reasonable to us.

Gordon Lightfoot finished writing his hit about the Lake Superior sinking of the Great Lake vessel The Edmund Fitzgerald. Ray would tell you it’s still the best song ever written. He would know too, because Ray is an amazing musician. In fact, even back in 1977 at the age of twelve Ray was a gifted artist. RC also has real talent, but Ray is the one with a genetic gift, and he’s a great teacher as well. He taught all of us. He is the leader of the band – no question.

Other than the Beaver’s being named the national symbol of Canada and the ship wreck, we didn’t much care about what was going on in Canada at large, as life was far too interesting to be worried about people and events in Quebec or Ottawa. For us, the nation’s capital was a million miles away, or should I say one point six million kilometers away. Instead of world events, we were focused on hockey, music, and how best to utilize our obvious overabundance of unproductive energy. We were twelve-year-olds, and we knew how to be kids. We liked being kids. Sometimes I think kids don’t know how to be kids anymore, and many don’t like being kids these days. Being a kid in the north was easy, as there were an infinite number of things to do – so the four of us grew up moving from one adventure to another.

We went to Ecole St-Pierre together. It was a French-speaking Catholic elementary and junior high school. I suspect our parents got together and hashed this plan out because it was an odd school choice: not one of us was French or Catholic. Not one of us is French or Catholic today. Parents make funny decisions when they want better things for the next generation, and I guess they decided bilingualism and Catholicism fit the bill. I’ll never forget our first day of kindergarten when Hats showed up with a blue velvet fedora on his head. It was the real deal with a bird’s feather in it and the whole bit. Hats believed that French Catholics all wore them, so he was surprised when he was the only one with one on. Hats loves his hats – that’s why we call him Hats – and he has thousands of them. You name the hat, and I’ll guarantee you he’s got it. He knows a lot about them too because Hats likes to understand the things he chooses to pursue. Consequently, he knows hat history, hat fashion, hat manufacturers, hat prices. You name it, he knows it when it comes to hats.

Spring had arrived in 1977, and we were only a couple of weeks from making it through Grade 7. It had been a long, cold winter, and the only thing that kept us going was the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Stanley Cup is the Cup of Cups. It is the ultimate championship in sport. In 1977 Hats was on fire and borderline unbearable because his Philadelphia Flyers beat my Toronto Maple Leafs in the quarter-finals, which made Hats believe they would win the Cup again. I have to admit, I was a bit envious of Hats because the Flyers were the real deal in the 1970s. Their star player was Bobby Clarke, a hometown boy from the neighboring town of Flin Flon, Manitoba, and we all secretly cheered for him, regardless of our official team loyalty. Unfortunately for Hats though, the Flyers were beaten in the semis by RC’s Boston Bruins. Unfortunately for RC, Ray’s Montreal Canadiens beat Boston for the Stanley Cup, four games to zero. It was a sweep, and Ray was on top of the world.

Take that, ya Bruins Fuckers! Hats yelled out at RC as Montreal skated around the ice with the Cup. As far as Hats was concerned, the team that had beaten his team was the enemy. Side note here, something you need to know about Canadians is that many of us swear a lot, and we start swearing at a young age. Something you need to know about Hats is that he swears more than most other Canadians, and he started swearing younger than most. His mother says he threw out his first F bomb at the nurse in the hospital when he was born. I’ll admit, he’s pretty good at it. Actually, he’s the best I know, and he can turn swearing into a form of music. I will apologize for him up front, and I truly hope you don’t find him offensive. Hats is a good man in spite of his colorful language skills.

Back to hockey. I was personally pissed at Hats because his Flyers beat out my Toronto Maple Leafs. I’m a huge Leafs fan, Ray is a Montreal Canadiens die-hard, and RC is a Boston Bruins fan. We all love Bobby Orr. Three of us are followers of the original-six teams. Hats moved over to the Flyers after cheering for the Chicago Blackhawks, which at the time meant we had four of the original-six teams covered. We were only missing New York and Detroit. Hats began to cheer for Philadelphia because he said they exemplified his style of game, which is rough and tough. Dave Shultz and the Broad Street Bullies are his heroes.

Hockey was hot in Canada in 1977. Even though five years had passed, the whole country was still vibrating from the 1972 Canada–Russia Summit series. Many Canadians just call it the Super Series, where we played four games in Canada and four in Russia – our best against their best. We got to go to game three in Winnipeg when Coach Vince took us. Game three was the only tie game of the series and set up game eight in Moscow as the go-ahead game to win the series. Paul Henderson scored the winning goal with thirty-four seconds left on the clock in the third period, and Canada won the Super Series four games to three. Our whole school watched the game on television sets brought into the classrooms. The 20-year-old Russian goalie Vladislav Tretiak became my new hero, and Bobby Clarke remained Hats’ hero when he accidently fractured the ankle of the best Russian player. It was an accident, and we still believe this to this day. The fact that it looks intentional is just a function of the angle of the cameras that filmed the slash and the fact that the lighting was bad in the old Russian arena.

Mostly because of Hats, we are also big fans of the Memorial Cup. This is the championship tournament that decides who is the best Major Junior Amateur hockey team. It was originally the Ontario Hockey Association Memorial Cup, and in 1919 the Ontario Hockey Association donated the Cup to the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association in honor of the soldiers who died fighting for Canada in the First World War. The Cup was re-dedicated in 2010 to honor fallen soldiers who died for Canada in any war. The Cup is a big deal in all of Canada, and it’s also a way for Western Canada to compete against Ontario, Quebec, and Eastern Canada. These days, there are also American teams in the league. The players are all young amateurs, and many are also only one step away from playing in the National Hockey League. That’s a big deal.

Unlike our NHL allegiances, the boys and I all cheer for the same major junior team. In 1977 our team was the Winnipeg Monarchs. They were our close to home team, but unfortunately, in that same year they moved to Calgary, Alberta, and changed their name to the Calgary Wranglers. We continued to cheer for them, but we also continued to call them the Winnipeg Monarchs. Then in 1987 they moved south and became the Lethbridge Hurricanes, and we continued to cheer for them. We also continued to call them the Winnipeg Monarchs. It’s very important to stay true to your original team.

The real Winnipeg Monarchs won the Memorial Cup in 1935, 1937, and 1946. The relocated and renamed Monarchs have never won a Memorial Cup, although we came close a couple of times. Sometimes it’s hard to stay a loyal fan, but it must be done. It’s principle.

In our neck of the woods our 1977 hockey year went well. Our team, the Maple Tree Hockey Team, would go on to win the Pee Wee Championship. Our coaches, Vince and the Judge, were very happy with us and the team.

The end of the 1977 NHL playoffs also meant summer was coming, and this meant we were going to have a full two months to do whatever we wanted. It was Ray that came up with the idea for the Lodge first.

We need a clubhouse! Ray told us one day while sitting in the basement of my house.

All right, we all replied, knowing he was absolutely right.

Ray is an idea guy. He has more than a hundred ideas a day. We know this because we counted once. Most of them are pretty good too, and when I say I suspect Ray is the smartest guy I’ve ever met, I’m not talking just school smarts. Sure he’s a whiz at all the math and science you want, but he’s smart in different ways – world-smart without having travelled the world, street-smart without having lived on the street. He’s just smart. In this particular case, he was right: we did, in fact, need a clubhouse.

Building the Lodge that summer was our first tangible accomplishment together from a teamwork point of view other than our hockey. We started that spring and poured our hearts and minds into the initiative. We ate, slept, and breathed the construction of the Lodge. To this day, I tell people there is no better feeling then being on a mission as people on a mission will overcome most obstacles that get in their way. That summer, we were on a mission in every sense of the word.

The planning was the first step, and I was given the role of overall project manager. Apparently I knew the most about lodges in the woods. Seemingly, I gained this knowledge from my studies of Robert Service’s poetry. Because I could recite The Cremation of Sam McGee, it seemed logical that I was the most knowledgeable about lodges in the woods and snow. I didn’t argue.

When the planning was complete, we had full agreement and alignment. It would be a log lodge in a place that nobody would be able to find, and it would be fully capable of keeping us warm in the winter. As well, we would call it the Beaver Brothers Lodge. Hats was the only one that argued against the name.

Fuck that, guys, he said. Let’s call it the Moose Brothers Lodge! The Moose got a bum deal in Ottawa and needs a little boost! It actually wasn’t lost on us that the Beaver had won out as Canada’s national symbol and that maybe the Moose did deserve a runner-up award. But we couldn’t ignore the fact that the Lodge would be built of logs and that we might even use the odd logs already felled by a cooperative beaver. We were able to get Hats on board without too much coercion, and he came up with the Brothers part. We all liked it a lot and the Beaver Brothers Lodge was born that day. In hindsight, that was a great day. With the high-level planning complete, we began construction, with site selection the first step.

There was no shortage of possible places to build the Lodge, as our town is surrounded by bush and wilderness in all directions – serious bush and serious wilderness. RC was in charge of site selection because he was most knowledgeable about living in the bush and orienteering through the woods. I can’t remember a time when he did not know how to use a compass, and orienteering through the bush was his way of training for his ultimate profession. From the age of five, he knew he would become a police officer when he finished school. More precisely, he knew he’d become a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In fact, that’s why we call him RC. At first we called him RCMP, but that got too complicated, and we shortened it to RC for practical reasons.

RC did a great job with site selection, even with Hats giving him grief about every detail. When we stopped at the spot he recommended we were deeply into the heart of the bush. It was a perfect-size clearing that had every tree species known to man surrounding the plot. The clearing was beside a small creek bed that ran a quarter-mile to a beaver pond that had no fewer than three dams supporting and creating the pond. The pond was almost like having our own private mini-lake. It really was perfect. We were as remote as could be and there was no beaten path to the spot. To find the spot, you had to know the identifying trees and actual coordinates to the place. You had to orienteer. Even though it was difficult to find, we purposely changed how we would get to the Lodge each time. This was Ray’s idea, and the purpose was to avoid making a path. We didn’t believe in paths, and to this day, other than the four of us, only a few people know about the Lodge. This does include a few constables from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I haven’t been there since the search, and I suspect the RCMP hasn’t either as there’s no reason to go now.

We loved building the Beaver Brothers Lodge. We loved hiking to it, we loved working on it, and we loved being in it. It was paradise by the northern lights.

Hats was on main log detail, and Ray had responsibility for the roof. We had ample pine trees around us so we began felling trees and using a drawknife to peel the bark off. We didn’t have time to dry the logs for a year, so we just had to deal with working with green logs. We were in absolute heaven. The main tool was our Hudson Bay Axes with their funny-shaped axe head, and we also had a host of other tools required to raise a lodge fit for The Beaver Brothers. To this day, I can recall the smells, sounds, and feels of that summer – the smells of wood chips caused by the axe chipping away at a tree that was standing tall; the sounds of the bucksaw and hammer and chisel being used to create a notch in a tree that had offered itself up for our cause; the feel of wood chips hitting us in the face and eyes as we tried to get the logs to fit together, and the tree sap sticking to our hands, forcing us to walk to the nearby beaver pond to wash it off in the still water. It was all perfect.

We skinned the pine logs, notched them, built the structure, and then chinked in between the logs with mud and grass. The floor was made from cedar logs with plywood on top of them and was 12 inches off the ground with hay stuffed underneath the plywood for insulation. We hauled the plywood in at night so nobody would see us. That was quite the show. When the Lodge was done, it was an imperfect square of 12 feet 8 inches by 11 feet 5 inches. The final dimensions were completely random and had been determined by mistakes we made and had to correct along the way. The Lodge had two good-size windows made from Plexiglas, and inside we had a table for eating and playing games – mostly Risk. We built two sets of bunk beds with logs as the frame and using binder twine to imitate mattress springs, and we packed in a few old wooden chairs and a couple of lawn chairs for sitting. In the end, the Lodge was the real deal.

Ray was in charge of roof detail, but Hats didn’t feel we had time to build proper roof trusses, and we didn’t think we knew how to either. Time and skill go