Aboot Town

I combined two activities today, sightseeing and geocaching. I’ve done very little touring (unless you count driving around lost in this $%*ing town) since I left Yellowstone; I’ve never tried geocaching at all before.

I broke out the GPS, a street map, and a Google map (generally, experience has shown that if I consult all three I reduce the odds of getting completely lost) and navigated to a geocache which was located at a small monument to the Newfoundland Ranger Force. Before they were assimilated into the RCMP, the NL Rangers served as the law, EMS, wildlife enforcement, firefighters, SAR, relief agents, and truant officers. To the 80% of the island too far away from a comfortable bed to be served by the RNC, rangers were the representatives of a far-away national government (the Republic of Newfoundland). Modeled after the Irish Constabulary, they served the island’s outports and small communities for almost twenty years before confederation. There wasn’t much at the site, except a plaque to the Ranger’s training house, which burned down years ago, and a little geocache next to a running/biking trail.


Geocaching is a niche sport, combining outdoor treasure hunting with GPS technology, because Heaven Forbid (!) anyone should go outside without an electronic device in their hand. Likewise, who would think to look at a tree or examine the ground if there’s no promise of a container full of notes and trinkets? Ever heard of tracks? Hmph.

Despite my old-school grumbles, geocaching has its place – and it does get nerds out of the house; I’ve seen proof. I myself spent at least 30 minutes outside of my truck/campus lab/bedroom. I also should admit that since sources of information about anything other than (a) guided bird-watching tours, (b) snowmobiling trails, (c) snowmobiling trails, (d) guided whale-watching tours or (e) snowmobiling trails are few and far between in Newfoundland, geocaching was how some of my CFA (Come From Away) brethren have discovered little areas of parkland or decent hikes ‘round these parts. Break out the beat-up eTrex and the spare batteries, I guess.

I must be lucky

Probability is a funny thing. We who are not statisticians tend to create perceptions of risk based on our own personal experiences, which is understandable and just as obviously out of whack with reality (‘I’ve never had a car accident, so the likelihood of my having one is low’). Many people drive their cars through frighteningly heavy traffic every day, yet find the risk of bear attack so intimidating that they hike in abject fear during their once-a-year visit to a national park.

I carried a ‘major injury’ health policy during the Montana winters, supposing that the risk of breaking my leg while trying to ski was a moderate to high probability. I was completely oblivious to the probability of contracting a rare disease. Low and behold, I didn’t break my leg (a fact which is probably explained by my flexibility, not my downhill skill), but I did end up with multiple sclerosis.

The odds of being diagnosed are relatively modest, 1 in 1000 by most estimates. I was much more likely to be in a car wreck or contract any number of common cancers. I guess that makes me pretty lucky. In this particular case, my luck was bad, but lucky nonetheless.

I’ve spent the last month carrying my medical records around St. John's in my pack and communicating with people on both sides of the border (neurochem corporations, schools, insurance companies, nurses, doctors, and bureaucrats of all stripe), endlessly explaining my unique case. I’m a non-Canadian temporarily residing in Canada for school. No job, no family, not planning to stay.

I further explain to these folks that I, like everyone here in the Dominion of Canada, have free access to a doctor, hospitalization and surgery. Then comes the tedious discussion of (my) MS: a medical condition which costs thousands of dollars a year but requires no hospitalization or surgery. Being a non-citizen makes me ineligible for the federal and provincial programs which cover medication.

I don't need a doc but I have one; I need medication but I can't get it. By the time I get done explaining this circuitous situation, the other end of the line was often silent for a moment. More than once I’ve had people sputter on for a bit before finally offering to call me back after they’ve consulted with a supervisor.

“This is, well . . . somewhat . . . unusual . . .”

I guess it’s the price I pay to be so lucky. The poor souls in customer assistance who deal with the masses day in and day out were just unprepared for lucky bastards like me.

While I do consider my luck contracting MS to be bad, I have to admit that my luck in terms of condition and progression is pretty good. It’s my theorem that this is what’s confusing people in the medical establishment so much: if I were lying in a hospital, or in a wheelchair, requiring thousands of dollars in care, everyone would understand. If I were a healthy, active person who runs and pumps weights and hikes and bikes, who needs to go to a GP once in a while and get a ‘script for a headache or sinus infection, that would make sense.

The source of confusion for everyone is that I’m a healthy person doing all those healthy things, yet I’m also sick and cost lots of money. So, like I said, I’m pretty lucky: some of it is good, some bad.

Today, I got the word that Teva Neuroscience Inc. approved my request for financial assistance. They will subsidize some of the $10,000+ cost of my medication, putting it within reach of my student insurance. So I can now complete the great circle of modern western medicine: go see a doctor AND afford the meds.

For the last month, I have lost a good bit of sleep and operated every day under the looming possibility that, after all I’ve done to get here, I would have to leave Canada; my post-bacc adventure was over before it even started. Now, even a cynical statistician would say that the probability of that outcome is pretty low.

And the sun in shining in March in St. John's! It seems like my luck is holding.

I hate Facebook

I cannot abide FB. In response to inquires from my friends, Facebook refused to let me write more than three FRIKKING COMPLETE SENTENCES (I was 'using too many words', it complained). So unless folks want updates like 'I'm fine', you'll have to come here. Sorry, but don't blame me - my ever-so-slightly verbose nature is not the problem.

After taking the time to point that out, I'll go on to say that the only news from the Canadian side is that I'm leaving town tomorrow for a week in the sopping wet dog-hair timber referred to as 'the woods' by townies. Tony told me not to bring trekking poles because I'd lose them in the post-logging regrowth and I'll need both hands to push through it. It reminds me of some of those burned areas on the west side/Madison, sections of which hold the distinction as the only terrain ever to bring me to tears. We'll be venturing out from a Parks Canada government cabin to count snowshoe hare tracks, in exchange for laughable compensation (why does this scenario seem oddly familiar . . ?).

Anyhew, don't look for any verbage from me for a spell. I secretly hope I’ll be able to report a soggy lynx sighting upon my return.

I made it

Grant me, O Sacred Heart, a steady hand and watchful eye, that none shall be hurt as I pass by . . .

I officially, profusely and wholeheartedly thank Saint Christopher (the patron saint of travelers) and the dude in Bozeman who steered me to the best set of windshield wipers I’ve ever used. Without those two personages, along with the influence of some of the oddest weather since white people started keeping records, I doubt I could have succeeded in my cross-continent journey. Indeed, if I had known beforehand what kind of country my route was to take me through, particularly the jig through the mountains of New Brunswick which was necessary to skirt the practically roadless region of northern Maine, I would have probably not attempted it.

Despite that promise of snowy and ice, I was instead greeted exclusively with two other elements during the trip: water and mud. I was going to take a picture of my truck at one point because so spattered in mud and slush was it that the vehicle no longer appeared white; I carried a roll of paper towels and a bottle of window cleaner.

Alas, the last two days have been characterized by 100kph drives through spitting cold rain, and so the truck appears clean again.

While my friends in Atlanta and my sister in Dallas had to deal with more snow than has ever been recorded thereabouts, and I arrived in the snowiest, cloudiest, windiest city in the Dominion of Canada without having shifted in 4WD once. Now that I’m here, though, I’m sure I’ll be slipping around town tomorrow.

It has been almost a decade since I packed up my life and drove from Florida to Wyoming. Before that, it was Texas, Oregon and California. I have to admit that the whole frikkin’ process seemed a lot easier back then. But there is no denying that this day marks the widest distribution of my life to date. And that ain’t too bad for a guy who didn’t have a passport until 2007.

On The Road

“Where ya goin’ na, eh?”

“Whoa! You’re a long way, na?”

Loose translation: ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

Polite to a fault but less conscious of personal boundaries, more than a few Canadians have done a double-take at my Montana plates and followed up with questions. When I tell ‘em Newfoundland, I might as well say I’m driving to Mongolia.

Leaving the ol’ GMGM, I plowed through eastern Montana, North Dakota and a confusing amalgam of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, slowing only as I approached the world’s friendliest border at Sault Ste. Marie. Trying to get information about the Sault was an experience that I’ll have to parody more in the future. More than half a dozen people in the UP, some within 150 miles of the place, proclaimed that they’d ‘never been that way’ or proclaimed no knowledge of the town. I was waiting for a grizzled old man with an eye patch to step out of the shadows and growl, ‘Aye, fair traveler, there be dragons to the east.’

Given the whispers and wide-eyed gasps, I was prepared to drop off the edge of the earth. Instead, I arrived at a border station staffed by bored CBSA agents (the place was almost completely empty). I successfully convinced a uniformed CBSA kid that, yes, I am actually a 39 year-old American going to school in a region of Canada about which he’s probably heard only vague rumors. I then spent a few shamelessly relaxed days in the care of a friend from days past. Tina and her husband Paul fed me, showed me the local sights in the Sault and generally helped me ignore the huge, overwhelming risk that I’m engaged in.

I headed out from the Sault through Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City. Ottawa and Montreal were, to this small-town rube, intimidatingly large cities while Quebec City was about the same size as Austin (500,000) when I lived there back in the day. It also probably didn’t help that my only familiarity with Ottawa was seeing Mac Hudson fly over its skyline in the Guardian suit (if you’ve never heard of John Byrne or Alpha Flight, just skip that reference). By Monday the 7th, I was out of Quebec and I could once again read highway signage.

I’ll pass through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia on Tuesday. Once I get to Sydney, NS, I’ll leave terra firma for the rock (via a 6-hour ride aboard a superferry). After a few additional days of driving, totaling 8 or 9 days, I should arrive in St. John’s. Not bad time for covering a distance measuring 45% of the planet’s diameter.

In conclusion, then, I have traveled through some of the least populated areas in the United Sates and some of the most populated areas in the Dominion of Canada. And it wasn’t all that easy to tell the difference.

Farewell 2010

And so we arrive once again at the point where I bid farewell to the NPS and Yellowstone. Travis has referred to this as my second annual going away. While there were some great experiences this summer, many things in the GYE have not changed for me (see my Farewell 2008 entry if you’re so inclined).

The summer of 2009 was . . . complicated. Given the impossibility of coherent explanation, I’ll simply say that I learned a lot about unexpected topics and surprisingly little about the subjects in which I‘d planned to immerse myself.

I was able to do things which, had I done them regularly in these past nine years, might have given me a different perspective on Yellowstone. Working for the affable Gunther, I squeezed out a few adventures and visited a few places in this park that not many people see. That ain’t bad for the last summer of my 30s.

The summer of 2009 was hard on my friends; much harder on some than I realized at the time. The winter has been hard on my family: deaths, Alzheimer’s, cancer. My friends and family have one big, fat, ugly thing in common this year: I wasn’t there for them.

I was considering my upcoming move, thinking that I would be so far away from everyone as to become irrelevant. As I passed for the last time (for a while at least) under the watchful, objective gaze of the Beartooths, I wonder if that’s already happened.

To say that I regret that possibility would be a colossal understatement. I’ve though a lot about the reasons, and come to the conclusion that the ‘why’ doesn’t really matter. I will either be forgiven or I won’t. I find that I have nothing in my heart but fervent hope that all those people who I care about will flourish in the days to come. I’d even go so far as to direct them to live long and prosper – but Jenny Jones would never let me live that one down.

Now then. Rumors are rampant, as if I would expect anything else from the YCR. Allow me to lay it down for those interested in the facts.

Yes, I did get into graduate school. No, I did not get into UM (Missoula) because I’m not smart enough. Well, really, I’m not the right kind of smart. I blow the top off the standardized testing charts in terms of verbal skills, something I was honestly surprised to learn is freakishly rare. It’s also spectacularly useless, especially in science. A mild, frustrating learning disability in the quantitative realm led many to doubt my fitness for higher education.

Despite all that, I’m headed off to school in Canada. And not just any whitebread school in British Columbia or Alberta, either – I’ll be attending Memorial University. MUN is located on the island of Newfoundland and is billed as the largest university in Atlantic Canada. Because of the absurd cost of a) Uhauling to Canada, b) shipping to Canada, and c) generally reaching Newfoundland, I’ve given away or sold everything that won’t fit in my truck and/or in the spiffy new huge-ass Rocketbox™ which I’ve bolted to the roof rack.

I’m praying for moderate weather through the Dakotas. It’s a straight shot to Minneapolis/St. Paul, where I will proceed to plunge through the dark forests of the UP (eh!) in Michigan to cross the world’s friendliest border at Sault Ste. Marie. An NPS friend from way back married a Canuck and lives there now. Once I’m done declaring all of my personal property, getting a permit for my bear spray and .22 rifle, and successfully convincing a border guard that I’ll leave when they tell me to, I can then proceed to apply for my student visa. After that wringer, I will head to Tina’s house where I plan to recover for a day or two before the ~1200 miles on the Trans-Canadian Highway to Nova Scotia.

Upon arriving in North Sydney, NS, I have to catch an apparently heroic ‘superferry’ for the six-hour ride which forms the penultimate leg of the trip, from NS to the western coast of Newfoundland. Then it’s 500 miles on winding roads to the island’s eastern coast and my final frikkin’ destination.

Memorial University is located in St. John's, the provincial capital of the single province with two names, Newfoundland and Labrador. St. John’s is the easternmost community in North America. It looks out over the North Atlantic to Greenland.

How did this come about? Well, I looked around and said, 'Where can I go to school that would make Gardiner look cosmopolitan?' Newfoundland came to mind. Seriously, I applied to a Masters’s project in NL, along with many others, some months ago. Every US project found a reason to decline my application, and just as I was poised to begin a career at WalMart, I got the call from Canada.

Gettin’ all lerned in Canada has advantages: I will have healthcare for a few years, something which my own country seems determined to deny to the outliers like me. As for Newfoundland, the entire island has about as many people as Wyoming (a hair over 500,000). St John's is a huge place that accounts for almost half of the economic activity of the entire province, and that single municipal area holds 25% of the province’s population.

Newfoundland has been historically isolated by distance, weather, and choice. Newfoundlanders consider themselves more European than Canadian - there are daily 2500-mile flights from NL to the UK; so NL is closer to London than to Wyoming. It's basically like Texas – a big nation-state where people who often talk funny have reluctantly joined a greater union but essentially want to be left the hell alone.

I'm supposed to trap and collar coyotes for this project, which others have failed to do, despite heroic efforts. If I also fail, then I have to start over with a Plan B for graduation. That nightmare is another posting entirely.

So there ya go. After 10 years in the intermountain west at 6300+ feet, I'm moving as far east as I go in North America, to live on a flat Canadian island which is only marginally Canadian in order to take on a graduate project with a major professor who is younger than I am and who has described the study as having 'a high probability of failure'.

Any questions?

Six: a legendary elk on an iconic landscape

Dateline: Gardiner, Montana

I don’t have many claims to fame, and some of those are sufficiently dubious that I don’t care to recall them. I can, however, make this assertion with confidence: I spent more time, eyeball to eyeball, with Elk Number Six than did any other human being.

I don’t make this declaration lightly; hundreds of tourists watched this elk’s aggressive antics in the Mammoth Hot Springs area of Yellowstone National Park. Additionally, his tendency to utilize certain yards in nearby Gardiner, Montana, as winter daybeds (notably PJ’s and Travis’) – and the hand-feeding of elk and deer in G-town – ensure that a select number of residents have indeed been in very close proximity to this particular elk at times.

Having said that, though, I still make the claim that I spent more time with Six than anyone else. You see, for most of the eight years I rangered at Yellowstone National Park, the arrival of crisp September nights and shortening days meant one thing with certainty: bull elk, following the lure of fertile cows, would appear in Mammoth Hot Springs for the rut. This group of bulls included such notable royalty as Six and Ten. My life would not be the same until November.

During those long weeks, I got to know all of the players – Ten and Brutus and Bumpy and Muddy and Stumpy and so on – very well. More often than not, though, it fell to me to share much of the daytime, and more evenings than I can count, with Six. This is not bragging, mind you, because much of that time was borderline miserable, at least for me. There were years when we weren’t more than a few blocks apart for the entire rut. I lost sleep on those all-too common nights when he circled my house, bugling all night. My relationships with friends and one lover were temporarily damaged by Six. I lost weight. Sometimes I damn near lost all perspective.

I got the calls when he was standing in front of the Mammoth Hotel irrationally slashing at anything and anyone that came close; people hated him. I got the calls when he was limping around Mammoth or when he was in Gardiner, in some alley or yard which was judged to be uncomfortably close to the hunt zone boundary; people were worried about him.

I was with him the first time he was dehorned and I personally put the dart in his butt the second time. I followed him late into the evening after both dehornings – bellowing, waving my arms, honking the horn, and once banging on a dumpster with a wrench to break up fights between Six and other bulls. Until he understood his antlers were gone, he would continue to challenge other bulls and he could easily have ended up mortally wounded in such a contest. Everyone knew that, but I was the only one so desperate to give him time to adjust to being weaponless that I stupidly followed him around in the darkness with a flashlight; as to what I would have done if I’d found myself between two furious 700-pound bull elk at night, I still have no clear idea.

In sum, then, I was with Six when he was frenetic from hormonal rage and when he was sedated. I was with him when he was healthy and when he was injured. I was there he was king of the proverbial Mammoth hill and I was there when he was beaten. I saw him during the zenith of his aggressive behavior towards the throngs of unwary humans, and perhaps most importantly, I witnessed him display remarkable acts of regal indifference and tolerance towards those same crowds.

For all the Number Six stories which people will tell - and people do love to spin yarns about Six - few if any of those tales will be poetic reminiscences of the time he did not charge into a group of clueless elderly people who inexplicably found themselves standing next to him. Or the time he charged, but did not contact, a man talking on his cell phone who never noticed the massive bull elk who could have easily driven an antler through man’s body, had he so chosen.

No, Six is famous for his tendency to damage cars and chase people. Much like Bear 264 or any number of identifiable wolves, Six had passed from reality into the realm of folklore years before his death. As such, the myth of Elk Number Six had already grown out of all proportion to the animal. Every day during the rut, someone would come up to me and tell me something new about Six – he’d killed a man a few years ago, he’d been shipped off to Canada but made his way back, that he was the 'son' of an elk that used to run around Mammoth in the 90s.

Stories like this will endure and Six will likely always be famous for his aggression. But the ironic truth is that his fame was a result of his tolerance. Six was figuratively born in the wildland-urban interface, of which Mammoth Hot Springs is a tenuous, but instructive, example. His notoriety wasn’t solely due to his belligerence; any number of elk are as willing and capable of inflicting damage on people and property. His fame came from the stage where he played out that violence. He charged, punctured, dented and threatened amid the paved streets and buildings of a pedestrian mall packed with loud, unpredictable, aromatic crowds of humans. Had Six been unleashed in a Billings shopping center, I doubt the risk of injury would have been significantly higher.

If not exactly enamored of mankind, Six was undeniably comfortable around humanity. During the rut, the most difficult time of an adult elk’s life, Six spent most of his time next to a busy gift shop, a post office and a fast-food joint. He stood in the road as cars and RVs rumbled by less than an arm’s length away. He chased people up steps onto the porch of the old Mammoth Engineers Building (the pagoda). He drowsed next to sidewalks teeming with boy scouts and tour groups. How many other wild animals, much less hormonally-enraged bull elk, would tolerate such close proximity to so much human activity for so long? As 'wild' as people considered him, Six was, in the parlance of wildlife management, habituated.

In conclusion, my familiarity with Six and his history lead me to make one more audacious assertion: his death was not, as Al understandably called it, a freak accident. It was a predictable outcome of his close association with humanity and our constructed environment. Over the years, I have seen many cases of habituated wildlife, from sea turtles and dolphins to coyotes and bears. In almost all of these situations, the animal eventually meets a premature demise, be it from carelessness around armed humans, coronary heart disease from eating our food, or being hit by a car. Six should have died on a snowy ridgeline in the company of winter cold and a mountain lion, or simply infirmity, but he died tangled in a fence behind a motel because that is representative of how he lived.

If I’m right and I spent more time with Six than anyone else, then it stands to reason that I learned more from Six than anyone else. I suspect that all the experiences which he bestowed on me in his distinctly inelegant way will take a lifetime to truly understand and appreciate. For that, I publicly thank the glorious, majestic, infuriating pain in the ass who was Elk Number Six.

Rest well, Six. If nothing else, you deserve that.

In a very real way, my life will never be the same