Journeys Afoot in North America
Part I, Early Walks
Early that same fall I walked from Green Bay, Wisconsin toward Edmonton, Alberta to see friends. Near Iron River in upper Michigan, an ex-sailor offering a lift also picked up a man with dirt cracks in his face who'd been on the road since the Depression.
When the sailor asked me what I did and I answered lightly that I was a bum, the man with the cracked face said "no, you ain't a bum, I'm a bum, you're too clean." I accepted the verdict and wash when I can.
In the Copper Counties it turned out their lovely copper colored water was due to drainage out of muskeg swamps. And Northern Michigan had "pasties", the hearty meal-in-a turnover introduced into this country by Cornish miners. Pronounced as in "pass the tea", both are taken hot.
Lake Superior was crossed into Ontario by way of Isle Royale, boat and plane. Leaving Port Arthur on the King's Highway, I walked some distance through a quiet Finnish community of white houses with pale blue trim until a woman who'd been hurt in a car accident had her son pull over to offer a ride. Seeing my footsore limp, she'd thought me a cripple like herself.
They then graciously provided supper and shelter for the night. It had been a two-mile lift, but there were friends coming for breakfast who would take me with them on to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Next day journeying, the friends and I picked from wayside treasure a bucketful of blueberries, and at their home I rocked a baby to sleep.
Near Grand Prairie in Saskatchewan a minister blessed me with a ride but cursed the trooper who caught him speeding. The minister was a good man, with two churches, a white and an Indian. But, I thought to myself, Peter only had instructions to found one.
Enroute to Jasper, now with the Edmonton friends, I left their night camp because of a quarrel. "Let that baby cry," they said, and I was off in a huff. But a few miles on, the stars dimmed behind an auroral dance of softly surging, then receding, varicolored cartwheels. To see the Northern Lights in color is said to be a privilege, even for Canadians. Not a time for anger; I went back and made up.
When they and the baby returned to Edmonton, I stayed to try Mount Edith Cavell near Jasper. The route was clear enough, but ice near the summit stopped me (I'd brought a rucksack this time, but no ice axe). There was, however, a shallow pan nearby, free of snow and feasible for a high camp in the clear September weather. Next morning, bare rocks avoiding the ice could be found. Exultant at getting up, I kissed the wooden cross someone had built on top.
Mountains are hard work÷the sandwiches prepared by my friends were soon gone, and during the descent only juniper berries to be had. At trailhead I slept for lunch until some campers woke me with the outrageous claim that they'd made too many hamburgers. "Would cheese on the second one be all right?" They also told of a spectacular Valley of Ten Peaks in the south near Calgary that shouldn't be missed.
In Calgary a bookstore lent topographic maps, and I walked some and rode some to Moraine Lake where the trail began for Mount Temple. An approach valley with hanging glaciers to be seen on the surrounding ten peaks was just the beginning. For at one point as I hiked around a bend in the trail, the very air began to shimmer like a dream of gold.
Closer, it seemed the yellow came from pines, the sun glinting through them against a high backdrop of majestic glacier. But not pine really; I saw too many needles in each sheaf. It was a stand of newly minted alpine larch, the conifer that turns in fall like a maple. The larch is a stateside tree too; why did it take a walk in Alberta for me to notice its beauty?
Higher on Temple I intended to camp for an early climb, but met a Moroccan with fierce mustache who claimed that during forty-eight ascents of Temple he'd learned the tiny cloud we saw toward the Selkirks invariably meant a bad storm. So I was persuaded to return to the campground, with a promise that if the weather allowed he'd guide me up next day.
In the morning the stars yet shone as we began his forty-ninth and my first climb of Temple. I could barely keep up; he attributed his strength and speed to a favorite exercise, standing on his head, but admitted there was danger of breaking the neck. When we reached steep rock the situation was reversed, my experience made me abler. The weather held for wide views on top.
Coming down I should have put him first, for behind hurrying he dislodged a rock which hurt my knee. When at the road he didn't offer a lift, I walked. And after a while the knee was all right.
Near the Minnesota border with Northern Lights, gold of autumn larch, and two ascents nestled in my pocket, time was running out. I took a bus back to university duties at Chicago.