Monday, January 6, 2014

Canada VI - Between II


     "'Spose you've figured out we're up here to do some fishing.  But don't take Silent but Deadly as being the means.  And we've got ourselves quite a few miles of road ahead before we can wet a line.  Good fishing extracts a price.  In this case miles.  Easier to drive for a day or two than to outwit a Minnesota walleye.  And we still have to figure out a place to sleep for the night.  Hope you don't mind I'm a cheap bugger.  We'll pull off the road in an hour or two, move the gear up front, blow up the pads and hunker down for the night."
     "Where we're headed is a little piece of gravel in the middle of nowhere.  Well, it's not actually right in the middle.  The middle's floatin' atop a bog two miles west northwest, give or take a degree and there's no way we're traipsing through a slough in the dark just to be in the middle of anything.  Tried that once and nearly lost a foot to a tundra alligator.  Up ahead we'll turn into a little parking area I know of and listen to the music of skeeters scraping the paint off the side of the wagon.  You've not heard anything 'til you've been serenaded to sleep by those little scumbags.  The place we'll bed down sits surrounded by about a hundred thousand square miles of swamp.  Heard tell Big Foot used to live up there 'til he froze to death one late summer's night.  Now it's nothing but bugs, bears, wolves and five crazed Canadians who come out to howl at the moon twice a month on Thursdays.  Though I'm not so sure the Canucks are still there.  We'll have to listen for the howling to find out.  Then again the howling might be wolves.  Comes down to who'd eat who to survive.  I'd put my money on the Canucks.  Doubt the wolves'd stand a chance."
     Nice way to set a city boy up for a restful night of sleep.  I figured Uncle Emil was kidding but from what I was seeing out of the window he was right on the money about this being nearly all swamp and scruffy forest so maybe he was also right about the rest.  Guess horror stories aren't just for the movies.

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