Road Apples

One of the great secret places of my youth was Top of the World Provincial Park.

It's a little remote.

If you have a look at an aerial view, you'll note that there are sort of roads kind of near it... but not too near it.

Interestingly, it's nearly exactly between the Sticks and another of the great camping spots of my Childhood, Wasa Lake.

I may have mentioned that it is the nature of travel in the interior of British Columbia that locations that are not very far apart as the crow flies, are some distance to drive. Wasa was like that; It was a pleasant drive, but 90 minutes from home. And it was close to Gramma Jay's.

And we could swim, with a sand beach and everything. And it had a fantastic little Ice Cream shop/Candy/General store that kids just loved.

But today, we're talking about Fish Lake.

Wasa was a drive, but Fish Lake, the main feature of Top-of-the-World as far as I was concerned, was an excursion.

It required rather serious preparation, both in gear and psychology... because, to paraphrase Boromir, One merely walks into Fish Lake.

For about 2 and a half hours, on average.

So, it isn't exactly a day trip. You usually plan for at least one overnight, so you have to carry in a tent.

And a bedroll. And food.

You get the Idea.

Naturally, the first time we went in, Dad and Uncle Crazy Legs planned it as a day trip.

The clans had gathered, as we frequently did in the summer. Uncle Crazy Legs, also a teacher, had exposed my cousins to the same sort of youth I had, with the only real difference being location. They ended up in Dawson Creek in 1979 or so.

Yes, it's a real place. No, it was there before the TV show. No, it has nothing to do with the TV show. And, yet again, I digress.

As a matter of fact, the clans had gathered in a marvelous clearing just under the bridge across the Lussier River - the same Camp spot Dad, the Artist, and I would later eat peaches. We were to be there the better part of a week. As it turns out, it's about 20 minutes from the parking area at the trail head to Fish Lake.

That's right; Parking Area. At the time it was a rough-hewn rail fence abutting the Primordial Forest, with a wide track of gravel to park on, just off the Whiteswan Forest Service road.

I recall that the day trip had been part of the plan all along; Dad had made some arrangements. The greatest of these were apples.

To this day, I don't know where the idea came from. He had Mom pack a couple dozen large Red Delicious apples, several tubs of peanut butter, and bags of mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, and trail mix in the tent trailer.

The day before Fish Lakes, camped en masse on the Lussier River, we all went to work. Under the direction of Dad and Uncle Crazy Legs, we cut the tops off the apples like one would a Jack-o-lantern, slanting in so that the top could be re-installed later. Then we spooned out the apple cores. You had to be pretty careful not to scrape too deep, or you'd break the skin of the apple. That would ruin it.

Once the cores were out, Mom had mixed the other ingredients together in a large bowl, and we spooned the mix of peanut butter, mini-marshmallows, chocolate chips, and trail mix into the apples, and pushed the tops back on. The peanut butter makes them stick.

Usually.

What you get is a highly portable, ridiculously highly energy- and protein-packed snack suitable for eating while hiking.

And no trash. The whole thing is biodegradable. It's about as perfect a Back-Country hiking snack as you can get. Fills you right up, too.

I was ten at the time. I don't recall which of us coined them Road Apples - so I won't take the credit. And yes, we all thought the Irony was pretty funny, too.

Tragically, my Beautiful Wife is deathly allergic to nuts. So is my niece. Subsequently my opportunities for making them again are pretty thin. That... and I live in Ontario now.

See, I only ever made Road Apples for the hike into Top of the World. The two seemed to just go together, like London Fogs on Christmas Eve. Ask Lange. She knows what I mean.

Late one summer in my 20th year, my friend The Angry Scientist wanted to do some High-Altitude Hiking and Photography, and, since the plateau is at about 2200 metres (that's about 6700 feet for you southerners),  we decided we should trek in to Fish Lake. I'm pretty sure that's the last time I made Road Apples. I don't recall his feelings about them.

I'm also pretty sure that's the last time I saw Top of the World. I think that was after the one where Mr. Bill couldn't resist a 4 am taste of Porcupine... But THAT is a story for another time.

Rum Junction

I recently recounted certain events surrounding the development of a hunting cabin called the Rum Junction Hotel. About a klick south of Highway three, barely five minutes out of the little town I grew up in - The Sticks - there is a bottle in a tree.

Okay, seriously. In that neck of the woods, there are very likely a number of bottles in a variety of trees - but none that I know of that are a named landmark for a very select group.

Couple things.  I grew up in the 80s.  It wasn't exactly the wild west, but... well, okay, it was actually the West, technically. My point is you've all very likely seen the posts on facebook how we should never have survived our childhoods... well a lot of this story would probably - nowadays...

Whatever. This story has elements that are not gonna be politically correct. I'm probably gonna offend PETA, MADD, and possibly the BCTF and a bunch of other acronyms, but that's the way things went down. Get over yourselves.

But then, my old friend Zon tells me I'm not exactly hindered in my commentary by an enormous audience, so I guess we're good.

Right. Into the abyss.

Dad and I were out hunting. It occurs to me that this is usually the way these things start.

The unusual part is that he actually saw something. An Elk.

And he saw it long enough to get a shot off.

When I was 15 years old, Dad was a pretty good shot. Having said that - a bottlecap in a tree is almost exactly unlike a 500 kilo Elk ripping up turf and trees around it as you can, realistically, get.

But I wasn't there - I was in the valley. I started moving in his direction when I heard the shot.

I found a man in befuddlement. He was certain he'd aimed true - but we could find absolutley no evidence.

Eventually, Dad found a tiny shred of bloodied flesh on a bush in the vicinity, that might indicate a bullet wound on a large animal. So now we had to track it down.

Six hours later, it was getting on to dusk, and we had not managed to find even one more trace of an animal that was injured, and we very nearly tore that valley apart. But Dad, being a Conservation Instructor and Environmentalist in his way, had an idea that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Heh.  There's an acronym I use as a matter of routine... SLAGIATT. Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. It's a great catch-all for when things go unpredictably, horribly sideways. This seems to happen a lot in My World.

We were coming back the next day - and we were bringing The Dog.

I grew up with dogs. There were usually two. And they were generally large - as in over 40 kilos, and 30 cm tall at the shoulder, and very often both. This Dog was both. He was the unregistered offspring of a purebred Shepard and an Alsatian Police Dog, and a couple years later would be diagnosed with genetic Retinitis Pigmentosis, and then develop cataracts.

That's a story for another day, of course.

He was in no way intended or trained to hunt or track... but there was nothing wrong with his nose.

The next day, we were back in the draw at Roberts Creek.

Dad handled the Dog. The Dog was somewhere over 50 kilos, and still otherwise prime, and Dad, rightly, was concerned that he'd yard me off my feet running a blood trail.

Four grueling hours up and down 45-degree slopes with nothing to show for it, the Dog pulls Dad off his feet. In landing, Dad came down beside a bush and one of the twigs slid under his glasses, and gouged the cornea of his right eye.

Never done that, but I wear contact lenses sometimes. I'm pretty sure that it HURT. I seem to recall him mentioning that once or twice.

Dad was on a mission, though, and gamely carried on through excruciating pain, his eye tearing to the point of useless.

And for several more hours, we continued to find absolutely no trace of this evidently phantom Elk. Dad, finally, had had enough, and sat down beside the old snag in the center of the draw up the valley. He pulled a bottle of  overproof Demerara rum out of his pack. It was a 750 ml bottle; back then we'd have called it a 26er. It was about a third full.

"I brought this to toast with in case we found that Elk," Dad said. "Don't imagine you can drive us home." I thought about it for a second or two, and, having never touched a steering wheel in a moving vehicle to that point, knew my limitations.

"Thought not. Well, I can't see a damn thing, and this is the only painkiller we have. Pass me one of them cokes."

So we sat under that tree, and killed the sixpack of coke we had in my bag, splitting the remains of the bottle between us. When it was empty, Dad decided to hang it in the Snag we sat under, in the bottom of that draw. there was a perfect broken-off branch pointing straight up about 10 feet high.

I rode Dad's shoulders and mounted the bottle on the branch... and we hiked down the 20 minutes to the truck and drove home - very fortunately without incident. It took years for dad's eye to heal all the way. And now - we have cellphones so such events would never happen.

That bottle sat upside down in that tree - hell, as far as I know, it still is. Eight years after we placed it there Dad expressed amazement no one had shot it out yet. I have not been through that draw in 22 years, though, so I can't even tell you the snag is still standing, let alone the bottle.

That Snag in that Draw lives forever as Rum Junction. Welcome to the Group.