By Peter Christensen

Op-Ed Commentary

Days go by as I run the pumps, furnace, hot water heater and fridge, disinfect the fresh water tank, fill and drain the black and grey water tanks, check air pressure in the tires on the new-to-us 19-foot travel trailer; hook up two, new heavy duty six-volt storage batteries in series, experience the solar panel read out, change oil in the truck, settle the trailer cup on the ball hitch, fit the weight distribution stabilizer bars, and test signal lights.

Carefully we select and pack changes of clothes, sort out the growing stack of medical supplies, pick toothbrushes and soap, stow the dog food and dish. Y cleans out the home fridge.  Camping is so relaxing! There was a time when I got five horses, tack and 10 days of supplies ready to go on a back country patrol, in an afternoon…!

A retired friend from Victoria, who visits once a year pulling his handsome, hand-built trailer (he is a finishing carpenter) with his three-quarter ton Dodge said, when I asked what kind of milage he gets pulling his trailer, “I don’t know and don’t give a shit.” Admittedly, his comment influenced my conversion to holiday-trailerdom and motivated me to get on the road and see some country.

A winter of scanning used holiday trailer ads yielded a buy from a handy guy outside of De Winton and has made our gasoline guzzling road trip possible.

At Highway 93 we turned north toward Radium, think about climbing three passes to get to a bustling TransCanada highway, turn completely around and head south instead into the greening grasslands and widening Upper Columbia Valley. At Fort Steele we turn toward Bull River, Fernie, Sparwood and the Crowsnest Pass.

East of the Continental Divide the small streams change direction and flow brightly till they coalesce into Crowsnest Lake, a large deep natural lake that spills into a wetland maze that becomes the Crowsnest River somewhere underneath a bridge crossing. This change in direction of rivers makes us feel like we are on our way; are leaving winter worries behind.

Our 2008 F-150 with its new engine runs well and the trailer tows respectfully. We breathe a sigh of relief; it is our first truck and trailer campground camping expedition. The world of hook-ups, interpreting domestic hand signals, forgiveness and backing into slots, awaits.

We are overwhelmed by the abrupt beauty of the east slopes of the Rockies as they drop precipitously past the old mining towns of Frank and Bellevue. Memories surface of living in the Bellevue Hotel when I was 16 and working as a jughound on a seismic crew. Memories, it has been said, “keep the wolf of insignificance from the door?”

As we drop down from the pass the land lays out in rolling green hills surrounded by a breathtaking blue dome. It is as if all this space suddenly erases a fixed way of thinking. The winter long ‘valley clag,’ both physical and mental, is cleared by our effort to comprehend so much space. Vast grassland pastures grazed by slow cattle with newborn calves suckling at their sides, interrupted by farms and smaller fields where a few horses nuzzle new grass complete the picture. The horizon recedes as we travel east.

We land at Lundbreck Falls Provincial Recreation Area, a campground west of Pincher Station, back carefully into a designated camp site, shut down and hook up. I turn on the propane, start the fridge and furnace, blow a bit of heat around the interior. We collapse onto the comfortable double bed sideways at the back end of the trailer, are lulled to sleep by the cascading waters of the falls.

– Peter Christensen is a Columbia Valley based writer and poet.

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