The Maple Grove campground
on Cowichan Lake was a favourite
of Cynthia’s and Colin’s

Next: Departure Bay | TOC

Colin stared, mesmerized by the flames of his crackling fire, the way it gnawed at the split cedar blocks he’d been feeding it. He glanced at the Rialta through the sparks and wavering atmosphere. “You weren’t supposed to take me here,” he grumbled.

“And you!” he glared at Hermes, only half-jokingly, “You’re the crappiest navigator ever.”

Hermes glanced up from the furry donut of his bed, then nestled back into sleep without responding, his nose tucked under his tail, a posture Cynthia had dubbed ‘the snooze ball,’ as if it were some form of yogic torture.

Sometimes Colin felt almost resentful, haunted by Cynthia’s spirit—he refused to use the word ghost, even though it would have been more precise. Felt constrained by her ever-present presence. If she were a ghost, he could at least have seen her spectral being as somehow outside, in his field of vision; as spirit, she permeated consciousness with an indivisible crowd of memories that left no room for a future.

Then came the guilt, the shame, intensified by the certain knowledge that she would have forgiven him, even urged him to move on.

The obvious route for the first leg of his journey would have been north up the Saanich Peninsula to Sydney, where he could have caught the Swartz Bay-Tsawwassen ferry. From there, he could have skirted around the northern flank of Surrey, meandering along the Fraser River toward the junction of Route 17 and the Trans Canada Highway near Barnston Island and the South Bend.

“Nah!” he reiterated. The thought of veering so early off the TCH, then cruising through the Pacific Northwestern extremity of the United States, and off-ramping into the flat alluvial farmland and industrial zones of the South Fraser Perimeter Road disheartened him. Silly, he knew. But, as Cynthia would have coached, Silly’s never a reason for not doing something.

So Colin pointed the Rialta Up-Island, over the infamous Malahat, heading north for Nanaimo and Departure Bay. There, he would catch the Horseshoe Bay ferry to the Mainland—a route that didn’t deviate from the Trans Canada. 

But mid-way through that leg, he detoured. It was almost as if the humming tires of the Rialta had been wrenched out of alignment, and he had to compensate to keep his rogue RV pointed in the right direction. It wanted to swerve left, west and inland, instead of keeping on course for Nanaimo. By the time he reached the intersection of Trunk Road in Duncan, he had pinpointed the source of this unyielding psychic magnetism. And he submitted. Taking a left, he skirted the downtown and made for Cowichan Lake Road. “We’re going to spend the night at the Maple Grove Recreation Site,” he announced. Hermes gave him an approving glance, then stuck his head out the passenger side window, his ears flapping in the wind as if he was preparing to fly.

“Good boy,” Colin reached over and patted his best friend’s rump, wondering if Hermes was in the same yearning state of mind he was. The view through the Rialta’s windscreen unfurled like memory, as if they were being drawn inevitably toward the vanishing point of a dream, and would never be able to escape its gravity and return the way they’d come.

Hermes glanced back, his flapping wings drooping. Dreams don’t weigh anything, he thought caustically. So they don’t create a gravitational field. Of course, we’re coming back this way. Then he stuck his snout back out again, sampling the flavours of his wind-tunnel world.

Taken aback, Colin stared at his ordinary mutt, a dog that wasn’t even pure-bred. “I beg your pardon!” he said angrily. It seemed to him that Hermes had adopted a noble pose, as if he were the star in a Universal Pictures production and a triumphal symphony was about to reverberate, drowning out the thrum of the Rialta’s engine.

The blast of a semi’s air horn startled him. The Rialta had drifted off course into the oncoming lane and was about to collide with the diesel behemoth. Colin wrenched the steering wheel right so hard the RV nearly capsized. Counter-steering, they lurched the other way, dishes clattering and glasses shattering as they toppled out of the cupboard behind him. “Holy fuck!” Colin gasped as the semi roared by into its Doppler vortex.

Indeed! Hermes agreed.

Colin stared at his passenger. “Since when do dogs talk!” he yelled, his voice amplified by the adrenaline still coursing through his veins.

Dogs are always talking. The question becomes, When will you humans listen?

“This is crazy!”

If you continue shouting at a supposedly dumb canine as if you expected an answer, your fellow homo sapiens will truly think you are insane—and perhaps they’d be right. I suggest you learn to speak telepathically and less hysterically.

“Huh?”

Imagine yourself talking to me without modulating the air passing through your vocal cords, or creating sibilance with your teeth, or formulating bilabial plosives with your lips.

“Bilabial what’s?”

‘B’ and ‘P’ sounds.

 “This is nuts.”

If, by that, you are declaring our exchange an impossibility, I must correct you. The very fact that you are experiencing it makes it perfectly real. Just what it might be is another matter entirely, and one that cannot be reckoned within the narrow compass of your discriminatory mind.

Hermes stared at him disdainfully, his head cocked, eyes locked on. Then his look softened, and he added, Think of yourself as Spock on the Starship Enterprise doing a mind meld. Imagine something, anything, then describe it to me in words unspoken.

Colin balked; Hermes waited. Think about where we’re headed, the dog nudged.

Cynthia and Colin had spent many weekends and holidays camping at Maple Grove. They’d bought the Rialta five years before he retired, planning to celebrate his hard-earned freedom with a cross-Canada adventure. In the meantime, they ‘learned the ropes’ on frequent jaunts up and down Vancouver Island, or into the province’s interior. They’d never crossed the border into Alberta or headed south into the States.

The fact that they had been cheated by the Realta’s previous owner didn’t lessen the pride and joy they took in their ‘cottage on wheels.’ True Rialta owners lavish the type of care and attention on their RVs that antique car enthusiasts do, forming clubs and Facebook pages, organizing get-togethers where they can display their spit-and-polished motor homes and swap tales of adventure on life’s highways.

Colin shadowed their sites but steered clear of any face-to-face or bumper-to-bumper encounters. His and Cynthia’s Rialta would have been judged an embarrassment. A previous owner had scrubbed and scraped off the classic Rialta factory motif and made a bad job of it. They’d attempted to hide their imperfect sanding and scraping by spray painting the Rialta white. But the cover-up had been sloppily applied, and they’d used the wrong type of paint, so the imperfectly defaced Rialta markings showed through, and the paint was peeling, the hood looking like a sunburnt nose. Somewhere along the way, the fancy hubcaps had come off, exposing the rusting rims and lug nuts that secured the body to its wheels. The interior was in even worse shape: the ceiling stained where water had seeped in around domed sunroof; the fridge door rimmed with rust; cabinets and drawers that wouldn’t open or close without yanking, shoving, slamming, grunting and cursing; plywood flooring, which Colin had installed to overlay the original worn out carpet; and a new generic toilet that didn’t leak, but which wobbled precariously when sat on.

Colin and Cynthia demurred when people asked what they’d paid for it. “Too much,” they’d admit. But his sister Loretta, in her forthright manner, had dubbed their motor home-away-from-home ‘the Junkernaught’ and declared, without even knowing the price, that they’d been ‘ripped off.’ Which was true, but irrelevant. “She’s our dreamboat on wheels,” Cynthia proclaimed. “Her many flaws remind us of our own declining condition, how patient and caring we must be with each other, my dear.”

And on that note, Colin smiled, hoisting himself out of his camp chair. “Come on, Hermes,” he beckoned. “Time to send a message home.”

Before heading into the Rialta, he glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then pulled down the front of his track pants and pissed on the campfire to put it out.

What a waste!’ Hermes grumped as the acrid steam hissed and billowed.

“Huh?”

You could have marked the entire campground as your turf with that amount of urine.

Colin laughed, and Hermes wagged his tail, each letting the other know in their own way that the remark was to be taken as a joke.

To: CynthiaPetersonArtist@gmail.com
Subject: Day 1 on Rialta Road – Off Course Already
From: Call-In-P-Terson@gmail.com

Hello, My Love,

I’ve just doused the fire at our favourite Maple Grove campsite, #82, and am getting ready to bed down for the night. I arrived late this afternoon, off course on the very first day of our cross-Canada adventure. I blame Hermes for the detour. He’s taken over the navigator’s chair in the Rialta, but doesn’t seem to have the slightest idea how to guide us toward our destination or avoid the looming hazards of the highway. Not once has he cautioned me for tailgating, and he didn’t even woof when I diverted from the TCH onto Trunk Road in Duncan, heading for Lake Cowichan, Youbo, and the North Shore Logging Road.

He was excited to be here, though. I wonder if his are actual memories of the campground, or if he’s simply triggered by familiar smells, sights, and sounds that remind him he’s in a place he likes to be. Does he remember the time you surprised an elk browsing in the bushes by the campground’s gravel road, and she charged you? I’ll never forget the panicked look on your face when you rounded the corner in full flight, or how Hermes heroically warded your attacker off with his shrill, frenzied barking. Or the time we toasted our last sunset, sitting in our camp chairs on the beach, and yours listed, then tipped over just as our wine glasses clinked. Despite the capsize, you held your cup up high and didn’t spill a drop. How we laughed!

These memories make me smile, but they haunt me too. I wish you were here in body as well as spirit, my love. I long to hear your laughter, not imagined echoes in frequencies beyond the normal range of human ears.

You would have had a wonderful laugh this morning when I set off on Rialta Road. Remember, we were going to dip our toes in the Pacific, near Mile 0, before setting off. I fulfilled that pledge, and then some. It seemed inadequate, to just touch the water with a nether digit, so I shucked the footgear—as you would have advised—rolled up my pants, and waddled in with both feet. Before I could utter my affirmations, though—you know, about valuing life, completing the circle, bringing joy to my fellow men—I stepped on what felt like a bag of razor blades. I jumped, landed, and stumbled backwards into a full immersion baptism in the waters of Juan de Fuca.

Oh, how you would have laughed!

Missing you
Always

Love, Colin

Next: Departure Bay | TOC