Ha Cha Cha...

I have a confession to make.... when I was younger I used to be very eccentric...hahahaha (some of you are rolling your eyes and thinking, Only when she was younger)...hahaha  okay, I'll reword that...when I was younger I used to much more eccentric.... In fact when I arrived in Alberta to join my parents and help them in a move back to BC... I got off the bus wearing an ankle length tapestry type hippy dress, with an empress waist and short sleeves under which I was wearing a faded old "STONES" T-shirt... a jean jacket that had seen better days and one that I had obviously out grown as it was quite tight...I had hair down to my shoulder blades..and frizzy...no make up, no jewellery and underneath the dress unseen, I was wearing long underwear and knee high leather boots that laces up the sides...I might at this time disclose that it was January 3....hahahahaha and about -25....I had Zsa Zsa Gabor style sun glasses holding my wild hair out of my face...a very tattered back pack slung over one shoulder and a canvas LEVI'S carry on bag... that held every thing I owned...and the back pack was the same one I left home with and used to carry my books to school before that... I had one pair of button up jeans to my name, along with a few T-shirts and of course my favorite Tee of all time, my Kermit the Frog one that I bought for my 16 th birthday....I wore until it was so thin it was indecent and after that wore it as a sleeping Tee.  I had a pair of running shoes with holes in the top of the toe area....and a pair of steel toe bush boots that I had spent one whole paycheck on to be able to get hired on at a cedar shingle camp in the wilds north west of Lumby... I loved that gig...living in camp with 5 other girls most of them from Quebec...another from Manitoba...we had a trailer to ourselves...and there was a common camp trailer where the kitchens were and us women and the men hung out, played cards, made music...It was very strictly run by a logging company...with camp chaperone's and bosses...there were rules out the ying yang....no sex, no booze, no drugs...and no fighting...you did two weeks in one week out...which we usually spent in Vernon......I didn't like the youth hostel scene..so I got a cheap motel room...where I took advantage of the running HOT water and showered a few times a day just because I could...I would call home rarely...but enjoyed watching TV, which we didn't have in camp... I loved that job....in camp when the days work was done, I went hiking...and had made friends with two of the girls so they often came with me...we sometimes washed our hair as a group...two would wash while the third one stood watch...not for the guys...spying but for cougar and lynx...bear, when hibernation was over... We layed on the deck of the small wooden forestry bridges that forded the many creeks and streams...and this one, was particularly handy because it was low enough to the rushing water that with a jug we could scoop water and pore it over our heads...admittedly, the water was brain numbingly cold....I mean FRIGID....but it felt so good to have clean hair.  I wish I had had a camera in those days because some of the scenery and wildlife I saw on those solitary walks were stunning...and the stumps....oh my god.some of them were huge...the guys actually set a picnic table on one of them and had lunch...ancient trees...hundreds of years old...makes me cringe now to think about them being cut down...but we made good use of the giant stumps left behind...the area had been clear cut by the logging company in the winters and a few years after they sent in these shingle camps to cut the stumps, which were often over 8 feet tall because of the snow when they were logged, we cut them with enormous chain saws, drug them to camp with  an ancient skid steer and CAT  they were cut into smaller blocks and then chopped with axes and wedges...into manageable blocks where they were split with a shingle knife and mallet...the girls usually did the bundling...but I got bored to death of that job and soon convinced the elderly camp boss to let me try my hand at splitting...which I turned out to be awesome at...if I do say so myself...the girls got paid for bundling by the hour but the splitters got paid per bundle...there was  card stock on which we wrote our ID number on and they were stapled to the bundles, the end of the day, the boss tallied up the bundles each person split and made note of it...man did I make good money...which was good, because when I went back to picking fruit the next year I lived all that winter on the camp money I had saved up... I loved that log camp work...but the politics were stupid....you know, that many people living together..there was bound to be shit going on...I never had to worry about that because I was boyish enough to not be bothered by the younger guys...but the pretty girls, well they worked there way through the camp...oh not while they were in camp of course or they would have got the asses fired...but on their week out they hooked up with the current guy and never emerged from their room the whole week...hahahaha so then back in camp...guys would be shooting daggers at each other across the table...shoving and pushing....childish shit...

I have, ever since that job...loved the smell of cedar...wet, dry or any way at all...the smell of rain and foliage...salmon berries right off the bush, wild raspberries and blackberries there for the picking...the switch back roads and riding in that rat trap old dodge fargo van....with 10 other people crammed in on our way to Vernon for our week off, buying fruit and chocolate bars to take back to camp for the next two weeks and the food we got served in camp...oh man the elderly couple who were hired as camp cook and maintenance man were so nice and man could Ellen cook...Eli spent his nights cheating the young guys out of their money at cards...winking at us girls across the room, all night...and before he turned in he would always give the money back...hahaha the guys would be just livid...but the next night they always played cards with him again..hahaha   I loved that Job...

So I don't know where that eccentric hippy chick went...I wish I could find her again...because she didn't care what people thought of her...or worry about her looks...she took care of herself...did a good job of it...except for the summer she lived on Chef boyardee...ravioli and free fruit...exclusively...oddly enough I still crave that crap...every time I see it in the store...I am sorely tempted to buy a tin..... that odd summer was what prompted me to look for a better paying job than picking fruit all summer and staying in youth hostels for the winter...that's when I got the shingle job...hahaha

So when I stepped off that greyhound bus in Alberta...I was a free spirit..never smoked pot...never had a boyfriend and never finished high school...and became a different person...married, kids, buried in responsibility and burdens..

Just no fun anymore, man... would I love to take Robert into the bush and split shingles...I know he would love it...but our old bodies would miss the comforts of home, so I guess that past life is best left in the past..for the young.. 

so ya...I used to be a sort of hippy...in the Seventies...hahahaha