Home Free (10 page)

“You only need to make one phone call. Call Egertson's, and they'll take care of everything.” He knew that tidy business arrangements and planning for the future were not our forte.

“I don't want any strangers gawking at me,”my mother would always add at that point. She had a horror of funerals with an open casket, and of trays of crustless sandwiches passed among the curious. She had already embarked on a course of electrolysis because, as she put it, “I don't want to have a stroke and be lying in some hospital bed with hairs sprouting out of my face.”Being seen dead was a concern.

“Just send us up the chimney and come home and have a glass of sherry,” she would say with a kind of gay irritability whenever we tried to protest. But now that some of my friends were being picked off by cancer, I began to find the conventions of funerals reassuring. Someone thought to make sandwiches, another friend could be counted on to say the wrong thing, so-and-so would get drunk and stay too long—it all kept you clasped in the present. The mundanity of funerals said that life with its pots of tea and mixed motives would go on.

But burning a person, it turned out, was not as simple as a phone call. There were laws about human remains, and the question of scattering, or interment, and then the business of what to put the ashes in, and who in the family would keep them. As murderers and widows come to learn, it takes surprising enterprise and a certain amount of work to truly rid yourself of the body.

I think my mother was in shock. The fact that my father would leave her side forever and ever, just as a hot dinner was about to be served, was not something she could quickly grasp. So instead of weeping and falling apart, she applied herself to this practical problem—the recipe, as it were, for her husband's ashes. As with a casserole, first came the matter of choosing the appropriate dish.

After an urn-tour of the house, we settled on a rather eccentric swirly blue ceramic vase, something my mother had made. My sister had fashioned a lid for it by gluing together several plywood discs that I had bought at the craft store. An ad hoc sort of urn. I delivered the vessel to Just Cremation, and my mother and I retired to the den with large glasses of sherry. There would be no service, just the family, and a brief “visitation.”

“Well,”my mother said,“that's that.”

But that wasn't that at all.

A Serious
Little Mountain

T
HE DAY AFTER my father died, I called Casey in Quebec to give him the news. During that first night it comforted me to know that he was up in the woods with his surrogate family, engaged in the safest, most bucolic activity imaginable— making maple syrup.

It reminded me of the phone calls from Brian's mother, who at 91 is frail but still living in her own home.

“So Marni's fine and Casey's fine?”Yes, Brian tells her.

“So everyone's okay.”The mantra we need to repeat.

Another consolation was that my father had died without ever being aware of the dangerous episodes in my life. I hadn't told him about that little sea plane ride where I watched the co-pilot poke a broom through a hole in the cabin to get the landing wheels unstuck. Or how our South American bike ride ended in the Atacama Desert of northern Peru,with chest pains and the world's longest taxi ride to Lima.

With Casey, of course, it was the opposite—we knew all too well what he was up to. Or so we thought. A few weeks earlier, after the school term had ended, Casey had told us that he was heading out to the Maritimes on a camping trip with his girlfriend Julia. They were going to climb Gros Morne mountain in Newfoundland. An easy day trip in good weather, according to the website. They planned to hitchhike there, but this was eastern Canada not Nevada. I paid scant attention.

However, things did not go as planned. I was spared the details until sometime later, when Casey decided to write an account of their trek up Gros Morne. Here is part of it:

“After what seemed like a few hours of climbing we came to a high plateau, with a wooden platform. I looked out onto the plain and saw grass, bushes, and wind-blown trees. Rising up ahead of us stood the peak of Gros Morne. On the platform was a sign:

Gros Morne, at 803 meters above sea-level, is the second highest mountain in Newfoundland. Up above the tree-line, we are now in an exposed environment resembling the Arctic tundra. This barren land is home to wildlife such as Rock Ptarmigans, Arctic Hares and Woodland Caribou. The vegetation is fragile and the soil is prone to wind erosion. The trail to the summit will take you up a steep boulder gully. You will pass through several distinct ecological zones, each a different habitat for plants and animals.

“The plaque gave a number of advisories.‘Be prepared for rapid changes in temperature, lack of water, high wind and blistering sun.'

“There was also something along the lines of ‘Please stay on the trail at all times. The vegetation is old and fragile. The trail is steep and the gully can be dangerous to descend as there is a risk of dislodging boulders onto climbers below.'

“Also, most importantly, ‘The mountain is closed until the beginning of July.'We were there in April,with patches of snow still on the ground.

“For some reason, this didn't faze us. I saw it as just another piece of paperwork, like one of those ‘Do you accept the following terms' contracts required to do most things. From where we stood, the peak appeared to be quite close. It was grey in colour and round in shape—almost friendly-looking.

“I decided that these warnings were intended for other less wilderness-savvy individuals—people with fanny packs and carbon fibre walking sticks. Gros Morne was a day hike. Besides, we still had a good three or four hours of sunlight left, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

“As we stood in front of the sign, I remember feeling a spark of hesitation. It was a subtle but familiar sensation. It begins with a potentially risky situation and a decision to be made. Is the lake too windy to paddle across? Is this set of rapids too big to run safely? On day 15, is it wise to eat the pre-cooked Mexican Beef with a little hole in the package?

“From the platform we could see the trail winding through the alpine field above us,past a few small lakes and up to the base of the peak. From there, a series of cairns pointed to a rock gully that appeared to be the most direct route up—except that the middle of the gully was filled with snow. It was a case of either slogging through the snow or climbing up the bare but rocky edges of the gully.

“I considered the challenges of walking on jagged rocks blanketed by snow, in sneakers. Prime ankle-spraining territory. I had visions of avalanches, the kind that begin as a tiny clump of displaced snow.

“All of a sudden, we were no longer on a nature walk; we were two people on a mountain. Only half an hour had passed and we were in a totally different environment. The sun was brighter. The air felt dryer. We were leaving the earth behind and entering the realm of the sky.

“As we climbed,we encountered bigger rocks, in the breadbox-to-blue-box size range. The grade became steeper, and soon we had to use our hands. At first it was fun and easy, like climbing a tree. From time to time a clump of rocks shifted under my weight, but for the most part things seemed stable.

“We were now officially high up. From this perspective, the slope below us looked much steeper, and the trail we had just taken through the fields looked like a piece of string connecting the lakes. The sight gave me another shock of doubt.

“Things were getting a little more serious, a little more technical. Going up, the way became narrower, and it wasn't clear how far we would have to climb. Going down, the footing was unstable. Either way was bad.

“I tested the sliding effect again with a careful step. The rocks gave way under my foot, and I watched them tumble down, down, down. This is how landslides are made, I thought. I was afraid. Someone had just turned up the voltage knob in my brain.

“We turned and climbed on in silence, with slow and careful steps. I took account of our situation. As far as I could tell,we were the only people on this mountain. And to make it worse, nobody knew we were up here. Nobody was expecting us home for dinner.

“I imagined the newspaper headlines: ‘Two Hitchhikers Found Stranded on Gros Morne.' Or worse: ‘Tourists Ignore Posted Warnings and Meet Their Doom.' I considered our chances of survival if we became stranded on this slope. We were probably visible from the plateau below—but who would be coming up here at this point in the afternoon,when the park was closed?

“Spending the night on the peak without a tent or sleeping bags was not a great option. The idea of a rescue helicopter was embarrassing but comforting. I watched the smaller rocks roll down behind Julia's heels as she climbed and imagined the whole bed of rocks rolling downhill like a conveyor belt.

“This was officially dangerous, but there was no other way out. Even sitting and waiting would be dangerous if it went on long enough.

“We began to discuss the situation in a pretend casual tone.

“‘Are you okay?'

“‘Yeah. You?'

“‘This way? What do you think?'

“‘Not very good.'

“‘Let's just keep going then.'

“‘Okay.'

“The slope had changed from a half-pipe to a more convex, rounded surface. I felt like an ant climbing the side of an exercise ball. We finally reached a point when we couldn't find any footing secure enough to keep going up. I began to think about death. This wouldn't be a bad way to die, I thought, but it would be embarrassing.

“Maybe there would be a region of the afterworld for people who died doing stupid
extreme
things. We would be surrounded by base jumpers, rocketmen, and dirt-bikers. I didn't want to join this club for eternity.

“We clung to the mountain and considered our situation. The only way out was
up
. We took our chances and made our way in a diagonal ascending line, splitting the difference between up and down. “The world around me faded. Other hills didn't matter. The ocean didn't matter. Everything else was background music for the task of moving carefully from rock to rock. Look at Julia. Look at my feet. Take a step. Look up. Take a step.

“Suddenly,we reached a green patch of scrubby, rough bushes. Labrador Tea, perhaps. The incline remained steep but now we had some purchase. Thank god for plants. We reached the peak only to find that it wasn't the top of the mountain but rather a ledge below the actual summit. Not that the summit was of any interest at this point. We snuck along the ledge, anchoring our steps in the fragile alpine vegetation.

“A few traverses of the gully wall and we had made it to the snow—home free. We began our descent. I looked down toward the bottom of the gully and saw our own tracks, clear dark lines in the snow.

“Yes, from here, our route up the side of the gully did look a little questionable.

“When we reached the wooden lookout with the sign,we broke into the crackers and smoked oysters. The platform was so perfectly flat and level. I was very happy to be there.

“I looked back at the peak. Nothing about it had changed, but it looked different to me now. No longer benign. No longer round and friendly. I had to admit it—this was a serious little mountain.”

In Banff, Alberta, there is a similarly modest summit that has claimed more lives than many of the glamorous peaks that surround it. During the summers I worked there as a university student and then years later, when other assignments brought me back to Banff, I would go up Tunnel Mountain regularly. Shaped like a sleeping buffalo (its original name), Tunnel sits just above the town and the way up is nothing more than a 40-minute switchback that rises not quite 1,000 feet—a bracing jog with the dog. But at the top, it doesn't feel so domesticated. One must pay attention. The wind can suddenly pick up, and in the fall, when the path ices over it's possible to make the final hairpin turn, and slide right off the back of the mountain, plummeting down into the valley. Many have, especially the new arrivals in town, who like to drink five beers and then climb Tunnel in the dark.

On mountains and in families, the sunny safe plateau can change between one sentence and the next to something mortal. My father's death was like that—a quick, lucky fall that arrived at the end of a satisfactory day.

The Saskatchewan River

T
HE LANDSCAPE underneath a big bridge tends to feature graffiti,debris, and used condoms. I had forgotten that. This wasn't the most appealing place for my father's ashes to end up.

Before he died, I had made a plan to drive through the prairies and see the bridge he had helped build in 1930. It was one of seven bridges that span the river that runs through the city of Saskatoon. My father graduated from the University of Saskatchewan as a civil engineer just as the Depression began. But the dean of engineering, C. J. Mackenzie, initiated a “relief project” that would employ as many men as possible and build something the city could use—a “bold, simple” bridge made of cement with nine graceful spans. My father was one of the team of engineers who worked on the bridge, which took 11 months of 24-hour labour, sometimes in the 40-below winter weather, to complete. It was a job he often talked about, with undisguised affection for “Dean Mackenzie,” as he always called him. He was a paternal figure in his life, after losing his own father at the age of 12.

The completed bridge was more lovely than anyone could have predicted and it became the postcard icon of Saskatoon, its horizontal Eiffel Tower. I still have a photo of my dad in a dapper news cap, smiling with pride as he walks beside the tall, patrician Dean Mackenzie. I knew I had to make a trip back to the bridge and walk over it.

I flew to Saskatoon, where it was clear that the Broadway St. Bridge is the grandest thing about the pragmatic, farm-circled city. Close by was the Bessborough, a CPR hotel built in the days when they still resembled Scottish castles. I prowled through the grand, empty corridors of the Bessborough and then walked by the river to the base of the bridge. I had originally planned to scatter the ashes off the bridge itself, but it was high above the water, and that day the wind was too strong. The ashes might simply waft over to the forlorn parkette on the other side and coat the single park bench there.