Written By Kenneth Kinder
Written By Kenneth Kinder
Janey and I were recalling our trip in 1980 when we traveled to British Columbia, Canada. We had gone there on the advice of our relative John Cox, and this in it’s self should tell you a little about our reasoning abilities at the time. John’s son Jack had purchased about 160 acres of land about 300 miles north east of Vancouver B.C. He had also persuaded his parents to come up and buy a place of their own. They eventually ended up buying three large pieces of property that would qualify as a working ranch.
But I digress, so back to our trip and the lapse of good judgment demonstrated by Janey and myself. We arrived in this place called 100 Mile House, situated at the 3500 ft. elevation and heavily timbered. It reminded us a lot of Grass Valley except the way the timber grew. Because of the cold climate and shorter growing season the timber grew tall, but not as large in diameter. This town serviced a population of around 22,000 people, having numerous motels,markets,restaurant,etc. The climate in late August was great, in the middle 70’s during the day and cool and crisp at night. We should have realized the type of winter that visited this part of the world when we saw all these 110 power plugs in front of most public parking spots. That along with most vehicles sporting an electrical pigtail hanging out through the grill. The other end of this cord was attached to a block heater installed in the vehicles engine.
Normally when John is involved in anything we do, a red flag naturally appears. Jack (John and Roberta’s oldest child) was born a hundred years to late. His idea of a good time is riding horse back from the top of Alaska to the bottom of South America. Jack and his new bride Marsha were living so far back in the woods, it required a search warrant to locate their modest cabin. We had landed in Canada about two day’s before John, and were resting very comfortable in a nice motel with two queen size beds, cable t.v.,and all the modern conveniences. So when John rolls into town, Jack emerges from the wilderness along with Marsha who is about 15 months pregnant. After a day of shopping, eating, and replenishing the necessities needed to survive life in the wilderness. We are invited to have dinner in the back woods with some of the newly-weds friends. We were not ready for what was about to happen to the two of us.
John, Jimmy, and I went ahead in John’s car while Janey and Marsha were supposed to be right on our rear. They weren’t close behind so after we had traveled deeper in the woods than Daniel Boone had ever dared, and then cooled our heels until after dark, the stragglers finally arrived. I was hot enough to cook, and in no mood for a smart mouthed Marsha to give me a ration of crap about how I should relax and enjoy the fact they had decided to stay and shop a lot longer. I had envisioned all kind of mishaps occurring in this sparsely inhabited corner of the world. After I regained my sanity, it was totally dark and we had a long hike through the thick under-brush across streams and meadows. There was one flashlight in the crowd so that person went ahead leading the way, and shining the light back once in a while to light our path. We stumbled,we tripped, we fell, and finally arrived at the cabin. After unloading our burdens of groceries and staples, we found out our journey had just begun. Jack’s friends lived along way from where we were now standing. All I could think of was the fact that we had this motel paid for with two queen size beds, nice shower, and wonderful food close at hand. But this was not to be, so we trudged another hundred miles until we arrived at this log cabin in the middle of nowhere. It was round in design two story with a loft, and in the center dug in the earth was a conversation pit with a stove surrounded by chairs for us to visit with the wide variety of guests that had been invited. In my memory almost everything had been hand made from material close at hand.
It had no running water, electricity, indoor plumbing or modern conveniences. It did have a sauna, candles, coleman lanterns, wood burning stoves both cooking and heating. Other luxuries included a deep freezer, automatic washing machine, and portable generator that was run two hours a day. During those two hours, all the washing and anything else that required electricity had to be done. This two hour window was to keep the food stored in the deep freeze frozen. The lady of the house had a long table made from local wood milled by her husband decorated with a beautiful table cloth, fresh wild flowers, pine cones and twigs. It was beautiful, and on this table was a rack of lamb, many ducks freshly killed on their property, and surrounded by their own garden grown vegetables, gravy, home made bread, and the most beautiful pies with designs in the crust of the fruit that was inside.
This gracious lady met us at the door wearing a full length gown that could have been made in Paris; but it wasn’t. She made it herself, and she and her family gave us one of the nicest evenings we will ever experience. The food was fantastic, the conversation was varied and stimulating. The guests ranged from what some might consider street people to professors, musicians, people that trained dogs to pull sleds etc. We stayed until the wee hours of the morning, and when we started on our long walk back, a guy called Buffalo Bill gave us a ride in his 4 wheel drive pick-up. About half way back he made an abrupt stop and told us to get out. We didn’t know what to think until he told us to turn around and look at the sky. We did and what we saw was the northern lights, a sight that we most likely will never witness again. They were like long fingers that moved up and down in the cold fall sky. Bill told us if we stayed up a couple more hours, the light would be in color because of the colder temps. We then had to deal with our sleeping facilities. Janey and I slept in a little shack separate from the main cabin, and I think it must have been built during the gold rush. We had bunk beds that were leaning far enough, that me being in the top bunk was afraid of falling to the ground and before I went to sleep I tied my sleeping bag to the wall. Our sleep was intermittent, but we have a memory to last a life-time.
We made it back to town the next day, and that is when super salesman John started his pitch about living in Gods country, the last frontier, great investment etc. He pulled out all the stops, and this Okie boy didn’t have a chance. He even went so far as to say that he felt like Moses leading us to the promised land. I really felt he was more like Jim Jones leading us to the kool aide stand! We ended up buying 60 acres of timber and hayable meadow. It was real close to Sheridan Lake home of champion size trout. Don't you think this would have been a beautiful site to build a retirement home? I agree, but oh those cold winters. We had grand visions of building here and retiring, but when I realized the type of winters that plagued this country, this was out of the question. Our next thought was to hold on for five years and make a killing. Well our five years stretched from 1980 until 1995 and our killing was just a bad pain, but oh what a time we had. Janey and I recall this adventure with great memories.
I thought this would be a wonderful place to raise a family, so far from the gang infested large cities to which I could relate. I figured drugs would be non-existent, until John took me some distance back in the woods to a mill where they made log structures. These buildings were both residential and commercial, and after they were built they were completely assembled, and then numbered before they were taken apart, packaged, and shipped. When we arrived it was about 2:30 in the afternoon and the crew was on an afternoon break. It was pretty cool and most were in their cars with their windows rolled up. I walked over to this one car with a couple of young guy’s in it and tapped on the glass. When they rolled down the window, the smell of marijuana almost got me high. John tells me on some of the trails he hikes to go fishing you can find a patch now and then. It’s to bad that the brown bears don’t have an aversion to this nasty substance so they would destroy any that came their way. That is one thing we have in great abundance in British Columbia, bears, moose, deer, wild life of all kinds, and fishing to die for. I will write more stories about Canada and some of Jack’s adventures as a survivor in the out-back. The many job’s he worked to make a living was an education.