On the Road

I don’t know what my parents were thinking when they let me leave Scarborough with Dave Horseman mid-summer 1976. We’d each saved up $400 by working at the Shell self-serve gas station and car wash on evenings and weekends. The trail for young men from Ontario to

Alberta’s oil fields was well worn in those days. But we weren’t looking for work.
My brother had given me his copy of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”. The tales of freedom and discovery that sent a generation “on the Road” in the sixties was still working its magic on me in the seventies. Kerouac made the getting from A to B of hitchhiking into a spiritual quest. Dave was my Dean Moriarty; slightly older and tougher and street-wise. His life had shoved him ahead into a way of dealing with the world that was bold.

I don’t know how spiritual Dave and I were at sixteen. I do know that we had surplus hormones raging through our bodies and we needed to set them free. We were heading for adventure. Deeply spiritual, deeply horny, deeply looking for any trouble that wouldn’t kill us or put us in jail, we were hungry and tired of the same old Scarboro fare.

We flew to Edmonton where Dave’s older brother had once shared an apartment with Rick Proudfoot. Rick was a roughneck on oil rigs out of Edmonton. He was maybe 21 or 22 but to us – he was a matured man. He was the man. The fact that he would even talk to us – let alone invite us along for the ride – was a great honour. I was surprised that he seemed perfectly okay with putting up two kids from his old high school looking for a western adventure. Rick was a burly, hairy, and very friendly guy. He quickly became our hero.

Dave was the youngest in a family of five tough kids. His firefighter dad had died when Dave was real young and his mom worked long shifts as a nurse. Dave was raised by two much older brothers who were known to be as tough as they were smart. His two sisters were just as smart and from what I could tell – not exactly the motherly types. Dave had learned how to take a beating – verbal and physical - early on.

My first memories of Dave Horseman are of his challenges to my innocent childhood state. Whenever our paths would cross in the neighbourhood, he’d call me names and try to provoke me into a fight to win back my self-respect. I would decline the offer and run. I had no interest in fighting real people. Imaginary battles were just fine with me. And self-respect wasn’t a big commodity in my life - certainly not worth blood and bruises.

I had a big brother too so was used to getting verbally and physically assaulted. The problem with fighting for me was that it was way too emotionally charged. Good schoolyard fighters like Dave made a sport of it. For me, these scraps took on Biblical significance. Fighting was against the God of Love and a punch in the face was to me a spiritual attack. Tears would well up and I’d cry not because I was in pain but because the emotion of it all would overwhelm me.
Because I was a large kid I was a target for small bullies like Dave looking to win points in the schoolyard. He finally cornered me one day after school and I was trapped by a circle of classmates. I refused to fight but Dave just tackled me to ground anyways. He was in the process of turning my hair green with grass stains when I simply stood up. Dave’s arms and legs were still wrapped around me, so he ended up looking like a chimpanzee hugging me off the ground. The jury of peers circling us broke up laughing and Dave just had to let go, drop to the ground, and laugh along with it. I had won the fight and Dave’s respect without throwing a punch. He pretty much left me alone after that.

It was wit again that formed a common bond between us in high school. I had become tired of academic achievement as my mark of social status and was working on becoming a smart ass instead. Dave and I began competing for number of classes skipped in a week. Extra points were awarded for getting kicked out of a class. Music class was the easiest.

Mr. McManus was a smart ass himself and couldn’t stand the competition from the likes of me. Near the end of the grade 11 year, I boasted to Dave that I would get kicked out of class without saying a word. I knew that McManus had had it with me. I simply stood by my stand-up bass with bow poised and when our teacher, baton in hand, did a scan of his band’s readiness, I gave him my best big wide in-your-face smart-ass smile.
“Get out Brown!” he snapped.
Dave exploded a guffaw into his poised trumpet with a “BLAAATT”.
“You too Horseman!”

We were raiding Dave’s fridge at home making massive sandwiches, still laughing about that one, when the school called. Mrs. Horseman was getting ready for her shift at the hospital. She picked up the phone and it was the principal – I guessed – calling about the incident with Dave and I. She listened, then flatly responded “Why are you bothering me about this – he’s your problem when he’s at school.” and hung up. She turned to Dave. “What are your marks like now?”
“Still straight “A”s.” he said not looking at her.

And that was the end of that. The Horseman house fascinated me. There was no God there. There was no suffering of fools or weaklings. There was never a hint of false courtesy. No tenderness for hurt feelings. No keeping up of appearances. And no fear of petty authorities like school principals or priests or the such. Those were all luxuries. In my home they were deemed essential and it was fascinating to see how love, respect, honesty and hard work were rooted in that home without the shrubbery of manners. Once you got past the big snarling black dog Sniff (by matching his snarl) – you found an inner circle of respect.

Roughneck Rick was between jobs waiting for the union to call. He had lots of time and money to burn. We’d ride in the back of his Trans Am, sipping rye whisky from the bottle (it made me choke - but I kept choking). He’d take us to house parties or bars or wherever he and his gorgeous girlfriend, Anne, were going. Long dark hair and big dark eyes, Anne was a very sexy woman - and again – so friendly. She gave us tips on how to pick up women. (Yeah right I thought – “hey babe, let’s hitchhike back to my pup tent!”).

Days we’d hang out in the apartment, recovering from the night’s adventures. One day we were visited by a real live ex-biker who’d done time for nearly murdering a cop right in front of my dad’s church. The stories he’d tell us curled our hair. We lapped it all up. He was the friendliest criminal I’d ever met. He was the only criminal I’d ever met.

After maybe a week of western orientation, Rick was heading back to the rigs and it was time for us to be in the mountains. He drove us to the outskirts of Edmonton and wished us well. We stuck our thumbs out inviting chance to bring us luck. I’d done a fair bit of hitchhiking around southern Ontario. Roy Robson and I would escape Scarboro for a day – taking our fishing poles on the Markham Road bus up to the 401 ramp where we’d catch a ride east. Our only plan was to get to water and fish – wherever whoever stopped for us might be heading. Once we made it all the way up to Lake Simcoe outside of Brechin before we headed home. We once rode with an alcoholic salesman who’d stop at every Legion and buy us a beer. At the fourth Legion we told him we were gonna check out the pond at the edge of town. I left my bobber hanging from the hydro wires alongside the Uxbridge pond. It was there for years. We once rode on a haywagon with a country kid who showed us his burlap bag full of baby raccoons. We always made it back to Scarboro before dark.

But two teenagers with big backpacks were having a rough time getting a ride outside of Edmonton. At the end of July cars were full of kids and camping equipment and had no room for two extra riders. We stood by the road all morning long. It was approaching lunchtime and our stomachs were growling so we came up with a sneaky teenager-type trick. (Desperate times call for desperate measures.) One of us would sit off in the bushes with the packs while the other hitched. If we got a ride our story was that “our buddy was taking a pee while you just happened to stop – do you mind if we squeeze in?”

We soon got a ride with a guy who’d been driving all night and needed one of us to keep him awake. I jumped into the back of his pick-up while Dave took the job of keeping the driver talking up front.

Riding in the open air, the wind whipping past, Alberta foothills appearing on either side, the mountains somewhere ahead, was all that I’d come here for. It felt like my mission had been accomplished – and we were just getting started.

Somewhere past Edson the driver decided to get a motel room and we were out of luck. Dave tried to convince him that he could drive the truck for him – but we were soon back at the side of the road. We got a ride out of town about 20 miles and then – nothing. We tossed a Frisbee back and forth, laughed about our adventures so far and bitched and complained about the lack of rides.

While Dave was “peeing” in the woods, a late 50’s Chevy pick-up with a home-made camper on the back stopped. The driver was a thin young farmer-looking guy in a straw hat with long black hair and a beard under it. We could see he wasn’t too amused about our two for one deal, but he got out and opened up his camper for us to jam our packs into. We crammed into the cab of the pick-up – Dave straddling the four on the floor shift - and we were off. John was heading to the mountains to camp for the week and would take us right to a campsite outside of Jasper. What luck! He soon warmed to us and seemed happy to have some company – a couple of green and wild Ontario boys probably reminded him of his own first adventures out of Ontario.

The thing you couldn’t help noticing about John was that he had his left hand on the wheel and a hook on the wheel where his right hand used to be. The hook was two stainless steel question marks that he could open and close at will it seemed. It wasn’t far into our introductions when Dave – not bothered by manners – asked John about the hook. He patiently told us the story of the sawmill accident back in Ontario.

Over the next few days we were to discover just how handy one could be without a hand. John was a very cool cat and we grew to respect his ways. Meeting him was just the kind of gift the road could present - if you opened yourself up to what it had to offer.

John was a natural teacher. Wise, subtle humour, never hurried, generously opening the book of his life. The maybe six years he had on us made him a child of the sixties. In other words - John was a hippy. I’d never met a hippy before either (just like with criminals - I only had a TV caricature in my head) He patiently shared with us how he’d carved out a life in the mountains at the edge of a small town. The hippy ethic he showed us – was to be generous, free of judgments, and boldly open with the choices one makes. For two young jokers coming out of an Archie comic book-suburban existence, it felt like we’d walked into a novel new way of being. But first, we had to pass the test.

We arrived at the campsite outside of Jasper and got set up. Dave and I unrolled the pup tent, put it up and threw our sleeping bags inside – no cookstove, no food, no fuss-no muss. John just opened up the back door of his camper, pulled out some cold Lethbridge Pilsner beers, and popped off the caps for us with a snap of his hook. Dave and I looked at each other - very impressive. We grew more impressed as he demonstrated an even greater feat of dexterity with his hook - nimbly rolling a joint at the picnic table.

Weed was nothing new to us. We’d been smoking pot for well over a year already. The guy who ran the Car Wash at the gas station where we worked kept us supplied with some good $20 an ounce Mexican. He personally hand cleaned it of sticks and seeds and sold only enough to keep himself in free dope.

So we shared easily in this communion with John. Anyone who smokes pot knows that there is a society one joins when one gets high for the first time. After that, when you meet another smoker, there is a shared common ground you meet upon. But whether we smoked or not wasn’t the test.

Sharing the reefer at our picnic table, we chatted and commented on the fine quality of the weed. As the joint neared it’s end, when a roach clip is often produced to keep one’s finger from burning while the last and best of the joint is consumed, John clamped the roach in his hook. With a twist of his left hand, he pulled the hook off and offered it to Dave.

I was glad it was Dave he handed it to first. I immediately sensed that this was a test – just how cool would we be about using John’s hook? On one level it was just a tool; a practical device like a knife or a fork. On another level – a level that marijuana makes more potent – we held in our hands a symbol of dramatic, traumatic change. John’s life had been radically changed at the sawmill – the kind of change we are taught to fear and cautioned against from infancy. The hook set John apart. He was no longer normal. He was one of them – the tragically Disabled. We held in our hands what made him an outcast. Would we lift it to our lips in a sacred toke or would we awkwardly laugh and be repelled by the weird other-ness of it?

I guess we passed. We didn’t laugh. We were cool about it. Each did a toke in turn and passed it back to John. I said “that’s pretty handy John” and only realized the pun after it was out of my mouth.
“Exactly” he said. And then it was cool to share a laugh about it. Over the next days we got to watch the reaction of others with this rite of initiation into John’s circle of trust.
John told us he was planning to make a pilgrimage the next day to a special place just outside of Jasper. Would we like to go along? We checked our calendars and there wasn’t anything planned so – “why not?” Free Camp, John explained was a few miles out of town. Every time he was in Jasper, he would go out of his way for a visit.

Next morning, we jumped into the cab of his old Chev and drove out beyond the town limits to where the railway tracks crossed the highway. “We’re on foot from here” he told us. Following the tracks, we encountered a steady trickle of people moving back and forth along a well-worn path.

They were not exactly the tourists you’d see crowding the streets and stores of Jasper. They all had lots of hair. Long hair, beards, beads. No polyester blends in their clothing. Denim and cotton and well-worn wool sweaters seemed the trend for this crowd. There were teenagers like us there. And there were some wise old folks in their forties. But most of these people were somewhere in their twenties. Arriving at Free Camp, taking the whole scene in, I figured there must have been a few hundred hippies camped out in this Sherwood Forest.

Tree forts were popular. Some of these folks had gone to great effort to build themselves platforms up above the ground. Sheets of clear plastic hung between trees and served as walls and canopies and blocked ones view from straying too far in any one direction. Just as well. Our suburban eyes were full of wonders. Dave and I hung back and let John take the lead. He had a few names of people he enquired about as we made our way in among this band of merry men and women.

Dave pulled at my arm “Amos – these people are freaks. We gotta get out of here!” I had never seen Dave so unraveled. He was supposed to be the tough guy. He’d led me into Taverns and Biker Bars and once scared off College thugs trying to raid our case of beer. But now, there was something that unnerved him about this place. I don’t know what it was. Maybe he thought we’d have to go naked at some point if we stayed too long? Maybe it was the lack of “tough” that was unsettling. People here were friendly and relaxed. Very relaxed.

We came to a large circle with log benches around a big fire pit. An older guy, John’s senior by a couple of decades, welcomed us and offered us steel mugs. We were taken up to where a huge cauldron –like I’d seen used for pioneer maple syrup boil-ups - hung on poles over the fire. Our host handed us a dipper and we filled our mugs with a hot tea.
“Marijuana tea” John explained. “Everyone pitches their twigs and seeds into the pot and everyone shares in the tea.” We took a seat on a log while John chatted with the old hippie. There was grey in his beard and he carried an authority about him like well, not a Mayor or a teacher or a Priest but maybe a combination of all of them without the rigid “box” any of those labels might suggest. He introduced himself as Marvin and we clasped hands thumbs up. John produced a reefer and the four of us shared a social moment.
“Who can stay here?” I asked.
“Anyone” the old sage replied. “That’s why it’s called Free Camp. Anyone who wants to stay can stay as long as they want. No fee. No rules.”
“Don’t the cops come out here?” I asked further.
“Nope. They know we’re here. But they also know there’s never any trouble out here. We take care of our own. If somebody gets hurt – we deal with it. So, they leave us alone.”
“Cool.” I nodded. “Very cool.” taking another deep toke.

We sat and John and Marvin started telling stories of years gone by. They spoke of an annual “Bacchus” bash that was the height of the summer’s social season. Athletic games and live music and festivities galore were spoken of in excited reverent terms. It was something to be experienced they told us – highly recommended.

And then the conversation turned to bears. Apparently they were a real problem out here. The main reason for the raised platforms. John told a story about watching a young guy having a game of tag with a bear in a field at the edge of the camp. This guy had kept the bear chasing him in circles for about twenty minutes.
“Bears follow you by smell.” Marvin explained. “They’re really very short-sighted. If you can get beyond their field of vision and zig-zag so they lose the scent trail – you can outrun a bear. Run in a straight line and they’ll be on you in seconds.” The guy in the field had managed to stay far enough in front of the bear to keep it confused about just exactly where he was.”
“Pretty risky game.” I said. “What if the bear’d caught him?”
“Bears also hate loud noises” Marvin explained with a laugh. “If you want to get rid of them all we have to do around here is start banging on empty pots and put up a racket. There were enough people around the field that day that if he’d got into trouble – we all would have been able to scare that old bear off.”
“Cool.” I said. “Very cool.” (that was the limit of my hippie repertoire at the time)

After a few cups of tea I stood announcing. “I need to take a leak.”
“The loo is that way” Marvin pointed past some plastic sheeting and I headed out. Winding past a few more campfires, I found the rough-fashioned outhouse at the edge of a clearing. A path continued past it through the field and into another wood so I chose to skip the loo experience and keep walking. The woods were tall pine and hemlock. The undergrowth was kept low by the fallen needles. In the hushed cathedral quiet of the woods, as I stopped to unzip and unload, I could hear the roar of a river. It called to me.

Zipping up, I carried on down the path. The volume of the roaring water rose with every dozen steps until I came upon the stony shores of a white raging river. Fist-sized rocks and bigger were strewn truckloads deep along the shores and I stumbled over them down to the water’s edge. Kneeling, I scooped up water to wash my hands and was shocked by the ice-cold chill in mid-summer. Even Lake Ontario would warm in July. But of course Lake Ontario wasn’t fed by glaciers. This was ancient ice freed by the sun at last to become this powerful raging river. Time frozen for centuries was now racing on towards ocean depths deeper than the glaciers were high.

High? Yeah, you could say I was high. I splashed the ice-water onto my face but that wasn’t enough. Placing palms on two large rocks just out from the shore a bit, I plunged my head into the river and let the rushing water fill my ears. I needed to feel it - not just hear the sound of its passing. It sucked the breath out of me like death and I pulled myself back with a gasp shaking the freezing water off my head like a Labrador. Still kneeling, I reveled in the wonder and power of the moment as the baptism trickled down my shoulders and into my shirt. It was another one of those –“this is why I came here” moments instantly etched into my soul.


Stumbling back up the river’s bank, out of the bright sun and into the woods, I noticed the forest’s floor was ankle deep with low bushes laden with ripe blueberries. Giving thanks for yet another gift from God, I stooped to pick a handful thinking “the bears would sure like this spot.” Rising to continue - it was as if my thought had summoned them. A large black bear was no more than a good cat’s throw in front of me. I dropped the berries in my hand as she rose to stand.

Watching her go up to full height I knew this was a “she” letting out her terrifying skin-tingling roar because - as my eyes grew wide and my heart started thumping - I also saw two small black cubs looking back at me from either side of where she stood tall and toothy. A mother bear protecting her cubs. What could be more threatening?

A thousand thoughts raced through my mind in a blink of an eye – although I’m sure I never blinked. Was this it? Was I about to die? Should I run for the river? Should I lie down and pretend like I’m already dead? Yeah right – AS IF!

From somewhere deep in my Scarboro loins came a reaction I didn’t know I possessed. It rose up and spewed from my lips in a stream of rage. “FFFFFFFUUUCCCKKKKKK OFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!
It was my native battle cry.
The bear cocked her head sideways regarding me now with curiosity.
I glared back at her.
“Are you serious?” her look said.
I didn’t budge.
“You really think you’re something don’t you?” she shook her head.
I thought I detected a grin as she dropped to her fours and started foraging in the berries moving her cubs away from the path.
“Good” I said like we’d just settled something.
My heart was still pounding in my chest as I stepped slowly forward. I kept walking a slow pace right past where she and her cubs were now getting back to their afternoon snack. Or, I suppose they were - ‘cause I didn’t look. Once I started walking I just put my eyes to the path and kept walking as if I was just minding my own business weaving past dangerous characters on Yonge Street.

I have no idea where that behaviour came from. You could call it instinct but it was more like another person took over for me in my own shoes. The self-conscious teenager stepped back in fear and doubt and another person stepped forward. Was it me – a new bolder version of me – a hidden warrior waiting for the right time to emerge? Or was it something more? Do you believe in guardian angels? Did the bear see a fierce-looking angel with a fiery sword of destiny standing behind me? I have no idea what that mother bear saw that day. It was either amusing enough, or threatening enough, or maybe a combination of both, to make her see me as more friend than foe. It also changed forever the way I saw myself in the mind’s mirror.

I had a tale to tell when I got back to the fire. I couldn’t sit down and had another few quick cups of tea while the guys quizzed me about what’d happened. Marvin grinned and looked at me with some new eyes. He offered his hand again - thumbs up - and drew me forward into a hug this time. “Welcome to Free Camp man.” it seemed that I’d been initiated.
“You’re fucking crazy man.” was Dave’s way of congratulating me.
John was all nods and smiles. He produced another joint in celebration.

Years later I circled back to Free Camp. I was unemployed in the middle of a summer break from university. I was traveling on my own this time. The rides were easier to catch that way. It was the eighties now and I was curious whether the hippies still roamed the woods as free and wild as in my memories.

They were there. The day I arrived just happened to be the day of the annual Bacchus celebration. I pitched my tent in the woods at the edge of the camp and partook in the celebrations. I hung back in my usual way. But I was no longer the child who had become something more that summer.

Circling back helped me remember the day a new person had stepped forward. And I had a sense that still another breakthrough was waiting to be hatched. The youth that had emerged from the child was outgrowing his skin again. I carried my full height and weight now but this new change was more about growing deeper into who I would be. I knew there was a purpose waiting for me and it was driving me crazy trying to see it from where I stood. I had more searching to do.