The Road Less Traveled (aka Trans-Québec Trail 5)

Yeti watches as i 'give' a Reiki blessing to the car.

i mentioned at the end of my last post, that our neighbour had given us a car.  When i got in i kept telling Antoine that it felt like a 'big person's car' or 'adult car'.  This is in contrast to the one he'd been driving throughout winter.  "Success" (named after the tarot card i drew when asking her name) served faithfully throughout the snows.  The ignition was started with a screwdriver and well, i know there were many things wrong with her but i can't tell you what they were, because as far as i was concerned she worked perfectly.  It was a bonus, you see, being able to hear Antoine a couple of minutes before the car arrived at this Canadian yurt.
Well, Success is now in car heaven (most likely cha-cha-chaing with your car Lady Miss Emma) and we have a new car, Yeti.  Yeti was not named after a tarot card.  Yeti was named after her maiden voyage.  As we prepared to take her out for her first Antoine&JenniferAdventure(c) i grabbed the essentials, sage with which to bless & energetically clean the car, a feather to put somewhere inside & a small yeti doll, i bought in Nepal.  Blessings & Reiki complete, we set off just to 'drive around the block' the yeti swinging happily from the rear view mirror.


The thing with Canada

How the road looked as we started.

is, turns out that 'just around the block' can actually be rather far.  We took the first right and then could go right again to continue along the housed street (one house per 400m) or we could take "the road we've never been down before".  Well, duh!!!

i was reasonably sure i'd seen on Google Maps that this road rejoined the highway at Seal Cove, about a 10 min drive away.

Nope...it wasn't *that* road.  We bumped our way along, Antoine marveling at something called 'suspension' which i never notice a deficiency of after the thousands of kilometres travelled on Asian buses+roads.  But apparently the new car had it & it was good.

Apparently this 'suspension' was getting more and more useful, the more and more bumpy, rocky, muddy & pot-holey the track (no longer 'road') became.  After about 3km the trail was covered by one of those ominous bodies of water: impossible to guess the depth. Hmmm.  Antoine went to investigate with a stick.

The Brown Sea - as we approached.

"Hmmm" was his conclusion.  Followed by a rather optimistic "i think we can make it."

"50/50" i decided.

One of those 50s, could mean our car was stuck, submerged in deep mud, with Antoine and/or i standing calf deep in thick, watery mud, trying to push out the car whilst being sprayed with aforementioned mud.  Pre-empting this, i graciously announced,

"If we get stuck, i'm not pushing.  i'll drive & you push."  

We sat there, staring at the potential brown swimming pool before us.

"Let's do it."  announced Antoine.

"Alright."  i agreed, with a stomach flip.  We high-fived - the North American way of sealing an agreement.

i should point out that our new car is a car...not a 4WD, just a silver nissan, which our French teacher friend had most likely never taken off-road before.  Fortunately, she liked it.  We sped through the gargantuan mud-pool, spraying water higher than the car: feeling like Moses possibly did (except we were parting the brown sea).  Almost out of the pool, the wheels started spinning (arrrghhh) but regained their grip & we reached the other shore.

Jubilation!  Exhilaration!  We laughed and i congratulated & admired Antoine's can-do attitude.


5 mins later we

Celebrating not getting wet or muddy.  Photo-bombed by Yeti.

reached another brown sea.  It was smaller.  However, by this point, we'd been on the road for quite a while & weren't so sure where the road was going & had to consider the possibility of the road not actually going anywhere & having to return via the same obstacle course.

Antoine accelerated.  We made it through again but the trail worsened.  We saw signs that it we were on the Trans-Québec #5 - a skidoo trail crossing the whole of Gaspésie.  We reckoned it was probably headed to Percé about 40km from This Canadian Yurt -  although *surely* there would be a turn off to the main road sooner???  Occasionally we'd pass a small cabin in the woods & think that we must meet the highway soon - but we wouldn't.  

"Are you having fun?"  i asked Antoine.

"Hmmm, i don't want to wreck the car."  We should've stopped then.  But instead, we descended an especially steep, rocky segment of trail.  We were now in the 'constantly just wanting to see what's round the next corner' phase. 

After about 40 minutes of driving, we stopped the car & continued on foot. i'd specifically checked before we left the yurt, that we were "only going for a drive not a walk", so i didn't change out of the
short black cotton dress (it's summer now!) and cotton tai-chi shoes, like the soft plimsolls we wore in playgroup/kindergarten. 

We walked another 30 minutes.  Antoine giving me a kiddy-back across the muddier sections (he, i noticed, was wearing hiking boots - which he had in the car).  We arrived at a broken piece of trail.  Broken in so much as it was like a giant step, with bolders & water running through it.

"We can't cross this" stated Antoine.  i became the optimistic one, pointing out where the car wheels could go, how we could move other bolders, stones & logs & make a ramp.  Once again, having spent so many hours on Asian mountain roads, i've learned a thing or two about what's possible on roads (everything!).  Antoine explained that those Nepali buses are much higher than our car & that our engine would just crash straight into the stepped road.  

Oh well!  We walked back to the car.  i was musing about how it's like that sometimes in life.  It seemed like there was some bigger philosophical point Life was possibly making, but honestly my mind was focusing on the brown seas we were going to have to re-cross.  i couldn't remember hearing that Moses had parted his sea twice.

Whilst i was focused on the potential mud-fest, Antoine was focused on the oh-so-steep, rocky hill.  We climbed the steep hill on foot, removing the larger stones from the centre of the path, so the engine wouldn't be shredded on the ascent.  

i stood at the top of the trail, as Antoine started the car.  It stalled about a third of the way up.  As he restarted the engine, the wheels spun & the car began to sink down into the soft ground.  He let the car roll back down the hill, hoping to gather more momentum for the incline.  His second attempt saw the car bump & groan & scrape its way up two-thirds of the trail.  Antoine (rather expertly, i'd say) directed the car into a patch of road which had less mud than the others. 

Now it was time to push.  Pushing cars is a part of life in Canada.  You push them through snow, when they're broken down, when the battery's died...when there's on a monstrous hill in the middle of nowhere.  Like chopping wood, it's not a Canadian tradition that i'm so into (maple syrup on the other hand...).  

i realized that if we couldn't get the car up the hill, we were going to have to walk back to the yurt (which would take at least 4 hours & it was already about 4pm).  This motivated me to push reeeeaaaally hard!  

We stalled on the first try & succeeded on the second!  Yeeha.  More high-fives (or 'eiffel towers', as we call them - if anyone's seen The IT Crowd?) what a team building exercise this afternoon was turning out to be.

This has gotten to be a much longer story than i'd expected, so i'm just going to whiz us straight back through those brown seas (we counted them down as the muddy waves arced behind the car - there was quite a bit of nerves around the last & biggest one, as we'd really had enough adventure for one day thankyouverymuch).

We noticed another turning in the road, one which we'd previously thought lead to a cabin.  We left the car & walked down to what was a massive wooden bridge.  This was most likely the trail i'd seen on Google Maps.  The massive wooden bridge looked rickety but like we may be able to cross it, thereby avoiding the final brown sea.  Antoine wasn't up for it.  Instead he bathed (read: did push ups) in the cold river running beneath.  We headed up towards the car & found the remains of a moose.  Nature had really gone to work on that one.  There were 2 white jaws left, complete with teeth & 2 small random bones & A LOT of hair spread out over a large area.  i collected the bones for a dream-catcher (moose is a powerful symbol of ancient feminine wisdom dontchaknow) & Antoine obliged at playing moose-dentist and removed one of the teeth (which will be a part of your creative-pay-it-forward, Sandy!).

How the yurt's looking without snow.

On our way back, i looked at the swinging yeti & announced to Antoine that i knew the name of our new car.  
We were so happy to hit tarmac that we went into town.  There was some reason for it, although all i can remember now is the poutine (chips, cheese & gravy - although just chips for veggie-me) with which we celebrated.

Thanks for getting through this story.  Especially with a lack of pictures.  I videoed Yeti passing through the initial brown sea, then the camera battery died, leaving this journey photo-less (except for a few screengrabs you see here).  Although writing this all out has been wonderful as the journey it's now more clearly etched in my mind.

Other Yurt Goings-on..
Dodo Rouge
As i was finishing writing up this story, sitting outside the yurt in the sunshine, i heard a squeak-barking close behind me.  i can't be sure, but i'm relatively certain our renegade squirrel was trying to say hi to you.

The view from the yurt.

Clearing the Appellation Trail
The day after our rally ride, Antoine took me to join a group "Clearing the Appellation Trail" (he enticed me to come, believing it was one of my favourite jobs - picking up trash in nature.  When it was actually one of my least favourite jobs - being involved in cutting down pieces of living nature).  Although i appeased myself by remembering that because this trail exists many people spend countless hours in nature.  i thanked the tree of each branch removed.


Photobooth

 Our vintage photobooth.

Last night we set up a vintage themed photobooth for an event of the local music festival Bout Du Monde (the festival itself happens in August).  It was really great fun & i met one of the organisers who'd taken a group of 16 year old Québec kids on their first non-Canada outing to Varanasi, India.  i guess if you can organise that, you can organise anything!


This blog is dedicated to Emma Williamson, for being such a belter & so vulnerable, honest & funny in her radio show - good luck for doing the breakfast show on Heartland FM next week! 

It's also dedicated to Martin Champ Roux, who was Success' personal mechanic & who Antoine said would have also gone straight through every single muddy lake too!  

Grass replaces snow at this time of year.