Day 75 - Gordie Howe Campground? - Part 2

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Day 75 – August 4 - Part 2

Monday morning came really fast and our plans had shaped a bit more. I had been communicating with my cousin Daniel who lives in Edmonton, and after our afternoon of rafting the plan was to get in the car and drive to meet him and his fiancé Missy for some barbeque. Though the rafting was extremely fun we ended up starting excessively late because we had to wait around for people. I texted Dan at six to tell him we were just leaving and wouldn’t make it for a reasonable time. We grabbed a quick snack and drove towards Red Deer to camp near Sylvan Lake.

My eating habits had been sporadic and unbalanced the past couple of days which usually happens if we have big goals for traversing long strips of highway between farms. I wasn’t feeling great leaving Calgary but when we pulled into Sylvan Lake everything fell apart.

Every symptom you’d expect from food poisoning or a 24 hour flu revealed itself all at once. Barely sleeping a wink the night before must have been the tipping point because my body began to panic. Experiencing extreme chills, weakness, shaking and a lot of washroom visits was how I spent the evening of August 1st. I’m always affected worse from hunger than Justin so he sometimes takes leadership in preparing a late supper after a long day of traveling, so he got the chicken thighs going on the frying pan.

It felt like someone had punched me in the stomach over and over again. Though it was bearable for the night I would have found a clinic the next day if the pain continued. Luckily the Jarvis Bay Provincial Park has a 2pm checkout time so a good sleep allowed me to heal to a point that I knew the bug was already subsiding. We were a couple of hours from Edmonton and since Dan and Missy were working all day the only logical destination was the West Edmonton Mall..right?

I can now say I’ve seen consumerism at its very peak. This place is obviously huge, but for a Tuesday afternoon I was blown away at the amount of people. We needed lunch so I used some Subway money our friend Andrew’s mom in Vancouver had given us, but other than lunch we didn’t plan on buying a thing. It was more of a sightseeing and people watching thing. Being in the belly of the beast is a pretty good way of gathering visual information and the vibrational energy that stems from material desire. In times like these I find myself contemplating the option of constant material acquisition through personal goals that correspond to that way of life. It’s not long before the concerned faces and high-strung energy reminds me the blatant lack of fulfillment one experiences from these choices. There is no doubt that human kind is constantly searching for something, but I feel it’s almost like the metaphorical rug (accepting that all is temporary and transient) was slipped from under us and replaced by some shiny object (consumer goods). I feel so much compassion for the masses that form their identity around what they own, because every aspect of our society is strategically designed to foster this. IT ISN’T NATURAL, but when you feel so much despair from a life of blind material desire there’s a pill that Big Pharma will gladly sell you in order to numb the pain. This isn’t us and them, this is a disgusting machine that doesn’t work. The source is greed, though it perpetuates in the name of “progress”. Re-evaluate...Re-think...Re-start...Don’t watch Re-Runs...because it’s already spiralling out of control. If we’re not educating ourselves or making lifestyle changes while we can then who are we to say that we did our best for the generations to come?

A popular Buddhist concept can be explained using the instance of a broken vase. Ultimately everything changes form. Matter is just dense energy, so when the vase breaks the atoms are just changing form. When you take this concept to the more severe case and you’ve accepted that the vase was already broken you’re on the path to enlightenment. You’re ‘awakening’.

So ya, I guess what I’m trying to say is embrace change if you find it difficult to do so. The result is more rewarding than most could ever imagine.

After the mall, which did include a sea lion show, we went over to my cousin’s place for a quick visit. I only see him every few years so that was great, and like I said I got to meet his fiancé Missy. Since they were both working the next morning we lined up a place to stay using couchsurfing.org. We took it easy that night and hit the road for Saskatoon the next morning.

Originally we were going to wwoof somewhere near Edmonton on the way east but nothing caught our eye. We went to the first affordable campground that came up which ended up being the Gordon Howe Campground. It was definitely the strangest campground I’ve ever seen, because it was in the middle of the city but didn’t exactly feel like it. It was, however, way too compact like most private ones are and had planted hedges to separate the sites. I had no idea Mr. Hockey had a campground named after him but it’s definitely a great way to catch people’s attention.

I had written a little about Tara, Jeff and their girls Freya, Isobel and Ruby in a previous blog. They live in a very small village in Saskatchewan called Wishart. We stayed for a week on our way west and had said we’d definitely be back. We got here around noon and did some work around the crops and greenhouse to earn our room and board, though Tara was busy inside and Jeff was leaving for his massage therapy job right when we arrived. Tomorrow we’re looking forward to catching up as well as helping with harvesting honey from their hives. We plan to leave sometime in the afternoon for a cottage near Lake Winnipeg where we’re meeting some girls who Justin knows through Dal. On Sunday morning we’ll leave for our eighth wwoof farm which we are choosing momentarily. Life is good!

Albert Einstein said ““We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” This is an exciting time for this planet, where our species’ consciousness is actually evolving to a higher state. If that doesn’t give your life meaning, I’m not sure what else will. 😊

Ryan

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