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Hitching
Hitch hiking is a tradition that had been around for a long time. It has always been the ultimate in budget travel to me. It usually went hand in hand with surviving on a sheckle or two a day, along with washing and relieving yourself in McDonalds or some similar establishment. One of the greatest aspects of it is the social interaction. You are almost guaranteed to come into contact with the kind of people you would never otherwise meet. People will sometimes tell you extraordinary things, personal things they would never normally say, just because they know they will probably never see you again. Sadly, as the world develops, the tradition has suffered with the apparent rise in crime and its related “untrustworthy” characters, and the unhelpfully spiced up horror stories in the media.
I first tried it on a big scale when I was in New Zealand a few years ago. I had heard stories from older travelers about how it, like many under developed places, was a dream place to hitch in the 70’s and 80’s. People would pick you up on any random road, and not only take you to where you wanted to go, but they would point out anything of interest on the way. If that meant a detour of countless miles to show you the oldest tree in the world, or the oddest looking rock, then that’s what they did. Then they would apparently often take you home to their place, cook you dinner, and give you a free bed, before sending you on your way the next morning with a hamper of food.
Of course, I knew that paradise would probably have been well lost by the time I got there, and indeed by the time I did, things had changed a fair bit. There had been a number of bad reports in the press about people getting relieved of possessions by errant hitch hikers, and various other overblown stories. The first time I tried to hitch I spent 3 hours in the rain before I gave up and got a bus. After that I had varying degrees of success. In the more rural areas I found it easy to get short rides, but near cities, as in most countries, people would usually not even consider stopping.
When I arrived in Canada in November, I knew that without a car, hitching would always be an option, a way of avoiding the inevitably overpriced tourist buses. Through construction contacts, I got hooked up for a three week contract in Pemberton, the next town north from Whistler. After looking at the bus timetable, I realized that I would have to hitch, as the first bus didn’t go there until noon.
Pemberton is 35kms up through winding mountain roads. The town used to be a place filled with nature loving rednecks, the old rural hillbilly’s with snowmobiles and rifles. Stetson’s were a frequent sight. More recently it has filled up with the Whistler worker population, paid too little to afford to live in the town itself. My new boss introduced me one of the only places to get a beer in central Pemberton by saying “welcome to the bowels of hell.” Its not that it’s a bad place; its in a stunning location beneath Mount Currie and surrounded by the coast mountains, its just that the most noticeable focus of the social life is the McDonalds next to the highway…
On the first day my friend and I hitched from Whistler it was a very cold, clear morning. The sun was out but we could hardly feel its heat. We picked a spot just north of a junction of the highway. It had a long straight road approaching from central Whistler, and there was an easy place to pull over. The traffic also had to stop at the lights coming in from the side streets, so the old ‘eye contact-make you feel guilty’ trick could be employed if no one else stopped. Once we reached our spot, I turned to the approaching traffic and stuck out my thumb, arranging myself to try to look vaguely respectable, and as non axe murderer like as possible.
The first car in the advancing line put on its indicator and pulled over. At first I didn’t move. I wasn’t scared, just flabbergasted. I have hitched a fair amount in England, and New Zealand, and never once had the first car to pass pulled over. Was this a good thing, or a bad one? We walked up to the car. It was an old blue Volvo estate, a car that I think my aunt and uncle had years ago. We climbed into the back, as there were books all over the front passenger seat. The driver was an old fella, with wrinkles and grey hair. He confirmed he was going past Pemberton, but then said that we must put up with what he was listening to. Sure we said, just thankful to be out of the cold. As we pulled away, he turned the stereo back on. A clipped south eastern English voice announced, “we entered the mortuary.” My friend and I froze and glanced at each other. The driver didn’t speak again.
The opening minutes of most hitching encounters are usually a little tense anyway. Both parties try to awkwardly get some talk going. This, however was on a completely different scale. For the next 10 minutes, the narrator described a murder and a conspiracy around it, before the talk turned to horses. I suddenly realized that it was a Dick Francis audio-book.
The journey out of Whistler begins by winding around Green Lake. It is huge, frozen and snow covered. There were snowmobile tracks weaving across it. The ice can be anything from 50cm’s to 3-4 metres thick. The Canadians are mad for their ice hockey, and there were precisely cleared areas all over it, exact rectangles for playing on.
Then the road turned away into the mountains. The Garibaldi Provincial park is 195,000 hectare park stretching from Squamish, 70 kms away to the top of the Whistler valley. Further north along the route to Pemberton, there are many backcountry roads going off to the east that peter out into trails up into the mountains. Mt Weart at 2588m can sometimes be seen. On the left the coast mountains stretch away to the north west. Mt Callaghan is the nearest and is 2515m. The entire area is a wilderness filled with many varieties of animals. Even now it has only been slightly touched by man.
With the sounds and names of my far away home country as a rather surreal background, I relaxed and stared out the window. No one spoke for the whole journey, but just before we got out, I asked him which Francis novel it was. He was astonished that I knew the author, and we spent a few minutes discussing England, and his old life there in his younger years, before he rattled off in a cloud of exhaust. I got out wanting to talk to him more. That’s the nature of hitching, a fleeting glimpse of someone’s life, and then they’re gone.
The next day, I hitched alone, and got a ride after about ten minutes. Not as lucky as the first day, but still o.k. It was a new Chevy truck driven by a middle aged guy and his wife. As soon as they realized that I was English, they talked non stop for the rest of the journey about their vacation to London the previous year. I managed maybe 5 sentences in half an hour. I got out feeling a little flattened by this tourist onslaught.
The following morning, a guy in a battered old 4x4 Jeep picked me up after about more than half an hour of waiting. It was minus 8 degrees in the early morning and windy. I was cold and shivering when I gratefully got in. I tried for 20 minutes to start a conversation with him. I got only monosyllabic answers. I asked him about his work, (construction), his home, (Whistler) and whether he had gone up the mountain yet, (nope) then I stopped. Personally, I pick up hitchhikers if I fancy a conversation while I am driving alone. He wasn’t interested, so I gave up and watched Mount Currie appear before the dancing clouds until we began to descent the last section of downward coasting into Pemberton. I got out wondering what his problem was.
Next morning he passed me shaking his head. As the sub zero blast of dirty air behind the truck hit me, I was confused. After over an hour of freezing our arses off, we finally got a ride, but only to Cougar mountain, about half way to Pemberton. Once we had got out, I realized it was a mistake. It was a bad point on the road with little visibility, or space to be picked up. After another 40 minutes without success, during which time we ran up and down the road trying to defrost ourselves, we gave up and got a ride soon after back to Whistler. We had now seen probably the best and worst of hitching here.
The next morning, a girl in her mid 20’s pulled over after 15 minutes. I didn’t expect her to stop, and was about to stop thumbing when she slowed. I generally subscribe to the theory that a guy will pick up a girl, a woman will pick up another woman, but a female will not usually pick up a male on her own. I was getting cold, and happy to be proved wrong. I guess she just thought I was about her age, and looked normal enough. She was going home after a night shift in a hotel where she worked the grave yard slot most of the week. Sometimes she could sleep in the rooms, while supposedly at work, if there was nothing to do. We agreed that crappy jobs were worth it, if you could live in the mountains and go up them sometimes too. We passed the sign for the Nairn Waterfalls, about 6kms before Pemberton. I had passed it frequently, but had not seen the falls themselves. I asked her about it. She told me she had camped around that area a lot the previous summer. Groups of people often stayed there overnight and had parties. As we slowed coming into Pemberton, we passed a huge boulder beside the road. On it, the large sign that welcomed us to the town was covered in Christmas lights. Just after it there was a large lake. Before she dropped me off, the girl told me she had skated on it each winter every year since she had been a kid. I got out wondering what it would have been like to grow up in a place like this.
The next day, a young guy picked me up in his rusting Nissan. He was chain smoking, and the ashtray was overflowing with butts. The car was full of rubbish, wrappers and empty cans rolled around in the back. After a few minutes, I asked him why he was going north to Pemberton. He told me he was going home to Vancouver. I pointed out that it was the other direction, south. As he chucked a Ueey, he was really embarrassed. He told me that he had been drunk when he had got back to his friends place late the night before, and had no idea where he was. As he dropped me back at the junction, a lady at the nearby bus stop, who had been there when I got picked up, was looking at me in a very odd way.
After 20 minutes a brand new, fully loaded Ford Explorer truck pulled up. The guy driving was about 45, and wore a hunting cap. We got talking about the wilderness. He told me he had recently taken ownership of a mountain cabin, north of a little town called Lillouet. I think he was a big city guy who wanted to go out and pretend he was back in nature. He told me he bought the cabin off a business contact in Vancouver. The first weekend he had owned it, he had arrived late and gone to bed. The next morning he had walked out onto the porch. There were Cougar tracks that had circled the hut, and a messed up area in front of it, where the cat had sat down and watched the shelter. The guy had left immediately, and returned to the city. He was returning now with a new rifle, and lots of ammo.
We talked about other animals. He had seen loads of bears. He told me about a time when he and a friend had gone camping.
“We had pitched the tent and gone for a hike. When we got back in the afternoon, we took a nap. I woke up to a strange noise outside. It sounded like a very overweight man who had been forced to run a very long distance as fast as possible. I stuck my head out and saw a large black bear trot past, panting and out of breath, after its rush up the ridgeline behind the tent. It was heading for the steak and sausages that my friend had brought along. They were hanging from a tree about 50 feet away. I ducked back in and woke my buddy, who grabbed his shotgun and leapt outside. The bear, steak and sausages had all vanished. We walked to where the food had been and looked around. A bear appeared from the bushes for a moment then scuttled off. Not wanting to intimidate it, we moved back to the tent but could not see the bear anymore. After five minutes we began to relax. Then a bear appeared behind us, on the other side of the tent. At first we thought it was the same bear, but it looked smaller. Then we realized it was a mother and cub. The mother reappeared and the juvenile moved towards her. They was clearly distressed, and aggressive in their movements. We were thoroughly freaked out by this stage, and started packing fast. One of us held the shotgun, while the other stuffed the equipment into bags. Then we hiked away quickly down the ridgeline, hoping the bears didn’t think we had any more food for them.”
He was starting on another story, but I had to cut him off to ask him to drop me off, as we had just passed the point where I needed to get out. As I walked across to the worksite, I thought about how much I wanted to go into the backcountry, camping and staying in cabins. I would definitely make sure there was someone with a gun handy for emergencies though.
One morning a lady picked up a mate and I. She worked for the Mountain Safety on Whistler. She told us about the death that had occurred recently up on the hill. It had been in the news, but exact details were sketchy. She told us that a man coming down on the lift had reported to the Lifty that he had seen a person who was stuck in the snow. The report was passed on to the mountain rescue lady, who began to organize a team to go out. Then another report came in from someone else riding up the lift. They said that a person had been seen upside down in the snow by a tree. The safety crew moved faster, but it was a hard area to get into. It was a closed section, with rocks and many trees. When they finally found the individual, they saw that he was stuck upside down in a tree well. A tree well is an area around a tree that is hollow until collapsed. As most Alpine trees have no branches low down (they would be below the snow), and the first ones above are wide (Christmas tree style), there forms a small hollow space around the base beneath the first branches, where snow does not fall. The guy (who was riding alone in a closed area very early in the season-not sensible!) had crashed and been flung forward into the snow around the bottom of the tree. As he was on a snowboard and his arms were wedged under him in the snow, he was completely stuck. The rescue team, including the woman who was driving us, had pulled him out and tried to revive him. A rescue helicopter had tried to land but the location was very inaccessible, and a chairlift passed close by. After an hour they had managed to get a proper doctor in, and he immediately pronounced the guy as dead. Our driver was obviously cut up about it, blaming herself for not getting there quicker, but also angry that the first report had not mentioned that the person was upside down. They would have tried to get there much faster, but the report only said someone was stuck in the snow, and frequent reports like that usually led to wild goose chases. I got out feeling sad, and sorry for her. She had a hard job, and I realized that those small mistakes could be the difference between life and death.
One day we spent nearly 2 hours trying to hitch. No one would pick us up. Eventually I called my boss and told him, planning to just take the day off. The work was running behind schedule, and the boss told us he would come and pick us up. A half hour later he arrived and we jumped in. For some reason on the way back, the subject of deaths kept coming up. The boss, Rob, who had lived in the area all his life, told us about a friend of his who had lost control on a tight bend next to the railway line. He had rolled the car, crushing himself as the roof caved in, and it had ended upside down on the tracks. My friend nervously announced that the ride he had got a few days before had lost the back end on that curve, and had spun onto the tracks. Luckily no one was hurt.
A few miles later, Rob pointed to a memorial plaque on the side of the road. A guy he had worked for, had been driving too fast on his way home from a night out, and had gone off the side into some trees. The autopsy had revealed that he was 3 times the legal drinking limit. He was well known and liked in the area. He had been a very wealthy guy, but only once he had died did his family discover his true value. Without a Will, they were still fighting over who should get what. It was obviously a sad, and painful story for my boss, who had built his house for him.
Further on, we came to Rutherford Creek. In the floods that had ravaged the area a month before, the bridge had been swept away in the current. With no lighting and the consequent poor visibility in the torrential rain, two cars had failed to see the lack of a bridge and had gone off into the river. Only one guy managed to escape. 7 people had died. Neither car, nor any of the bodies had been found. In a small community like Pemberton, the people were all known and it was considered a real disaster. We slowed and Rob told us to look at the bend in the river just downstream from the bridge. The bank was about 30 feet high, but was gouged out by the force of the water that had come plowing down from the mountains. It looked like a knife cut into the ground, and tree roots hung out in the air. I tried to imagine the power of the water needed to dislodge so much earth.
As we came into Pemberton, the boss insisted we go through the McDonalds drive thru. The guy at the window handed him his food, and thanked him by name. Like I said, it was a small town…
The days began to blend together, sometimes rides were memorable, sometimes not. One morning it was raining hard and I got a ride early on, probably out of pity. The driver, a middle aged guy who was rather overly chunky around the neck and belly, greeted me with a booming “morning”. He drove an old cheap truck, and told me that he had lived in Pemberton for 30 years. He had seen the prices of property in Pemberton and Whistler increase massively. The number of beds in the area had been capped by the local government in an ineffective effort to slow construction, and this had artificially pushed up housing values. Many locals to Whistler had been completely priced out of the market. They had simply uprooted and headed further into the Interior of the State to escape the advancing development. The 2010 Winter Olympics had recently been awarded to Vancouver and the Whistler area. It had only to served to accentuate the problem.
We moved on to talking about his family. His sister lived an hour and a half away, north west up the ridge of coastal mountains, as the crow flies. He was going to visit her the next weekend, but as there was no road, it required a 500km round trip down to Vancouver, onto a ferry for an hour then a long slow drive back up the other side of the mountains again. His sister had not spoken to him in 6 years. He didn’t elaborate as to why.
She was a single mum, and had called out of the blue to complain that her 15 year old son had stolen her Christmas bonus. She had brought the $1500 cash home and put it in her jar of Christmas money. Then she had gone out to buy food, and when she returned it had gone. There was no sign of a break in, and the son was the only other person who could have got in. He denied everything. The sister wanted my driver to come and deal with it. The guy was going to take the kid out into the wilderness and leave him there until he confessed. If that didn’t work he told me he would rough him up, and knock the truth out of him. He told me his dad had beaten him whenever he felt the need. I didn’t say anything. Then he told me that his dad had worked until he was 72 years old, then retired and died at 74 of a heart attack. He had no intention of working for that long and was aiming for retirement at 45. As I got out, I was worrying about delinquents, in-breeding and unlikely parental techniques.
The next day it was snowing heavily. The truck that picked me up had not been treated well. I looked hard and realized it used to be white once upon a time. The driver was a young guy, no older than me. We pulled away. The vehicle was in no better state on the inside, wires and broken bits of dashboard hanging out everywhere. Above 60 kms/per hour, the whole thing began to vibrate so much it made my teeth rattle. The first 15 kms of the journey is on fairly straight roads, but then after passing Rutherford Creek, the road goes into switchbacks up and over a ridgeline. The snow was blustery in the winds that whipped over the hill. As we came out of one of the turns he gunned the engine too much and we lost the back end. The truck slewed across the road, causing a car coming down the hill to stomp on the brakes. Both drivers had a moment of absolutely no control, and mine gave out a hollow screech. Then we recovered just in time and got back on the right side, facing the right way. I found out later that the spot was called Suicide hill, because many people failed to make the sharp turn coming downhill.
I tried to get a conversation going, to distract us both from the near miss. We talked about jobs and discovered that he lived in the same units that I was working on. They had been flooded with water up to nearly a metre in the recent record floods. Fortunately, the housing authorities had stipulated that the properties must contain no accommodation on the ground level, and only the garages had flooded. As I got out I was still a little shaken. He asked me to take care doing up his garage, and I nodded weakly.
One day, a Scottish guy picked me up in a rattling old Mazda 4x4 truck. It seemed that if you lived here, it was compulsory to drive a rust bucket of a truck. (Locally known as a “beater“) We talked about Scotland, and then British snowboarders. He knew many of the guys that were now at the top of the British scene. Then we talked about Canada. He had lived in the Whistler area for 5 years. After marrying a Canadian girl, he had got a work visa to stay in the country.
“Ye should do the same,” he suggested.
“I’m not sure how easily I could persuade my Irish girlfriend to go with that idea,” I explained.
“Ah fook it, do it anyway.”
We talked about Whistler and he told me that most of his original friends had moved on from the area. He complained, just like many other locals had, that Whistler had been spoilt by the massive influx of second home rich people. He had moved to Pemberton, priced out of the market like many other long term residents who had rented, and could no longer afford to buy or even rent anymore in their home town. Just before I got out, he told me his name was Eren, and asked me my name. I told him. When I got out, I realized that he was the first, and as it turned out only, guy who I had got a ride off, whose name I had found out. Perhaps strangely, it was just something that usually never came up, even after half an hour of talking.
Another time, a real old timer gave me a ride. It was snowing and slippery and he slid to a halt on the ice in the obligatory knackered old truck. I think it was a Toyota from about 1980. He was in his 60’s, and a local to Squamish, a medium sized place between Vancouver and Whistler. He had lived there since 1970. We talked about England. His wife was English, and came from Bolton. They had returned to travel around the country for a month, a few years before. He told me his favourite place was Blackpool. He had loved the place, but when I pushed him, he couldn’t really pinpoint as to why, just said he liked the feel of the place.
We talked about the weather pattern changes in the area since he had lived here. He told me that when he first lived in the mountains there was considerably more snow than there was these days. This was a familiar theme for many locals that I spoke to. The consensus was that the snowfall average was decreasing. The guy warmed to his subject, throwing out theories and opinions on the pollution of the world, and global warming. Then he moved onto the other favourite locals subject, the over expansion of the town, and he complained bitterly about the outsiders intrusion.
“The place has been deranged by the Corporate money that’s steamrolled into the area,” he told me. I got out feeling that change is inevitable. Places we know and love will always seem to rapidly get more and more spoilt by over population and development.
On one occasion a French guy from Quebec picked me up. After talking for a while we worked out that he lived in the only unit of the 28 that we were working on, that had not been flooded. He was a wood cutter, and had all his machinery in the garage. He would have lost his livelihood but fortunately, although the water had got to the door, it had not come in. Many other people had lost equipment that was stored in the garages. As I got out, we agreed he had been very lucky.
One day there was no bus and I hitched back from Pemberton. After about 35 minutes, I was getting cold when a battered jeep wrangler slowed down. It had one headlight, and as it passed me and stopped, I saw that it had only one tail light. Attached to the towbar was a rickety wooden trailer, without lights or license plate on the back. I was fairly dubious. As I opened the door, the interior light came on. The guy was in his late 20’s. He was wearing a pair of pin stripe dungarees and a baseball cap, and seemed unusually hyperactive.
“I really need some good karma, man. Its been a really long day and I’m trying to get back to Whistler with the trailer, pick up a snowmobile that I’ve bought and get it to my house in Squamish. I gotta make it without the trailer falling apart, losing the sled or getting stopped by the Police, man. So you gonna bring me some good karma, eh?.”
I was cold but still dubious, caught out by his flat demand. He encouraged me to jump in. I did, and we sped off.
“Where you from?” he asked.
“England.”
“Awesome, man that’s super cool,” he said, mashing his gum.
He was chewing caffeine gum, and offered me some. I declined, worried that I would end up as hyper as him. When we reached Rutherford bridge, he told me he wanted to stop to liberate some plywood. He worked there on the rail bridge that got half knocked out in the same floods that had taken out the road bridge. He knew where some wood was and said he wanted it to repair the trailer. We began to drive down a narrow, snow covered track into the woods. Obviously I began to get a little twitchy. What was this all about then? Surely he wasn’t going to try and rob me was he? Maybe it was worse than that… After about 1km he slowed and tried to turn round. We immediately got stuck. He to and fro’ed it for about 10 minutes, panting and getting more agitated as he wrenching the steering wheel round while thrashing the gears. I sat still and tried to stay out of the way. Then we were out and pointing the right way. He jumped out and vanished off into the woods. After a little while, he came back with a huge piece of plywood. Then he sped off and came back with another one. We strapped them down onto the trailer, but not in a very secure way. He didn’t seem too bothered and leapt back in. We headed back out onto the highway, and began to speed up. I looked back as we came into some switchbacks, just in time to see one board slide smoothly off the side onto the road. We stopped immediately and he hiked back to get it. We continued on more slowly.
I started a conversation about work. He told me that, as well as his job as a welder, he was on the dole. This seems to be a widespread scam.
“I’m making a total of around $800 a week (about 400 pounds). Its insane how easy it is.”
The dole had been called Unemployment Insurance in Canada, but had been changed to Employment Insurance, as it was considered “less depressing” by the authorities. I told him,
“in England it used to be the dole, but was it changed to the Job Seekers Allowance to try and encourage people to go out “seeking a job.”
He seemed to find that very funny. We agreed that it was pretty pointless to rename it, as many people would consider it free money, and try to claim it regardless of what it was called.
“The Indians here especially, they are all on it. There are whole generations of people living entirely on the Dole cheque and illegal work.”
As we approached Whistler we were getting on well, then he remembered, “I’m only going to Emerald Estates for now,” (an area about 10km short of where I wanted to be) and braked quite hard. The trailer jack knifed and the two pieces of plywood ended up in the ditch. With the enthusiasm of only the kind of man who had consumed way too much caffeine, he scrambled into the waist deep snow to get them. As I stuck my thumb out for another lift into town, I wondered if he would make it home.
On one of my last days, it was a monday morning. I was hitching alone. After about 35 minutes a well beaten Subaru estate pulled over. The driver was a bearded guy of about 30. As soon as we moved off, he pulled out a joint, lit it, and asked if I smoked. It was 9.30am and I had a full day of work in front of me. However I did not want to be rude, and have him dump me out on the highway somewhere. As the smoke was hot boxing the car anyway, I found myself in an unwinnable situation.
He told me that he had gone to work, only to find out the job was shut down for the day. Now he was going to get his buddy, lots of beers, and go ice fishing on a lake up the valley. It was stocked in the 1980’s and had not been fished since. The last time he had gone there, he had pulled out 18 fish.
Then we talked about the legalities of herb, and he told me that his buddy grew it in Alaska. Apparently the guy had inherited $15 million from his dad when he was 21, and had built himself a huge mansion. As well as various above ground level floors and luxuries, it also had three levels beneath the ground. In the bottom level, he grew copious amounts of monstrously strong weed, which he shipped down to California. He had sent some to the University of B.C. He knew someone there in a department that was working on marijuana testing for cancer patients, in a medicinal capacity. They told him that it rated a 68% THC content. When our parents generation smoked weed, it was grass with a THC content of maybe 10%. Since hydroponics and cross breeding manipulation, the percentage has massively increased. I told my driver that even Lonely Planet had described it as the unofficial 3rd biggest industry in British Columbia, after Forestry and Tourism. Many Canadians smoke weed, of this there is little doubt. A 2000 Gallup Poll showed that over 33% of B.C residents believed pot should be entirely decriminalized. There is a national Marijuana party that regularly fielded candidates in local, provincial and federal elections. With herb as strong as this guy was smoking, I couldn’t see how anyone did any work around here.
As we came into Pemberton a large dog, a husky, was trotting down the road past us. I got out of the car feeling dazed, disorientated, and in no condition to go to work. Another dog, a black Labrador, loped by. I called to it, and it turned to look at me, but carried on along the road and out of sight. As I lurched off to work, I wondered where they were going so purposefully. Then I stopped and tried to get myself in a straight frame of mind. It was an interesting day to say the least.
Next morning Tom, a guy I worked with in Pemberton picked me up in his family wagon. As we drove along, he told me about the trails along the side of the road. He told me that sometimes he used to leave Pemberton at 4am on his motocross bike, to come to work in Whistler at 8am. He would rag it around the trails, coming back onto the main road for sections and then veering off again to go up into the surrounding hills. Sometimes he was early or did not want to go to work, and would double back, riding tight technical sections with steep drops on the side. There was also a proper motocross track out in the woods nearby, and a stock car racing oval. As we carried on, he pointed to a valley running up into the mountains. There was a track up to Jeffrey Lake, a short hike up the trail. Further up were two more lakes, and we made a plan to get some of the workcrew, and go up there once the job was done. As I got out, I was again thinking about the wilderness. Guys out here love nature and the idea of going out into the backcountry.
On my last day of work, I hitched back to Whistler. After about 15 minutes, I got a ride from a couple of local Indian guys in an old Ford Tempo with the exhaust falling off. They had passed me, but there was a native Indian hitching too, and once they had stopped they offered me a ride too. Over the time at work in Pemberton, I had been talking to one of the work guys about native Indians. He had been born in Canada, and had often got into scraps with local Indian kids. They would pick fights on their own, and then when the fight was going, another 2 or 3 Indian kids would come round the corner and smack him on the back of the head. He said they always played dirty. He clearly had a bad impression of them. Another guy I had got a ride off had told me that his friend had messed around with some Indians, cutting them out of a herb deal. They had taken him out into the wilderness and threatened to kill him if they saw him again. Then they had left him there and driven off. It has taken him two days to hike back to a road. My work mate also told me that Native Indians got free scholarships to any universities (hardly any took up the free offer), and they were all on welfare, and got cheques every week. Most did no work, and spent all their money on drugs. Despite being hugely dependant on the government, many were openly against the increasing control of central state government, and of anything non Indian at all. Dozens of Indian groups, dubbed the “First Nations” had filed writs in B.C to get decisions made on their land claims through the courts. The local one, the Mount Currie-based Lil’wat Nation, had filed court documents asserting the band’s claim of title to its traditional territory, including Whistler, Pemberton and all the territory surrounding those communities. This is a massive area, including land currently “owned” by thousands and thousands of different people. Trouble had been brewing since the Delgamuukw decision, a landmark B.C. Supreme Court ruling that reaffirmed First Nations’ rights to have their land claims dealt with. In 1997, the ruling affirmed the admissibility of oral traditions as evidence in land-claims proceedings. This effectively meant that many local Indians ended up giving evidence in court, stating that their great grand parents had owned the land. The main problem was working out who was telling the truth. My work mate disliked the Indians intensely, and thought they were money hungry and not to be trusted.
All this was running through my head as I climbed into the back of the natives car. We drove off, and I began trying to think of a way to break the ice. I wanted to ask them about the land claims, but couldn’t think of a way to start a talk. After about ten minutes, the guy in the front passenger seat turned around to me. Great, I thought, he is going to start a conversation.
“Pass us the plate behind you.”
“Huh?” I replied.
“Can you pass us the plate behind you.”
I turned around and fumbled in the dark on the back shelf. My fingers stuck into something squidgey. I found the edge of the plate, and picked it up. It had a knife and fork, along with an unidentifiable lump of food on it. I passed it forward. The guy turned back round, and started eating with the plate balanced on his knees. The two in the front talked to each other, and ignored me for the rest of the journey. They sang along to the Christmas tunes on the radio, seeming to enjoy them. This was the first time I had been in close proximity to any local Indians since I had arrived, and it was an odd experience. They also smoked a pipe between them, without offering me any. As we came into Whistler, the passenger again turned to me and asked where I wanted to get out. I asked them to stop at Nesters, a small supermarket, so I could buy some dinner. He turned to the driver and said,” Lets get some more food.” I thanked them for the ride and wished them a Merry Christmas, but without any response.
I saw them in the snack food section a little later, grabbing huge bags of chips, and chocolate. They seemed to have embraced the American culture in this sense. It seemed at odds with what I had heard about their dislike of foreigners and their culture, and the land claims. I wondered if they had made the money to pay for their munchy food, or were spending their welfare cheques.
During the time I was hitching I asked one question frequently. After assuring people that I wasn’t planning to rob them, I asked if they locked their houses and cars. Most said that when they were at home they did not lock either. When I first moved into the room we rented in Whistler, I asked our landlady for a front door key. She umm and urred, and then finally said it was never locked, and admitted that she wasn’t even sure where her key was. Although I’m sure it is a different story in the centre of the village, we lived only a few kilometres out.
I first discovered this relaxed attitude when I was out in Canada five years ago. I was walking home with my Canadian girlfriend of the time, from a night out. We tried the doors of every car in a line of maybe 50 parked vehicles, and almost every single one opened. Car alarms are almost unheard of. This kind and liberal nature, typical of much of the population of B.C, is one of the things that has drawn me back here. In many western countries today, you could stand at the side of a road trying to hitch all day and not get a ride. Many people, who have never done it, will tell you that it’s dangerous to hitch. It is a travellers tradition that is dying out, as crime and scare stories in the media put people off stopping. Of course there are exceptions, and in rural parts of England, and New Zealand in particular, I have still found it easy to hitch.
I am not an innocent fool who trusts everyone, and twice in the last few weeks, I turned down a ride when I didn’t like the look of the guy driving (or the state of his vehicle). Usually though, I didn’t have any problems when I was hitching. In fact, I found many of the experiences enlightening. The people who stopped were usually very friendly. I discovering new things about the surrounding areas and often got contacts for work, and ideas for places to visit. This openness is something I love about this country, and one reason why I chose to hitch, instead of taking the bus (as well as being skint, and tight with my money). I wanted to confirm what I thought-that while many of the societies in the world today are becoming more security conscious, racist and secularized, the west coast of Canada is still a very laid back place. Of course I am generalizing, something that is unavoidable in a State of this size, but from my own experiences the majority of the people are open and friendly to strangers they have chosen to pick up from the side of the road. How many other places are really like this now? It is easy to say that when you have a car, you would sometimes pick someone up if you felt like it. However, it’s a different story when you are on the other side, hitching every day to a job that you are depending on. I have learned to ignore the apparent personal insult when a whole line of cars blaze past, without any of them stopping for me. That sting of cold air when they pass feels very like a slap in the face, but I always had to let it go without frustrating me. Of course, there are people that will never stop. They often seem to be the rich ones driving sparkling new ATV‘s, with no concept of what it’s like to not have enough money to own a car. There is no doubt that most of the people who picked me up were from the middle to low ranking worker population. They are a part of society who can obviously connect to, and sympathize much more easily with a freezing figure on the side of the road. In the last few weeks I have often tried to imagine the sight of myself standing there, with a pleading smile and my numb thumb out, and wondered if I was driving, whether I would pick myself up. I hope I would.

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