The road to get to Prince Edward Island (PEI) was Highway 16. We got off the train in Sackville, New Brunswick, a quaint little college town that the agent at the train station told us was the arts capital of the maritimes. We were skeptical. The man was overeager to help us, laying out in fervent detail all the necessary tools for backpackers like ourselves. He gave us very, very detailed directions and talked for a very long time about the spectacle of PEI. He had to be starved for company working as the station agent in Sackville, which seemed a dead town. He was very informative, explaining to us the site "Hostels International" and how to look it up on Google, imploring us not to be late for our train on Wednesday, writing down precisely the time it left, detailing out a map with pointers of hot-spots to check out in PEI while we're there, as well as giving us the numbers for the cab companies in Sackville in case we changed our minds about hitchhiking. All in all, the effort of the man was very sweet and it was understood that he rarely came upon the opportunity to indulge to patrons with his multitude of information. I felt strangely like i was doing him a justice by listening, abiding to his lengthy information about this small town and all of the facets that keep it as a crossroads. He was pale, with a growth on his upper chin--but he was young. And besides the heavy bags under his eyes and the unique, desperate energy; he was a remarkable man. I imagine most adaptations of the man Charon, who tows you across the river Styx, are inadequate in their representing the man as old, withered and frightful. It would make more sense in the mythologies for him to be a young man, condemned to the service of an incessant feat. That way, as the tow comes under way, you can see the suffering in hope for the outside world. That's the sadness, that he was young. And he guided us as best as we could, even encouraging us to walk on the train tracks to get to the road, "it might be dangerous, but it's faster. You watch yourselves there." 
We walked the 7 kilometers (a little less than 5 miles) to Highway 16 and waited at the on ramp for four hours chatting about making a musical called "Paris, 1968" that refined the history into a war between the representation and the real, calling that spectacomachy. Mark also thought it was stupid that the french spelled "West," "Ouest;" I believe he thought it was pretentious. Mark had believed it would be a better idea to split up to more easily attract drivers. I thought that wait would be unseemly lonesome, so i made the executive decision to stay a pair. I'm glad I did.
Even though we were waiting for what seemed like forever (especially with the excruciating build-up and let-down of every passing automobile. Imagine having to watch a commercial break for four hours, with each commercial you hope that your show is coming back on. Well, maybe that's an adequate metaphor). It was getting cold, but we were talking about all kinds of things so it made the wait easier. For instance, one of the games we played was deciding on whether or not drivers were pissy, rude, afraid of us, or just so zoned out they didn't see us. While it sounds bitter, it was; but it was fun.
I thought i had seen a Tim Horton's, the Canadian staple coffee/donut shop, at the truck stop near the junction. After a few hours, mmm mmm coffee and donuts sure sounded good. Mark said they were probably talking about us at the stop. Everyone had seen us. They were probably asking (gossiping, really) about us on their CB radios ("those guys still out there?") So we went in. No Tim Horton's, i was wrong. Just a diner. We got there like 50 minutes before it closed. Ordered hot tea and french fries.
Now, supposedly the french fries in Canda are exemplary, particularly in the Maritimes. A product of PEI greatness, the potato crop. You can't get fries that'll compare anywhere else. But not these salty cardboard potatoes at the truck stop. Uninspiring, to say the least--but at the time, they would do. Warm and heavy. It was a cold night, lower 40's.
I fell in love with the waitress, a shy red-haired girl that would be in one of those country songs, "I worked here my whole life and damned if i'm staying, but damned if i'm leaving..." She was interested in our adventure and said she lived on the way to the PEI bridge (our direction!). I didn't have the nerve to pitch the idea of a ride to her, just then. I was hoping we were charming enough that she'd pick us up on her way home, but after consorting with co-workers she probably thought it a bad idea. Yes, yes.
But we were out there, embittered by the cold. A joke began
about complaining about the girl not picking us up. I'd say to Mark, "hey, was that your girlfriend that just passed us?" He'd say, "I don't think your girlfriend loves you anymore." The tirade kept us going, and in a pathetic way it was sad, but not pathetically sad--the sad that it takes in overpowering a weakened situation--like most Beyoncé songs. In a fresh way, it was absurdly sad. Ah well, we thought. We decided at about 11:30 that we weren't going to be picked up that night. We went to a nearby thicket of pine trees to sleep on a grassy moss, that as Mark says in his blog "was nicer than any mattress i stayed on for the rest of the trip."
We woke up early on, and went back out to the road. To cut it short, we spent 20 hours waiting on the side of the road in New Brunswick. At about 1pm the next day, Angelique picked us up.
She was a lovely woman. A government agent for the Treasury, we were her first hitchhikers of all time: "I've never done this before, but i figured what the hell." She was incredibly sweet and drove us all the way to Summerside in PEI, even offering us a trip back when she came back across! When we got out of the car, she asked us a strange question. Doting on the fact that this woman in her 30's with kids whom was a worker for the government, i couldn't identify with her so much as to ascertain what she might have meant. What i mean to say, the way i misinterpreted her was just as flippantly absurd as what she had really been asking. But then again, i learned that essentially everyone in Canada does--doctors, lawyers, bankers, students, the lot! She asked, "you guys puff?"
I thought the question was weird, so i asked her, "you mean sex?"
Mark explained that she meant pot. I felt kinda stupid, but i had never heard that euphemism short of the Peter, Paul and Mary song. Either she didn't hear me or she didn't care, because she still offered to take us back. Awesome. I guess we could prepare for a wild ride.
Angelique took us to her hotel in Summerside where she was running late for a conference or something. Oddly, there was a antique car show of Ford Model-A's gearing and cleaning up in the parking lot. Upon talking to one of the old greasemonkey gents we learned that they were rich bastards from New England that transported their cars to exotics places (Scandinavia, New Zealand, Asia, The American West) to drive around in a big train of old cars and honk their horns and flip people off. Man, old people's hobbies sometimes blow my mind! Anyway here's a picture of what i looked like in the reflection of a wheel cap:
So we were in Summerside, but trying to get to Charlottetown, a good 70 kilometers away. It was nearing mid-day and judging by the luck we had had in New Brunswick we expected it to be a hard trek. But just as soon as Mark put out his thumb, a gentleman pulled over and offered to take us. IT WAS A REAL LIFE MIRACLE!
The man who picked us up was named Joshua, a very nervous Johavah's Witness who had lived on the island for his entire life. We gauged afterwards that Josh probably had not had many interactions with strangers in his life. He was just a kind soul who really didn't know how to talk to people. He was training to be a mechanic and had worked on a farm for pretty much all of time. I tried to engage him in conversation about either of these things, but he simply said, "I really don't have any interest in farming/mechanics. It's just what i do." I was a bit dissappointed in this, but Mark seemed to empathize. He talked about how he worked on bikes a whole lot, but hates talking about it. It irks him the people who know so much trivia about bike manufacturers and the types and styles. Joshua told us about his love to drive on the red clay of PEI. "I love the land," he said. He munched on a 99cent Wendy's chicken sandwich for most of the trip, another thing he seemed to love.
I could understand Josh's interest too. Prince Edward Island was perfect. Somehow the clouds managed to maintain this overall pretty impression--all cumulus, all the time. It was like big bunches of imagination lying in dormant comas, what Louis the whateverteenth must have looked out on when he opened the windows and looked at the bushes at Versaille. Immaculate. The landscape is beautiful. The hills have a soft roll that stretches over the entire island. And the land is red. The island is built on this sediment composite of red clay, so all the soil is red prompting the nickname The Red Planet (i made that up, but i imagine someone came up with that before me, surely!). Looking out the window at the transfixing scenery, silence dominated the car. Except for Joshua's rattling his fingernails in rolling succession on the steering wheel, no body spoke. I have mentioned before the somewhat latent suspicion I had that Joshua had not had many interactions with strangers in his life, which explains the question which came next,
"So--uh--" he paused, searching wildly in his mind for a question, anything to fill the void...
"...you guys like any interests?"
Mark and I shared a glance, then i guess we kind-of rattled on about some basic things we enjoyed: reading, biking, hiking, traveling Canada. It was weird. He obviously wanted us to fill the void but wasn't actually interested in the conversation. I thought maybe i could engage him in talking about the Apocalypse, which another Jehovah's Witness had explained to me in really explicit, wonderful detail back in California--but he still seemed only to nod, what seemed slightly annoyed. OH! and the biggest oddity! His plan had been to take us merely to his stop, ten kilometers from where we started. But, he ended up driving us the whole way!
"Well, i haven't got much to do," he explained.
We were wowed. He basically dropped us off at the doorstep. Those Jehovah's Witnesses, man, are immaculate with their kindness. It was really amazing. I hope for his sake he learns to engage strangers more in the future; a man that kind should have a bevy of friends! A truckload! A mess! A gross!!
We were going to stay with a kid named Chris whom i found on couchsurfing.com. He was an interesting kid--half-nerd, half-hippie. He made money as a busker to tourists who visited throughout the year.
(Fun Fact: We all know that Anne of Green Gables was a popular story set in Prince Edward Island. But did you know that it is part of Japanese high school curriculum. So, like, 80% of tourists to PEI are Japanese--and apparently LOVE Anne of Green Gables and LOVE buskers.)
By the time we were through in PEI, we had designated the place as "The Shire." Surely, you all have kept up on your Lord of the Ring's mythology because of Peter Jackson's famous movies. The shire is a paradise set up apart from the conflicts and horrors of the rest of the world. It is a farming community that subsists on good cheer and healthy eating. It is a small community, rural and beautiful. It's P.E.I.
PEI is an island that is mainly agriculture. There's a university and some other basic stuff, but truly it's a small kept-away nook. If you think about an island like this, that doesn't have wilderness areas really, there is no harmful wildlife. No cougars lurking in the bush or on cliff-faces. I take for granted that everyone in Canada is much nicer to. For instance, i saw a drunk get kicked out a bar, got right in the bouncer's face and the bouncer held his ground. As the man walked off, even pissed off, he apologized. I've seen knives pulled in the states for putting Weezer on a jukebox.
The house we were staying at was amazing. They had a hobby of smoking weed out of a collection of fruits. No kidding. They would buy fruits, exotic fruits--apples, mangos, grapefruit, bananas, orangutan--to smoke out of them. They had a whole rotting collection in a crisper in the refrigerator. Seemed a little Daumer-esque if it wasn't so damned CUTE! Also, a couple of the roommates had an anachronistic (it seemed to me) fascination with Magic cards (I mean i thought that trend died, not here!). Everyone ate potatoes, puffed weed, played magic cards and sung this interesting celtic-derived folk that was taking evolutions into sectors of indie rock and hip-hop. The man who is most well-known for the genre is named Stan Rogers. His folk is definitive maritime folk, the brand that coagulates around the towns of Halifax, Charlottetown and Moncton. Here's a song he wrote about having to work out West to make money, called "The Idiot":
Incidentally, when i was in Alberta, i met a man from Newfoundland. I'll tell you all about him later. But he has tremendous pride for the Maritimes as well, and turned me on to this charming (as well as more contemporary) ode by Classified:
So now you have a sense of Maritime music. It's pretty eccentric. And lovely!
On the first night there, they took us to open mic at bar called Harriet's. I have always been pretty skeptical about open mics. But this one was different. I don't know how to describe it other than a tranformation. This guy, Chris, who we were staying with just gave himself up on stage. He entirely handed his ticket, his soul to the performance and fell into the role of infatuated romantic, leaning into the song, begging for it with his voice. It was wonderful. All the singers were wonderful. Especially this one girl, Marie. She was a pretty French-Canadian girl who was so petite and shy. She seemed so nervous and had that desperate look of worry about approval when you engaged her in conversation. But when she stepped out onto the stage, when she started and really poured into it, there was everything: a truly naked lunch. She was raised and magnificent, a yodle from her throat, carried by eminence, by eloquence and music. It just all made sense. I felt my heart quiver. It was no wonder everyone was in love with the girl.
The household was set up so there were three guys living there. One was a private in the ROTC and the other, named Christensen was this taut wiry nerd with muscles who loved Magic cards (his family was descended from vikings but as he put it, "they're all giant hippies now"). Down the street was a household with three girls. The private dated one of the girls. Christensen dated another. The last was Marie. Marie and Chris were left stranded from the perfect equation. So when they were prompted with the (by now) redundant pressure, it went like this:
"So two of the guys date two of the girls, and we're just waiting on the last two."
Marie responds sarcastically, "We are going out. We just don't sleep together."
"Gonna change that," Chris coyishly kids, but there's a visceral heartache there that resounds in his face, and again in the music. It's so perfect, it's a melodrama. She, the lonely nervous angel, and he the helpless romantic nice-guy, straining for an affection they can only hear in music but neither hearing the other's full song. Oh, these damn days of our lives! Or maybe he hears her but she doesn't hear him. The scenario made me come apart, I felt more tension than an old sweater being pushed through razor wire. I felt like i was in the midst of a drama i only ever thought i'd see on stage. But here was the reality! That's the kind of magic i'm talking about with "the shire," a visceral image of life and the story. It was the power that took Hamlet going into a theater while he was part of a theater to finally achieve some kind of supreme sublimation in necessary justice. A meta-perfection, only achieved in infinite smallness and infinite bigness. I felt like i was teetering in the scope of something beyond dimensions. A dimentia! I have never been that close to the real story before.
In whole the experience was delightful. We got back to their apartment after a night of singing and drinking like jolly little people, then everyone got baked and traded music. Everyone was floored when Mark put on Remixes, Volume 1 by Ratatat. It was like a kaleidoscope of sound; for folk-crazy people, i can imagine what that kind of layering suddenly posits. Maybe i'm underestimating their music knowledge though. Also, they had a big Canadian flag hanging up in the living room, a sign of sure pride of country. As Mark put it, for this kind-of crowd, "that would not happen in the US."
We got up late in the morning, and Mark insisted we see the coast even though it was raining. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn't have it. It was ridiculous to think of not seeing the coast of PEI while he was here. If he had to, he'd walk there. And that's just what happened. We got something to eat, and started hitchhiking, a slow and unsuccessful process of flagging down unresponsive drivers. We did get picked up once though:
This girl in a white camry pulled over and let us in. I sat in front and Mark sat in the back on a pile of her clothes, shoes, magazines and plastic bags full of appliances and food. On the dashboard in front of me, a big spider was weaving a web. Mark's door did not close all the way, he had to hold it with his hand. He also did not have a seatbelt. "Casey" as i called her, because she never told us her name, smoked menthols while driving at top speed down Country Road 15, north towards the coast. She had blasting on the radio first a remix of "Sexy Back" by Justin Timberlake and that song "The Vengaboys" by the Vengaboys. You know, the one where that weird-looking man dances a fool in the Six Flags commercials. As the music played she darted down the road, weaving into the other lane to pass cars. At one point she passed a stopping school bus; i thought we'd hit it. At some point she turned down the music and started talking. She had just moved to Halifax with her boyfriend two days ago; "my boyfriend broke my nose," she said. Though her nose did not look broken. She told us she picked us up because she hated to walk. One time her car broke down on the way to pick up a friend at the train station, "and i refused to walk." She waited for her friend to walk to her, to come get her. She drove us to Harrington, a good 20 miles up road in a matter of five minutes. She was a tiny girl, very very small with pale white skin who looked girly with freckles, straight platinum hair with pink accessories in it and piercings in her cheek and nose. She looked like a raver. "Well, bye," she said, at the tip of her driveway. Mark and I got out, then "whoa."
Then we started walking. Kept trying to be picked up, but drivers weren't having it. We walked for four hours before we came close to the coast. Mark was taking pictures like a mad man the whole way. On the route, we found a cemetery by the side of the road, he took tons of pictures there. We ate some apples from an apple tree by the side of the road too. We bought some old, old cardboard cookies at a dime store. Mark tried to ask them how hard it was to get picked up hitchhiking and they looked at him like he was going to rob the place. It was a strange encounter. On the road, i came across a dead raccoon. I picked it up to throw it into the grass to decompose better. I saw inside a cavity that a bug had ate out from its anus--it was gory and red and deep and hollow. I don't think i'll ever forget the image of that dead raccoon's eaten cavity. It was a horrifying impression.
We finally got to the coast after hours upon hours of walking. It was windy as shit that day, and the coast was like none other i had ever seen. There were huge breakers set up to collect sand as dunes in order to protect the wild grass that grew there. It wasn't a coast for swimming, but more a conservation area--with recreational facilities, like a park. There were crows flying around all over the place. Mark snapped a genius photo of the corpse of a bird being torn apart by other crows. It's stunning. If you ever get the chance, ask him to see it. I might post it here if he lets me. There was also this strange pink foam that was building up from the surf. I was exhausted that day and began to lose my mind. I have a video of me taping this foam, and a song i made up called "quivering jelly t.v.". My idea, at the time, was to have an absurd television show which broadcasted the life of this quivering pink jelly 24/7, not unlike the plot of the Truman Show, but this would be much more mundane. If you would like to see the video ask me for it. I've decided that keeping it up here, well, it just makes me look too damn crazy. Here's the ocean, though:
Doting on the luck we had had hitchhiking during the day up towards the coast, we were pretty realistic in our assumption that we would not be picked up at night going down into the mainland. Our option was to either walk back or find a way to call a cab. We found a restaurant called the Millhouse next to a tourist resort, set back, called Vacationland. The place looked amazing, so we decided to eat there. Good, simple food. Delicious, PEI-grown (or as they put it "near") potatoes and a slice of pie for dessert. Mark ate mussels, sabotaging his potential Vegan of the Year award. The woman was amazed we had walked from Charlottetown and made it seem like we were crazy. It really wasn't that long of a walk. Not crazy, anyway. It seemed we were the only people to ever walk down 15. She was spry and country, with weird teeth and a jolly laugh--the type of woman you would imagine runs a restaurant that friendly.
After we had eaten, we decided spending money on a cab would be unnecessary. We could just walk back. The woman thought we were morons out-of-our-mind, but i think we found that encouraging. The walk back was amazing. The night made it really dark on the road, so all the stars were bright and the houses--set way back and lit only modestly--looked cozy and romantic. I can see why Anne of Green Gables raved about this fucking place. It's perfect. Mark took some very elegant photos of farm houses and trees. I'm pretty sure you can check them out on his block (it's http://train.ography.org) in case you forgot. We finally got back to Chris' at 3am, never to see him again. We woke up early in the morning, and rather than risk it took a bus to Summerside for thirteen bucks to meet back up with Angelique. We had some time, so i showed Mark the wonder of the Tim Horton's experience. We got half a dozen donuts and i wish i could say it blew our minds, but it was sugary fatass dough. Surprise! Although, for what it was, it was pretty good.
Angelique took us back over the giant bridge that seperates New Brunswick from PEI. There's usually a forty dollar tax to cross the bridge, but because she was a government employee--she didn't have to pay. So we didn't have to pay either! We had decided early on we would to enhance our chances of getting a ride. But what luck, riding with this hip, double-0 agent, we were born free! Amidst puffs she told us about the race riots in Nova Scotia in 1990. Apparently she had been somewhat involved after some event involving her sister. I won't go into it, but it seemed hostile. She also detailed the feeling of the separatist riots in Quebec, something she had seen as well. I had never heard of any of this turmoil, but she had apparantly been on the front lines. Really, we knew nothing of Québec, not the language, the history, the culture, nothing. "Expect to be treated rudely there," she said. I think at that point we gulped.
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