We drove home from Calgary and a visit with our new granddaughter on Monday, coming up against a steady and growing stream of traffic on Highway 22 and then Highway 3. No surprise there — many would have been the same vehicles we saw leaving the Calgary area on Friday afternoon and evening.
The surprise came at about 1 p.m. as we left Fernie. My eyes widened at the oncoming bumper-to-bumper traffic crawling eastward at a snail’s pace. As it continued past the ski hill turnoff, then Morissey and right to the tunnel, I said to Angela that the mass of traffic gave me a creepy feeling — like something terrible had happened and we didn’t know about it. With that comment I suddenly remembered a brief chat in a liquor store the day before, when a clerk saw by account that I lived in B.C. and asked if we had any problems with the mudslides near Golden.
How crappy, I thought, to have looked forward to a long weekend spring getaway, only to have to make a long detour to get back home. No better, either, for the folks making their expected drive from Fernie, Koocanusa, Yahk, Kootenay Lake and I suppose even Invermere, only to encounter masses of traffic that would add hours to the drive.
When I was a kid in Calgary, the drive to Fernie took us south to Fort Macleod and then east on Highway 3. It was almost exactly 200 miles and it was a long trip back then. We always stopped at the junction of Highways 2 and 3 for lunch. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that Highway 22 became a viable option. Even then it wasn’t paved all the way and on one memorable trip with our young sons, Angela encountered a section of road so waterlogged that a Cat was towing vehicles through.
On our countless trips back to Calgary since, Highway 22 has become my favourite drive, with gentle curves winding through the beautiful landscape and the view of the Rockies to the west. But I have never for a second envied the steadily increasing numbers of families who make the drive to condo or RV destinations as they haul snowmobiles, ATVs, boats and trailers with vehicles laden with bicycles, kayaks, golf clubs and other recreation gear. Once in a while might be fun, but for many it’s a routine migration stimulated by the need to escape the city for weekends in the outdoors. Even in shoulder seasons, when ski hills are closed and the weather remains wet and chilly, the lure of a condo or RV away from the city is too tempting. I envision families huddled around a table, playing cards, tapping away at their cellphones and pacing like lions, all the while asking if the drive was worth it.
Those of us lucky enough to live in rural areas don’t have nearly the hassle. Many of us can walk a block or two and be in the trees or on a mountainside, breathing fresh air and listening to the calls of birds. A short drive is all it takes to find a huge variety of experiences. Even better, when we do make our excursions to cities, where we find family and a great variety of culture, we tolerate traffic and chaos because we know we are only visitors. Heck, getting caught up in rush hour traffic on Deerfoot Trail even affords us the opportunity to feel smug in the knowledge that we don’t have to buck the grind on a day in, day out soul-sucking routine, with only the dream of a four-hour drive to Koocanusa on Friday afternoon to sustain us.
Friends in Vancouver used to joke that Angela and I did more fun things in a week in the city than they did all year. That’s the great rural secret — we can escape to a city and ratchet up our energy level in a heartbeat, moving at full throttle for several days, knowing that we will soon return to our normal lives, slow down and re-energize. For city folk, I don’t think it works quite the same way. It takes much longer to shed the pace of urban life and slow down long enough to smell the rural equivalent of roses.
I hope, for the sake of the drivers caught in the long, tedious line of traffic west of Fernie on Monday, that it was an anomaly caused by the mudslides on Highway 1. I wouldn’t wish for that drive to become a routine on anyone.
Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.