A Few Days Alone in Banff National Park, Canada, Confirms Thoughts of Auto-Extinction
Posted by: filastine in General, tags: bear, coyote, tree, voluntary human extinction, wildernessEach nightfall brings a wave of deep mammalian terror. Total darkness, total solitude. We are programmed to fear this, just another link in the food chain. Scrawny naked ape so vulnerable sleeping on the ground, bigger animals with claws and teeth all about.
I find an an abandoned canoe on this glacial lake where no road arrives. How did it get here? A paddle made from chunks of wood pushes me towards the other shore. The sky turns black and the lake erupts into to milky green whitecaps. Maybe this janky canoe will leak or capsize in the storm. I’d die of hypothermia long before reaching the shore. A corpse would float to shore and be eaten by scavengers. I paddle furiously into the wind, feeling so tiny, and also so fucking happy.
After a few days my food runs out. And this place it better off without me anyway. It’s time to retrace steps back the road, fording rivers, wading through bogs.
Back at the highway there is a coyote with a panicked expression trying to cross the road. His eyes are golden, his fur dense and soft; he gets close to sniff and decides that I’m less a threat than the passing traffic. When the road is free of cars I clap and stomp to spook him across. We continue to stare at each for awhile. I feel profoundly apologetic for this highway and it’s cars, which, even in this most remote and protected place, circumscribe his territory and threaten his life.
I hope someday the coyotes, bears, and their allies encroach on human landscapes, that every trip to the corner store is an opportunity for attack by a mountain lion, that forests sprawl to swallow the cities.
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Wow, you weren’t kidding – this place looks completely majestic. Thanks for sharing these photos. xo Val
The only time i successfully hopped a freight train was with 3 friends in 1998. We got on a freight train in Vancouver, BC on a train headed for Toronto.
After a beautiful breathtaking journey through the rockies, we were unfortunately spotted and removed from the train in Banff.
A very friendly police officer convinced the train company not to fine us and then gave us a ride to the youth hostel while pointing out to us where to try and hitchhike from in the morning.
My friend said to him “You’re the nicest cop I’ve ever met.” The officer replied “I just figure: people don’t give me any trouble, I won’t give them any trouble.”
On the way to the hostel we passed a bear overturning a dumpster and the officer said “That’s what I gotta go deal with next.”
All 4 of us together easily hitchhiked from Banff to Winnipeg, most of the way we got a ride from a very friendly high-ranking Canadian Freemason, who was friends with the former Prime Minister of Canada.
When we told him we were on our way to an anarchist conference, he said “Oh, i have a friend in the lodge who’s an anarchist, into Bakunin and all that.” Very, very strange world!
Wonderful view from your red canoe. Do you know a short story by Peter Carey, “Exotic Pleasures” (in The Fat Man In History collection) Some [intergalactic I guess] birds are brought to earth by humans, birds which are strangely captivating, addictively pleasurable, but the birds have an agenda ….. the result, seeds which quickly crack through the concrete of cities and roads and trees grow, taking over the human world. Forest literally sprawling to swallow cities as you say – it’s a fantastic vision, one I’d like to see (I plant native trees in the cities I live in, little leaps of faith) ….. If you haven’t read it you may like. Thanks for more of that inspiration.