Day 112: Fear Becomes Anger - 28km

Tracy's in Bruce Mines to Jenna's in Echo Bay

So I'm writing this from the comfort of Station 1, a coffee house in Grimsby Ontario. It's been almost three weeks since being home. I'm resistant to recall this day. I'm not sure why, it brings up sadness, frustration. I guess I can easily fall back into that feeling that I felt that day.

At this point in the trip, so close to the end. I guess it was our 2nd last day. We're all mustering up a sense of fun and will and motivation to make the best of it. We left Tracy's through another (thankfully) short cut. We had to back track 2km or so but then we were back on back roads, passing through Mennonite farm lands. Horses and buggies and people dressed in black passing us on the gravel road.

It was pretty funny, every time Lux saw a horse and buggy coming towards us, no matter from what distance, his head shot up, ears perked forward. He could not get over the fact that these black horses were pulling big objects behind them. The only other time we had encountered a horse and buggy was in Quebec. A man was exercising his horse around a circle in his field, and Lux just started trotting around and snorting, looking back at the horse. So this time, when Mennonite's would go right by him he would start trotting and staring and getting all excited. It made Jewel and I laugh each and every time. It was interesting to see these carts, with full families sometimes, or just one person, going here and there with their horses. Working on their farms or selling vegetables. Such a completely different way of life, it always makes me wonder if its better, if they've got it figured out. And they probably wonder the same about our lifestyle. In the end, I don't think one is better than the other, they're just different.

We went past this one huge field, there must have been 100 horses in it. Most of them paints, there was palominos, appaloosa's, each and every colour, you name it. All running around, grazing. Babies of different sizes. It was almost like watching a massive herd of wild horses. Jewel and I stopped and just watched them for a while, Lux and Ora too. We continued on and made it to the highway. It was a huge four lane, with a divider in the middle. I was asking Jewel if we were supposed to cross or not, she said the number and to keep going. My blood grew hot immediately. I was scared. Even though the paved shoulder was there and a decent size, we had to pass along a guardrail which means we had no where to go if a car came too close.

"Are you sure this is right?" I yelled back to Jewel. "I think so.." She said, as we looked for the number at the house approaching. Cars whizzing by at 100km/h. We stopped just inside a driveway so we weren't so close to the road. I started to get angry at Jewel. She didn't know which side of the road it was on, her phone had died and I didn't want to continue on the driveway. We were going off a memorized house number. I tried looking it up and it didn't come up in the right place. I had a feeling it was the house I was looking at across the street. We couldn't see the number, but we knew now we were on the wrong side.

Joseph confirmed it was the house across the street. So we had two options, go through a very very deep, unknown ditch to cross the highway or back track towards traffic on the highway. We chose to back track. I was so mad. It was like any calmness I had earlier completely dissipated and I was furious. I wanted to blame it on someone, and so I blamed Jewel for not knowing. Though it wasn't her fault, and I had no right to be mad at her. I learned that day that when I'm scared, I get angry. I guess its a way for me to cover up my fear with false bravado, get angry instead of getting vulnerable.

We arrived a half hour before Jenna was home. I was happy to just lay on the trampoline as the horses grazed. Jenna showed us inside, we each got our own bedroom with a big double bed, a shower, and she even made this amazing vegetarian dish. We had a really great conversation with her about the trip and what we had learned so far. Jenna had traveled a lot herself and so she completely understood a lot of our struggles and realizations. She also understood we needed some quiet alone time, and we were all in bed by 8pm. One more day ahead.