It was late at night, no one was awake. I was by myself on a couch with earbuds in my ears, iPhone in my hands and Netflix playing an episode of the X-Files on the tiny screen.
The blinds are pulled up on the window directly in front of me, so the farmyard is easy to see. It’s eerie in a way. Perhaps it’s because I’m also in the middle of reading On the Farm, a heavy tome about the escapades of Robert William Pickton. Through the window I can see barn-like structures stacked with round hay bales. A large payloader is directly in my line of sight. The scene is reminiscent of the front cover of the book, a black and white picture of the Pickton farm located somewhere near Vancouver, B.C., in Port Coquitlam.
My earbuds blare creepy and suspenseful sound effects and music from my phone, while Dana Scully and Fox Mulder attempt to track down a group of devil worshippers in a small town. I did not expect a 4-D experience soon to add to my moment of suspense and eeriness.
Earlier in the day I had seen a long black creature, which looked like a weasel or ferret, cross over a snowbank during dusk and scamper off out of sight of the window. Just as the music was extra loud in my ears, when something encroaching was surely about to jump out at Mulder and Scully, and just as I was running over the recent stories I had read about Pickton in the book, that little black creature somehow returned and, unbeknownst to me, had snuck up to the window. He then violently flung himself at it like a bird who had lost its way.
The window donged. My body jumped. My heart thumped. I was stunned. Somehow Netflix had added a new feature to my subscription, an option I had involuntarily chosen where real life occurrences would align directly with the action on the screen. This was truly a 4-D experience and I was impressed. Technology these days.
The next day I found out the creature was a marten. Everyone wanted to call him Martin, but I insisted on calling him Paul, a political pun. It was probably one of the funniest things that happened to me during my Christmas vacation in Jasper, Alta., at the Jasper Park Stables.
The rest of my Christmas would be spent catching up on reading, playing board games, taking in some local restaurant culture and appreciating two half-days on the slopes of Marmot Basin.
Arriving just before Christmas, my mother and I joined my father, his friend Leonard and Leonard’s wife Lorna for some free accommodations. We received free accommodations because we were staying in the ranch’s staff housing buildings with my father. Our place had three bedrooms with single beds, and a single and separate small room with only a stand-up shower in it, a shower I soon dubbed the “reverse shower.”
I called it the reverse shower because you went in smelling kind of bad and came out stinking worse, or so it seemed. The water from the well was so rich in sulphur it had a terrible sour gas smell. Luckily it smelled during the shower only, unless we were tricked and had become used to the undesirable, but interesting, odour. I sometimes wondered if we were going out to eat in restaurants smelling terribly of rotten eggs. Maybe we didn’t receive welcoming side glances from other patrons not because of our raucous conversations and loud laughter but because we were smelling terrible in public places.
We were staying on the farm, complete with the smelling shower, because my father and his friend had picked up a two-and-a-half week job driving horses. The two were in charge of wagon rides at the Jasper Park Lodge. Over the Christmas break, I volunteered my time helping out with the wagons, harnessing the horses and sweeping snow off the wagon benches.
In the morning, we were tasked with prepping the horses to be harnessed at the ranch, and then loading them into a large white horse trailer. Once the horses were loaded, the four of us – Leonard, my dad, myself and the boss – would cram into the boss’s truck and head over to the lodge for setup.
The boss’s name was Dale, an old cowboy in his 70s, who had purchased the ranch after his third attempt at retiring. He was a nice enough fellow, didn’t speak much and wore a cowboy hat. He lived on the ranch with his wife Mary in a log house on top of the hill. They even invited us over for Christmas dinner one night. Good people, I would have to say.
Back to the horses. To prepare the animals – four Belgian draft horses weighing on average around 1,800 pounds each – we would lead the animals out of the corral and tie them up at the hitching post in the tack shed area. Here my father handed me a curry comb and a brush, two items I used to scratch and pull the extra horse hair away in two sequential wiping motions; first with the curry comb and then with the brush. I am told by the cowboys there are two main reasons for brushing down a horse. First, it gives you the chance to check every inch of the animal for sores and second, you need to especially focus on brushing off the matted hair where the collar will sit, to reduce pain from pulling hairs.
After the brushing was complete, I was told to go into the tack shed and pull a draft harness from one of the shed’s harness hangers. I was put in charge of harnessing Dan, Diesel’s brother. I was told they are full brothers, full Belgian and 14 and 15 years old. Unfortunately, Dan has an old back with an S-curved spine. I guess it comes with age.
The first thing I had to do was attach the collar around Dan’s neck. The collar is a large round piece of equipment that reminded me of an oval-shaped motorcycle tire. There was a buckle to undo and then I placed it around the neck and did up the buckle, much like putting on a belt to hold up your jeans.
The harness is separate from the collar. I pulled it off the rack from inside the tack shed and it reminded me of a knot, a tangle of leather straps, buckles and all sorts of intertwined mess. I was told to put a piece, called the hame, up and over the collar and to attach it directly to the collar itself. The hame then leads down the horse and towards the tail where I was told to attach the breeching around the ass area. I was getting a little frustrated. None of this tangle made sense to me. I couldn’t help but laugh on the inside at my feeble attempts at unlocking the secrets of the tangled draft harness.
When the harness was finally in place, we loaded the horses and headed out.
To be continued ...
