My old man gave me solid advice before I left home: make sure to be within walking distance of a public transit station in case I ever needed to escape. How silly I thought. However, after 4 days of living in a treehouse on Quadra Island I realized I needed to leave and the only way to do it was by running away in the middle of the night. Although beautiful, Quadra is weird, the family I was staying at was horrible and my woofing duties were …. odd. I did 3 th
ings at the farm and my only instruction I ever got was to "do my task mindfully.” I unsuccessfully used a jackhammer to try to dig a new well (photo to the right: Billy was headfirst down an old well. He should not have felt save with me un-mindfully doing my job of making sure he didn‘t die.), unsuccessfully tried to un-sink a sunken ship (it is now artificial seaweed at the bottom of the Pacific) and I was an unsuccessful midwife to a cow (the calf was a stillborn and the cow ended up getting shot in the head.). I like adventure but I was afraid, actually terrified, of what I would unsuccessfully be doing the rest of my stay with this family.
I didn’t know how to politely tell my host family that I deeply hated them so I decided to revert to my childhood days of packing all my stuff in a bag and leaving a note behind saying “Good riddance! I’m never coming back!” and then head off into the forest. Unlike my 9-year old self I didn’t just climb a tree for 20 minutes and return to a family that never even realized I ran off.
Looking back I know what I did today was very dangerous and I can‘t believe I actually did it and I plan on never doing anything like this again. Hitching a boat ride at a random harbor was really stupid and then having to lurk around the greyhound station with professional lurkers in the wee-hours of the morning was dodgy. I've never been more thankful for a flashlight and my iPod in my life. But, after 11 hours of traveling everything worked out - phew - and I’m back at Salt Spring where everyone is naked, every other one is a homosexual and every other other one is a multi-millionaire.
ings at the farm and my only instruction I ever got was to "do my task mindfully.” I unsuccessfully used a jackhammer to try to dig a new well (photo to the right: Billy was headfirst down an old well. He should not have felt save with me un-mindfully doing my job of making sure he didn‘t die.), unsuccessfully tried to un-sink a sunken ship (it is now artificial seaweed at the bottom of the Pacific) and I was an unsuccessful midwife to a cow (the calf was a stillborn and the cow ended up getting shot in the head.). I like adventure but I was afraid, actually terrified, of what I would unsuccessfully be doing the rest of my stay with this family.I didn’t know how to politely tell my host family that I deeply hated them so I decided to revert to my childhood days of packing all my stuff in a bag and leaving a note behind saying “Good riddance! I’m never coming back!” and then head off into the forest. Unlike my 9-year old self I didn’t just climb a tree for 20 minutes and return to a family that never even realized I ran off.
Looking back I know what I did today was very dangerous and I can‘t believe I actually did it and I plan on never doing anything like this again. Hitching a boat ride at a random harbor was really stupid and then having to lurk around the greyhound station with professional lurkers in the wee-hours of the morning was dodgy. I've never been more thankful for a flashlight and my iPod in my life. But, after 11 hours of traveling everything worked out - phew - and I’m back at Salt Spring where everyone is naked, every other one is a homosexual and every other other one is a multi-millionaire.
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