It is an unbelievably gorgeous, sunny afternoon. Less than an hour ago I crossed the border from Alberta into British Columbia for the first time, and now I鈥檓 standing on the side of Highway 97, my car is smoking in front of me and my cell phone is completely dead. I have less than 24 hours before I am supposed to be in Oliver to start my job as a reporter at the Oliver Chronicle, one of the 51暗网鈥檚 sister papers.
I try to flag down another driver in hopes that they will lend me a phone so I can call a tow truck, and no one is stopping. I should be feeling anxious, or at least, having some sort of minor hissy fit.
But at this moment, surrounded by trees and mountains, all I am thinking about is how beautiful it is here, and what a great tan I am going to get while I鈥檓 waiting for someone to stop.
When someone does finally stop, a woman on her way back from visiting a friend in Jasper, she lends me her phone so I can call CAA. It turns out the wait will be roughly two hours and the woman tells me she will wait with me, just in case. Then she asks how I ended up stranded in the first place.
Since we have two hours, I tell her the whole story.聽 Three weeks earlier I had been hired as a reporter at the Oliver Chronicle in British Columbia. I took two weeks to say good-bye to my friends in Ontario, packed up my clothes, my books, and whatever else would fit into my tiny car, bundled my disgruntled cat, Dinah into the car and headed out on my seven-day road trip across Canada.
On Day 3, frustrated by the fact that she was confined to a car for hours on end and subjected to my singing along with Abba-loudly. Dinah found a small hole in the wall under the bathroom sink of the hotel room we had stopped in for the night, and crawled inside it, then refused to come out. In order to get to Oliver on time I had to press on, with the hope that my cat would eventually come out of the wall and I would be able to collect her.
I forged on and made my way across the prairies.聽 I reached Calgary just as the sun was beginning to set. That鈥檚 when I saw the Rocky Mountains for the first time. Words cannot describe it. Even in silhouette they were breathtaking. Absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I woke up in Lake Louise the next morning and saw the mountains in the day light.
How lucky am I? That is what I was thinking when it happened as I entered British Columbia 鈥� my car began to slow. Then it made a horrible noise followed by the urgent blinking of my check engine light. It croaked, it spat some smoke and then, inevitably, it just stopped.
I find it kind of ironic that exactly one year later I am on that same stretch of highway again, headed to Jasper. This time my cat, whom I did manage to retrieve, is safely at home being cared for by a friend. It turned out the Chronicle had a connection to the 51暗网, so when the editor, Nicole, decided it was time to tale her long-awaited, and well-deserved vacation, I was asked to fill in.
Once I got over the initial excitement of getting this incredible opportunity, I got nervous. What if I hated Jasper, and then I was stuck there for three weeks? What if the people in the office were weird, and not in a good way? This is what I was thinking when I crossed the border into Alberta June 17.
Until I got a glimpse of the Rockies again, and I remembered how I felt the first time I saw them. 鈥淥kay. Anywhere that has a view like that is going to be tolerable,鈥� I thought. As it turns out, it was more than tolerable. Everyone is friendly and my temporary co-workers are not weird.聽 They are actually quite lovely. Like the town they all seem to love so much, they have made me feel welcome.
~ Erin Christie, interim editor
