At the secret hotel suites, Luscious Lyn cooks me up a fruity breakfast, with bacon, which I wolf down in my after-party comedown state in the window of the checker table cafe – oblivious to myself, and to the fact that I’m not quite ready to see the world today.
Afterwards, Sinful Sydney entertains wholeheartedly with increasingly warm and dewy-eyed recollections of a ’68 European tour; adversities creating the memories. You don’t go the beach, mister, you go to Pamplona!
The comedy meal with the belligerent waiting staff; the diminutive Fiat rental car with the bent door; getting on the wrong bus. And Lyn’s indecent socks … I really didn’t need to hear that one.
For some reason, I’m then introduced to the whole family.
And I’m totally stoked to be brought into the the inner circle, gabbing away in semi-hungover chatter with the camorra owners, when all the while all I’m thinking is … am I expected to marry someone here?
Flee the scene from out of the fire escape, into the cold light of day, where now I have no guidance; I’m partially reliant on my own intuition and a sense of direction. And smartphone apps! But they don’t tell me where to buy things I don’t need.
Once I’m done faffing around town in disguise, driving up and down every road in greater Timmins on the offchance I might see Millie, I hit the road to nowhere.
And almost immediately upon leaving the city limits, I stumble across a great bear sauntering across the highway right in front of me, with little care and a lax attitude to the green cross code.
Stopped in the middle of the road!
Apropos of nothing, I report quietly that I had no porridge this morning.
Once this bear has struck a pose for the obligatory photo (hands up!), I move on, along solidly deserted roads, heading east to new lands – Quebec.
At the provincial border is a language barrier, which someone drove a horse and cart through a few centuries ago.
Suddenly it’s freeflowing farmland, of a vibrant green I’ve not seen for a while, with odd collections of very large falling-down barns.
Fields littered with sidelined backie-cabs, or back-racks, or whatever they might be called around here. It’s a step up from bathtubs, I guess.
Through immaculately-presented Francophone villages pretending to be French towns, with Catholic churches landed from outer space to a stunned agricultural population.
Past the yellow buses picking up their mid-afternoon cargo, by the roadside shrine with the red heart and the diagonal ladder.
I’m welcomed in a clearing at Parc d’Aiguebelle by an alluvial man with a mature moustache and heavy hands, who insists on catching me out by speaking French into a hands-free phone.
I’m unsure if there’s anyone at the other end … I suspect he is testing me, trying to verify if I really exist and that I speak a kind of truth.
This is never confirmed either way, however shortly after this introduction I’m led by him in his pick-up truck along rugged tracks through continuous forest, like a scene out of a film (specifically: In Fear), eventually arriving to a cabin / chalet by a remote lake.
I’m led through the wooden door, and after a nimble sweep around the fireplace with a shaggy broom, and a gallic shrug, followed by a theatrical spin of the ‘Occupe’ sign (he’s done that before), my superior speeds off in his Ranger cab.
Suddenly I’m alone in my own private log cabin by my own private lake and how did all this happen, how did this all come to pass, is all I can think as I crack open a tin with a semi-bewildered expression.
Shortly after, a trip to Taschereau for allumettes and bifteck, from the local shop, all in French.
Then a walk down the boggy track around the lake to get my bearings, when really it’s a futile exercise … I don’t need to get my bearings – they’ll find me, at my log cabin in the forest clearing, up at the lake: Lac Lois.
It’s immediately clear that everything here Is Better. Doubt was left at the park entrance, which I may or may not collect on the way out in a few days.
Over my evening beers, the birds unexpectedly get all loud and barber-shop-like at dusk, to the point where they’re cranking it out like a chorus of car alarms, which I swear could wake the dead.
Yet I’m not remotely bothered, sat on my private wooden bench in my very own remote wilderness.
Possibly this is all because the lake itself isn’t bothered. Possesses it’s own quiet calm, occasionally going this way, occasionally drifting that way.
Those enigmatic birds are putting on a properly raucous music hall show for me now, but always staying hidden behind the curtains, concealed amongst the trees.
Yes, I’ve arrived in Monsanto’s cabin, and I’ve even got my own private Mien-Mo in the distance, the flat-topped mountain, exactly as it was written.
All I need to find now is Alf the Hallowed Mule, an ass.
An Outside World 