By Donald F. Smith, Cornell University
Posted August 21, 2012

Five years ago my dog, Beau, and I drove from our home in upstate New York to Alaska and back. The first five installments can be found by clicking the "Traveling with Beau" link on the upper right-hand corner of the Home Page. In the last blog, Beau and I were spending the night in Minot, North Dakota.

Rising at four and anxious to get to the Canadian border before sunrise, so we skipped both our morning walk and any urges to feed our hunger. Beau had barely moved all night, and he continued his restful composure. The tide had turned and we were both happy. 

We wound our way around the western edge of Minot and headed northwest on Highway 83.  The smoke of the previous day had been replaced by a dense mist that clung like a tattered fleece to the Des Lacs River on my right. The two-lane road meandered along the waterway, creating a euphoria that I had not experienced thus far in our journey. This was the wilderness into which I had wanted to submerge my thoughts.  

By Donald F. Smith, Cornell University
Posted August 21, 2012

Five years ago my dog, Beau, and I drove from our home in upstate New York to Alaska and back. The first five installments can be found by clicking the "Traveling with Beau" link on the upper right-hand corner of the Home Page. In the last blog, Beau and I were spending the night in Minot, North Dakota.

Rising at four and anxious to get to the Canadian border before sunrise, so we skipped both our morning walk and any urges to feed our hunger. Beau had barely moved all night, and he continued his restful composure. The tide had turned and we were both happy. 

We wound our way around the western edge of Minot and headed northwest on Highway 83.  The smoke of the previous day had been replaced by a dense mist that clung like a tattered fleece to the Des Lacs River on my right. The two-lane road meandered along the waterway, creating a euphoria that I had not experienced thus far in our journey. This was the wilderness into which I had wanted to submerge my thoughts.  

Ducks cluttered every pond, every quiet bend in the river. Some were solitary, some in clusters, but all bobbed their little heads incessantly into the water like energetic mechanical toys.  As the jeep passed by, we would see either an upright duck, a headless duck with tail feathers pointing to the withering moon, or a duck in rotary transition. Beau would have been amused by the sight, but he lay like a baby resting quietly after a day of colic. 

Though I was awake and well-rested, my eyes did tricks on me as the light of the morning battled the charcoal from the night sky. I periodically slapped my cheeks and lowered the window to the damp rushing breeze to remain alert. Seeing a brilliant flashing yellow light ahead of me, I adjusted my speed to prepare for what I assumed to be a slow-moving construction vehicle ahead. The distance between our vehicles closed much too rapidly as I realized with horror that it was coming towards us down the middle of the road. Its weak headlights were overpowered by the mesmerizing orange strobe. Just before what would have been the point of impact and with an train-like horn blaring in my face, I veered onto the right shoulder and careened around the giant truck. I never really did see what it was as we passed each other in the dim light, but it appeared to be some sort of a road-cleaning truck with giant sweepers on its front bumper. It was the closest we came to an accident the entire trip, and I was understandably grateful for the loving angel watching over Beau and me that morning. 

We arrived at the border hamlet of Portal at 6:45 am, and I stopped for gas before approaching the small immigration house. A ranch truck pulling a loaded horse trailer had just cleared U.S. customs coming from the north, and three 40-something, salty-tongued women had climbed out for a stretch and a cigarette. One of the women--huskily-built--came over to pet Beau. She exhaled some second-hand smoke in his face then turned back to her rig and bent low under the trailer to inspect the rig's underbelly. Averting my eyes from the Josephine-the-plumber moment, I quickly topped off the fuel tank and hastily approached the waiting federal agent. I was his only customer. 

As was typical of each of my four border crossings into Canada, the interrogation was brief and humane. “Any firearms in the vehicle?”  “No sir.”  “Any alcohol?” “No sir.”  “Do you have more than ten thousand dollars in cash?”  “Oh, I wish,” I chuckled, and the agent waved us on. The whole episode was so quick and painless that Beau hardly had time to rise and wag his tail.

Beau meeting Larry and his wife from London, 
Ontario.We discovered that his veterinarian
 was a mutual friend who, like me, had 
graduated from the University of Guelph.Saskatchewan was always a hard word for me to spell. As a child, my mother would sometimes sit facing me in our kitchen on a cold winter night, our bodies warmed by the wood stove that remain stoked until the last child went to bed.  She would quiz me on multiplication tables, on the names of Canada's quaint lakes and rivers and mountains, and on spelling. When it came to the wheat province, she coached me like this: “Donald, think of it as a sequence of four three-letter syllables. Sas, like sis only with an ‘a’; kat, like a cat only with a ‘k’; chew, okay that’s four letters, but you make up for it by repeating the ‘w’ in the final syllable, wan.  On this August morning decades later, I recalled with remarkable clarity the touch of her loving hands and her unwavering love. Due to circumstances that were unknown to me on this August morning, I would drive to be with her in Toronto on my return trip in September.

We had breakfast 50 km north of the border at the hockey town of Estevan. Though lacrosse is the official game of Canada, hockey infiltrates every pore of family life in rural Saskatchewan. Signs for summer camps and used hockey equipment were as common as the large combines harvesting wheat. 


Harvesting wheat on the Saskatchewan prairie near Estevan
Colourful grain silos discharging wheat to waiting rail cars.I had looked forward to seeing southern Saskatchewan during harvest time and was not disappointed. Large combine harvesters rolled across the pan-flat prairie; immense silos offloaded wheat to waiting rail cars along the rural roads. Beau sat upright, fascinated by the sounds, the motion of the massive farm vehicles and the occasional clouds of wheat dust. On his happiest days of the trip, he alternated between looking out the front window of the jeep and peering obliquely through the side window into the rear view mirror. He would look back and forth between what was behind and what lay ahead. I thought of Winston Churchill who ascribed to the notion that one could never have hope to forecast the future without a clear sense of where we had traveled. 


Weyburn, a picturesque town of 10,000 people in wheat country.


Another 85 km up the road lay Weyburn, one of the prettiest little towns I have ever seen. Copper-colored sculptures of wheat stalks punctuated a well-groomed park where Beau and I had a long stroll. It was hard to stay on schedule with these surroundings, but it was mid morning and we wanted to reach the provincial capital of Regina for lunch.

Larry and his Siberian Husky on the
grounds of the capital building in Regina.We pulled into Regina about 1:00pm and met a friendly pair of Royal Canadian Mounted Police at the local Tim Horton's Coffee Shop. They went head-over-heels over Beau, and he loved the attention. Seeing what a well-behaved dog he was (or at least that's how they made him feel), they suggested we have a picnic lunch on the dog-friendly grounds of the provincial capital buildings. We followed their directions and spread our blanket on the flawless grass.  As we were finishing our cheese and chicken, Larry, a former member of the legislature, jogged by with his handsome Siberian Husky, and assertively shared his perceptions of American politics from a Canadian's point of view. He did most of the talking.

The remainder of the day was pretty much fast-forward because we needed to rest our heads in the mid-northern university city of Saskatoon that night. Tomorrow we would be in Alberta, and the following day, the much-anticipated Alaska Highway. I was beginning to feel the excitement.

Along the 260km stretch from Regina to Saskatoon, I rolled over in my mind the cost-benefit of camping that night vs finding a motel. Wanting another warm shower and hot dinner, I settled on the latter. However, a few kilometers south of the city, we came upon a large estuary. Though it was getting dusk, we drove around the back side of a large marsh area where scores of white pelicans and hundreds of ducks were moored on a sand bar. 
Pelicans and ducks in a secluded marshy area
south of Saskatoon.
The area was devoid of any human life and we were about a half mile from the road. Beau looked at me, and I looked at him. No words were exchanged. I backed the jeep next to a grove of small trees, and we set up our little tent. About midnight, I stepped outside to pee. Though I shivered as the air was like a chilled damp towel around my bare chest, I was dazzled by the brilliant Big Dipper balanced delicately on its handle amongst a million stars. The North Star reminded me of Bethlehem. Bull frogs throated their garumph and I heard occasional spashing that I assumed was from the waterfowl. Beau brushed against my leg as if to say, "Let's spend the rest of the night out here." We did.
                               Check in Saturday as we travel across Alberta.