And speaking of the prairies, Tim and I were B.S.ing having a philosophical discussion over a couple of Blue Beavers the other day, and he suggested that I share some of the adventures I’ve had in foreign places with our readers. So that’s what I’m going to do.
The past summer I spent three months hiking through the badlands of the Great Hot Brown South; also known as the sovereign nation of Medicine Hat. The first thing I discovered was that you need to wear a sunscreen with an S.P.F. of at least 200, otherwise your skin will literally start to bake like a chicken. Now most people think that all of the land around Medicine Hat is as flat as Saskatchewan. This is not entirely accurate. In some places there are large valleys, which if you think about is a spot where the land is flatter. While it is true that there are no trees for miles around, in one place I saw two shrubberies. One was slightly higher than the other, so it was a two level effect with a little path running down the middle. I saw a few herds of cattle out there, but these poor beasts were incredibly scrawny, due to the fact that there is no grass for them to eat. There is no grass because it doesn’t grow very well in desert sands.
I didn’t see a lot of wildlife apart from antelope which is the one thing that seems to thrive down there. But there was one or two mangy coyotes around and someone told me that there were Burrowing Owls in the area. I’m not sure how that could be seeing as there are no tree for them to build their nests in. Of course no life is wilder than pipe-liner life, which I also saw a lot of ( but that’s a different post for a different day).
The independent nation that is the city of Medicine Hat has a very interesting history regarding how they came to secede from Alberta. I met a young lady by the name of Candace who works in one of the restaurants and is also a student there. She said she could tell me all about it. We started talking and we also started drinking Blue Beaver and then we started doing more drinking than talking and then we drank some more. The next morning I woke up with no recollection of what happened the night before. I also didn’t know how there came to be a Newfie pipe-liner sleeping in my tent. And I never found out the history of Medicine Hat.
So if you ever go down there, this is my advice wear something that will effectively block the suns rays, like an air conditioned building; and stay away from pipe-liners especially the grader operators and hoe-hands.
