Boomerang

We decide to head to a tree farm in the middle of nowhere to live and work for a month and wait for the snow. Time to experience a different side of Canada. Oh boy it's different. This is cowboy land, red neck country! It’s great!

An 11 hour overnight bus ride sees us standing bleary eyed at a roadhouse, which turned out to be the town, waiting for our new family to collect us. Up pulls a big red truck, and out steps a guy, shoulder length bleached blonde hair, looking exactly like Hulk Hogan, wearing the full cowboy get up complete with a cow hide hat and a coyote fur jacket head and all. That’s him. Should be fun.

We get to the farm. It is a massive timbered farmhouse. It’s a cowboy mansion. There are two dogs and three cats all super cute plus 57 horses to ride whenever we want, and quad bikes to burn around on. This guy is loaded…and so are his guns as he frequently mentions. Our initial tour of the house does bring up four alarm bells. One, the house is decorated with maybe 100 shot and stuffed animals. This really works well for my phobia of dead animals. I’m a little jumpy. Outside my bedroom door is a full sized stuffed grizzly bear, but luckily the screams of terror during my nightly bathroom visits are gradually slowing down. Two, 'This is where I store my guns, I have 80, but I haven’t shot anyone yet. You’d better work hard’ Three, ‘Do you like steak? ‘Um yes’. ‘Over in that paddock is Apollo’. ‘Oh, he’s cute’. We are shooting him next week, gotta stock the freezers up. Gulp. Four, ‘It’s really remote out here, you could bury a body and no one would find it’.

Aside from the constant jokes of them shooting us these people are a real hoot, albeit slightly askew. We had a party one night and cranked up a bon fire and all the local cowboys came around. The next morning we sported cowboy boots, saddled up and went for a ride. The background information on my horse- he is really chilled out most of the time but can ‘schitz out at nothing’. Soul mates I say. So of course he ‘schitez out’ at nothing and rears and bucks me off. I land on my ass in the grass and don’t even so much as get my clothes dirty. What a rush! I feel like a real cow girl now-Yihaaa! Next time we ride I am swapping horses. This time I get the one that is blind in one eye. Me too. Soul mates I say! Just make sure you are steering when we go along the cliffs. No problem. His left eye, my right. We’ll be fine.

This is where I must leave you all. Not for good I hope!