Author: Rae

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Review of Memoirs of a Monster Hunter by Josh Gates

This weekend, I was finally able to read Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter, a travel memoir/behind the scenes account by Destination Truth host Josh Gates. I expected a fluff collection of memories from filming his show and was astounded to find myself laughing and crying in turn, amused by his uncanny ability to find the hilarious in the most mundane situation and touched by his insights on life, travel, and adventure.

It was his final thoughts on the concept of home that have prompted this post. He writes:

Travel does not exist without home. They are inseparably married. If we never return to the place we started, we would just be wandering, lost.

As a perpetual traveler I’m not sure I agree with that, but, then again, I’m like a hermit crab in that my home goes with me everywhere! I certainly do not feel like I am wandering aimlessly nor do I feel that I need to return to a certain place (other than my bed in Miranda!). While he and I travelers, we are of a different sort. As I wrote in a previous post, we wanders are of two types. I think he is the kind that travels the world looking for something (Bigfoot, mostly) while I am the kind for whom travel is an answer unto itself.

But we are kindred spirits, as evidenced by these words that convey my thoughts in a more eloquent way than I could ever formulate:

I read books by other career travelers and discern a sort of conflict that’s familiar to me now. It’s a melancholy felt by all professional pilgrims that simmers just beneath the joy of never having to conform. To live in motion is to always be caught between worlds, a liminal existence. I slow down just long enough to fall in love with a place, yet never long enough to feel like I belong.

Indeed. And as these winter days begin to grow longer and I continue to enjoy my unexpectedly long stay in southern Alberta, a mere three months from now will find me back on the road. This stop has been longer than expected, but no roots have grown, and soon Lethbridge will fade to being another place on the map where I hung my shingle for a time. I will leave behind wonderful friends who will surely draw me back, but by then the town I have grown to know will have changed and no longer be familiar.

What I have learned in three and a half years of travel is that once you really commit to the road, truly give it your heart and soul and turn your back on settled life, you really can’t ‘go home again.’ You have moved in a different direction than those you left behind and each day finds you further apart. This is the difference between travel being a vacation and travel being a lifestyle. With the former, you eventually return to your routine. With the latter, travel itself is the only constant.

Even if you have never watched Destination Truth, I still recommend Memoirs of a Monster Hunter to the armchair traveler who doesn’t take this world too seriously and also to anyone interested in cryptids like Bigfoot and the Jersey Devil.

Josh’s writing flows naturally from sentimental gushing at the wonders of this world to crude descriptions of circumstances that would break a lesser man. From the summit of Kilimanjaro to the radioactive ruins of Pripyat, the haunted forest of Romania to the dark waters of Vietnam, Memoirs of a Monster Hunter is a book well worth reading, and more than once. I look forward to the further adventures of Team Truth when the show comes back with new episodes in January.

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Out of Excuses (Except For, You Know, Weather and Lack of Time)

I still have a couple of carpentry projects pending in Miranda, but they keep getting pushed out of the way because they need some sawing and my trusty jigsaw died last winter. This summer, I asked Gary if he had a jigsaw I could borrow and he didn’t.

Fast forward about six months and look what was under his and Jody’s tree with my name on it:

jigsaw (picture taken for my French readers!)

It was all Gary’s idea. Isn’t he great?! Of course, I had to open the box the minute I got home and plug the saw in. Thankfully, I have nothing to saw in The Apartment. 😀

Jody had a lovely pashmina for me and, I can’t believe I was surprised, some Tupperware! Hee hee.

I went over to their place today for a non-light lunch. I am looking forward to deep fried turkey later this week. 🙂

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A Hellish Week (But Not For Me)

It has been one hell of a week out here in Raeland. My employer said that my blog must be particularly entertaining these days and was very surprised to learn that I don’t blog about work! It really is incredible that my blog is soooo boring these days when my life isn’t!

But I threw out a project idea at them and they don’t have a problem with it. So sometime in late spring, when a bit of time and distance will have passed, I hope to publish The Untold Stories of My Lethbridge Winter: adventures in apartment management. 😀

As a hint, this week has really reminded me of a classic short story by Carl Stephenson that inspired a great episode of MacGyver. Different foe, but, same idea…

It’s a four-day weekend at my end and I’m not doing any holiday celebrating, but I’ll have done 24 hours worth of transcription work by the end of it. So I expect to be as bleary-eyed as everyone else come Tuesday morning!

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My Lethbridge Winter, So Far

We are well into the end of December and thus far a Lethbridge winter has been about a gazillion times more pleasant than were any of my winters in British Columbia

We did have one cold snap of a few days, but every B.C. winter has had at least one of those. Thus far, I haven’t experienced anything that would have made me unduly comfortable in a properly prepared rig in the right place. I would have needed to be in an RV park with 30A power plus an extra 15A circuit where Miranda could have been skirted as well as sheltered from the wind.

The major difference here is that there is SUN, so the rig would have warmed up considerably inside even on the coldest of days. I went into Miranda during the cold snap where we hit about minus fifteen during the day and even with just one heater running, Miranda’s interior was well above the freezing mark so I don’t think I would have spent any more on heating here than I have in BC where I had to fight the damp.

Of course, it’s only December, but I landed here in late March last year when the weather was already much better than that on the western side of the Rockies, even with that April 1st snow storm. So we really are getting over the hump towards spring.

I frequently have to run between my buildings and not having to put on a coat is great. I just keep the heat down in the office so that I don’t experience a shock when I step outside. I wear fleece or wool and if the wind is particularly biting I’ll add a pashmina shawl. This is so much less cumbersome than what I expected; having to pull on boots and full winter gear each time I have to go outside!

As for snow, it has been negligible and has kept on melting. I decided to not get snow tires for the car and have avoided going out during inclement weather. The four season tires  I bought in Whitehorse have been more than adequate so far. I really agonized over this decision, but as the weeks marched on and I saw no need for them, I decided to spare myself the expense. If I had to drive every day regardless of the weather, then, of course, the tires would have been purchased.