No Cars Go: The Quest for Bareass

"We know a place where no planes go
We know a place where no ships go
...
(Hey!) Us kids know
(Hey!) No cars go"

After everything that's gone down between us -- confusing, disastrous, amazing, and considering my departure is so fast approaching, I figured Lewis and I had to do one more thing together before we head our separate ways. We've just been through so much eh? We've both been working our asses off, on opposite schedules -- and you know how hard that can be. But we decided Canada Day was the one.

So we loaded up on supplies at the supermarket, packed up back packs (just the way we had done -- so speedy and hype-excited -- in Ecuador), and loaded up on fifty bucks worth of beer. Our plan was to spend the rest of the day at Bareass Beach. Only we had no clue how to get there.

Now out in these parts Bareass Beach is somewhat of a legendary place. Clothing optional and tranquil, this riverside paradise is known to everyone but accessible by none. What I mean by that is, everyone we talked to said they'd been there -- and even raved about it -- but no one really seemed to know where it was or have any clue how to get there. Shit. At first we thought it was walking distance.

So we met up with Marek, our urban artz rap stylist with the giant 'fro, and wandered up and down Broadway in the sweltering heat with all our gear. In the alley behind one of the shops, we found a small fold-up chair. Totally functional. What are the odds eh? We talked to everyone and everything that moved. And some people gave pretty detailed "directions" too. And we would get all excited, until the next person would give equally detailed "directions" heading the exact opposite way. We heard a whole lot about Valley Road, crossing through farmers fields, dirt roads, and some big red barn. As we were finding no real leads we would toy with the option of just giving up our quest and sticking in town for the community-sanctioned fireworks. I mean, we didn't even have a way out there. And Marek would say things like: "Yo bro. Like what's even the chance that there'll be people there at the beach n' shit once you show up. Y'no' what I mean? [insert a wry and zesty smile here] I'm not feelin' this yo." We called a cab, and when it showed up they guy told us we were looking at spending a cool sixty or seventy bucks. So what we ended up doing instead was just stopping every couple blocks or so, sometimes opening the folding chair and drinking beers -- because all chill urban kids know how to make the city their beach.

Eventually after another beer, and sensing our lust for adventure, Marek decided he was just gonna make the night an early one and guarantee the catching of many "Z's". So he split.

And with little time remaining and dreams slowly dying (you have to understand too that for Lewis to keep his job, he actually had to be at work the next day at 10 a.m. -- giving us very little to work with) I just hit surfer mode. We were going to find this fucking beach and then we were going to get there. No two ways about it. Pouncing on the internet, I cross-referenced sources, played around with search terms, and poured over satellite images of the Saskatchewan river. In the end I was able to narrow down our course to two different possible routes.

We didn't really have any clue at all how we were going to make it there. But I brought along my hitchhiking "kit" (one sleek cardboard box with large, unadulterated surfaces and a shitload of coloured permanent markers). A lot of people didn't believe us, but I knew there was a market we could hit to ride the wave of cars all the way town to Bareass.

In the end we caught a ride with Caleb out towards the west end, since he was on his way to the bar. We told the long-haired cab driver our plan and he seemed intrigued. He didn't know where Bareass Beach was either -- although he agreed it was the place to be. Since he was just at the end of his shift he agreed to drive us right out to the edge of town, since we had come so far already. "That would be something if you could find out where it actually was," he said, obviously thinking of the money he could make if he could find a way to tap that niche -- $70 bucks ain't bad you know. But he had already gone on an exploratory mission with a passenger once. They returned from their wild goose chase empty handed.

As we pulled into a lonely fill station surrounded by farmers fields, leafy trees and highway, Lewis said, "I'm not sure why, but I have this feeling like I've hitched out of here before." Well, as I knew, this was because he most likely HAD hiked it out of this exact gas station before. He's like that. But I wasn't feeling it. Not enough traffic. Just too much uncertainty.

"Wow, there's like no one here," I said, concerned. "I dunno.... But I guess this is THE SPOT."

He nodded. It was the only gas station around.

"Hmm," I said, even more concerned. If we didn't get "out" then I was looking at one expensive and depressing cab-ride back. It was ALL or NOTHING now. We chose ALL.

"Too bad you don't wanna give us a ride down there..." I looked at the cabbie to gauge his reaction. We gathered our stuff, preparing to exit. He was interested, but not about to waste a bunch of time and gas on some kids that probably didn't have a ton of cash anyways. It had been a long day.

"I don't know if you're into it or not, but I mean, I could give you 35 bucks if you took us all the way there." It was a 40 or 45 dollar fare still from where we were. He wasn't biting.

"I mean, I know my directions aren't great or anything, but I've got a pretty good sense of the geography from maps and that...but I mean, you know, we want to get down there real bad so maybe there'll be someone that comes through here headed there. That's probably the best option, eh?" By this point I had given up and was thinking of some crafty little saying we could write on our sign ("Beer. Weiners. Bare. Beach." or "Show Us Bare Ass") to catch a helpful motorist's attention and prove we weren't insane.

"You have directions???" he whipped around.

"Yep."

"Thirty five. Let's do this."

********************************

It was so freeing to finally be out in the country and on the open road again. Things seemed clearer. Less congested. I was leaving the thoughts of mind-numbing work on the burger factory assembly line behind. I didn't have to deal with or ignore the drama of the Overdrive nightclub. You never know who I was about to meet or run into.

After maybe 10 or 20 minutes down the highway, we passed onto rural roads. But we ended up taking a wrong turn, passing through barbed wire fences, and halting abruptly at the bold set of "No Trespassing" signs. I was sure he was getting pissed. Just another wild goose chase.

"Wait." I said. "I've actually got TWO sets of directions."

We put our heads together, I read the scrawled notes, and we tried to figure out our path like it was a puzzle. See, we knew we couldn't be far away. The river was tricking us, too, the way it snakes back and forth. Making pinpointing a specific location quite difficult. So we flipped one set of directions on its head, inserted a few elements of the other and then used his cabbie super-sense to glue it all together. We passed the big red barn, turned onto the dirt road, and landed at the parking lot within five minutes. He only charged us $30 for the fare

***********************

Two or three guys ambled up the bank. Bulked up. Wearing only boardshorts. Carrying these miniature surfboards under their arms. And that's what they'll call them out here. They'll use them along the river and call it "surfing".

The river itself was as wide as some parts of the Mississippi, and you had to walk through a couple feet of swampy water just to get to the beach. Unlike what we had feared -- a place populated by fat naked old pervy men -- instead we found families and tons of girls in bikinis (always, however, in tandem with their boyfriends). The people were predominantly our age. In the distance sand bars stretched out like islands, I could see bodies and waterfowl filling them up. There was even a tent set up a little further down the shore.

An ATV four-wheeler jammed it out in the marsh behind us -- the blond bikini chick was definitely enjoying the ride she was getting from her prairie muscle man.

"I've found the perfect spot." Lewis said. He motioned just up the bank to a little sandy alcove cut out of the the tall grasses and brush. Primo. So that's where we set up.

We knew we totally could go out and mingle with the cute chicks off on the distant shores. It looked like some of them were swimsuit-less. Maybe we would luck out and a couple of them would end up being boyfriendless. But we decided we would rather just fucking sit on our asses (I had brought along that folding chair), drink beers, and chill. It was that amazing.

Somewhere far off in the background, heavy bass pulsing filled the heated landscape, giving the atmosphere somewhat of a drowsy lazed-out chill. It could have been a speaker system, but it could have equally been the rumblings of a train. Very drum n' bass. Very country. Other than that it was completely peaceful. And as I looked around and saw all the people milling about -- I knew we had made it.

I write this and then drift off...

And I know these moments will sustain me in the days and weeks ahead.
I don't care that we'll be stranded.
I need the ultimate relaxation of this place -- I need the breezes.

The long afternoon light. The twisting river -- as wide as luck.
The fine sand and golden sunshine.

++++++++++++++


And as it got dark people started to leave. The sense I got was "this thing is over and everyone knows it". Even the guys with the tent started to pack up. Normally no big deal. But the thing was, we didn't have a ride back into town. Lewis had to make it home so he could get to work the next day. And I had forgotten my cellphone at home. But we decided, you know what, fuck it. Let's make this one count. Even if it means being those two sketchy hitchhiker dudes at two in the morning in the hazy mists on the side of a lonely prairie road. And we would joke about, "Hey, wouldn't that be crazy if all the sudden two chicks just walked up all like, hey do you guys want to have a fire... and they totally had no boyfriends... or some shit..." Hahaha. Yeah...

At this point I was pretty out of it. I hadn't slept the night before, since I had been working on a blog post I wanted to get finished up. And the beers started to wash over me nicely. So I'm not really sure how the transition went -- but at one point I just came to my senses and realized, I was making a kickass fire surrounded by darkness, a couple girls and a bunch of chill dudes of all ages. We were joking about something, and I'm not sure what, but I remember it being light-hearted and really fucking funny. I busted out my sturdy flip-open hitchhiking knife and cut up some sticks for the crowd there. Out came the hot dogs. Later the s'mores. They would give us a ride home right to our door.

Lewis mixed drinks from our backpacker's bar-- vanilla vodka, gin, three types of juice, two types of pop -- and of course, beer. Molson Canadian (Canada's second oldest company, now owned by an international conglomerate that recently had to pay out $1.05 million for environmental harm) -- in honour of Canada Day (that's how the hot "offsale" clerk sold it to us anyways).

I put down my brown llama blanket and the girls huddled up against each other for warmth.

Someone brought a portable stereo. On went the radio.

Then, for the first time since arriving in Saskatoon, I heard that style of music that's been so refreshing to the worldwide alternative pop-rock scene. It pierced the Western armour (has it helped that Feist is now repping Calgary and not just Queen West... is that the link?) and streamed out all along the lower Saskatchewan River. In Toronto they call it indie-rock. The song was "No Cars Go" by the Arcade Fire.

Hearing that song reminded me of listening to the Arcade Fire's super indie album late at night with my little brother a couple years back -- stuck working my ass off up North, dreaming of returning to Toronto and my friends there, and trying to share what I meant by that feeling -- drinking tea and eating bread slices with margarine and jam with him, when we should have been sleeping, if I remember correctly. And I remember the days when I lived downtown in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood on Brunswick -- nights when practically our whole house would gather together in Pierre's room and just jam out on whatever instruments there were around (guitars, keyboard, bongo, vocal chords, etc.). Sweet stuff. I remember that time we finally got out of the city at Thanksgiving -- swimming in the frozen waters along the Great Lake, taking our time by the foam and wet moss along the shore. And we listened to Funeral all the way back right into downtown's light intensity.

So, from down at Bareass Beach, distant from the much-hyped and disappointing fireworks of the city, meeting musicians, cuties kicking back, tramping through waist-high water, shooting off roman candles and fireworks -- and staying warm by the fire... These are the moments that stick with you. And it's fucking awesome.

++++++++++

Also:
-The Arcade Fire sue Fox for stealing...no cars go?

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