He was short and stocky, wearing black and white striped, farmer-style overalls. The top half was covered by a red and grey checkered mackinaw. He was wearing brown-sugar yellow leather boots. He was wearing yellow leather gloves and a checkered winter cap that may have matched his heavy jacket. It probably had a tucked under flap to cover his ears and neck in very cold weather. Grey hair protruded from under the cap over his ears. He had two pieces of luggage: a large black nylon suitcase and a fairly long, heavy-looking duffel bag, the kind that young hockey players have.
It was early October in the early 2000s. I was on my way to our cabin at OK Ranch west of Clinton, B.C., for the annual cattle roundup, culminating on Thanksgiving weekend. That’s when the cows with their calves and the yearling heifers would all be brought to the large corrals and loading chute complex at the “Green Buildings,” the headquarters of the large and sprawling OK Ranch. I wasn’t really a wannabe cowboy, I was actually a retired Alberta beef and grain farmer who lived in Coquitlam, a suburb of Vancouver, with my wife Jeanie and daughter Sheena.
I would be staying at the cabin that Jeanie and I had recently built on a one-acre leased property belonging to the ranch. I loved puttering around at the cabin, and in the fall, helping with the cattle handling, sorting, loading the calves, and preg-testing the cows, all part of about four days of hectic activity.
So here I was, heading for roundup, by myself. I had had lunch in Hope and would arrive at the cabin in daylight and in time to fix myself a sent-along-left-overs dinner. The back of the truck was pretty-well empty.
He was standing at the entrance to Lytton and the junction of highway 97 and highway12 hiking north.
I gave him my careful three second once-over. My mind said, “He’s OK, looks like a farmer.” I slowed down and stopped.
I watched in the rear-view mirror. He hurried towards the truck, carrying the suitcase but dragging the duffel bag. He swung the suitcase over the tailgate and threw it into the back of the truck. He lifted up the long duffel bag with both hands, over the tail-gate and dropped it into the box. I could see he was taking off his gloves as he walked around the truck. I didn’t think he really needed gloves yet: the weather was still fairly mild and we were at Lytton, often the hottest spot in Canada in the summer.
He opened the passenger door.
“Hello,” I said, “my name is Walter.”
He smiled, extending his hand. But the voice that replied wasn’t a he.
He was a she!
“Hello, I’m Anna from Iowa—that’s how folks remember me—Anna from Iowa.”
I was stunned, surprised and shocked, for two reasons. One, I never thought or imagined for a moment he was a woman, and two, I had promised Jeanie I’d never pick up a lone female passenger. I had kept that promise.
She was talkative. “On my way from Iowa, to Dawson Creek, British Columbia, Canada!” She stretched out Ca-na-da. “And I’m almost there! Maybe less than two more days if I’m lucky! You headed up that way?” she added hopefully.
“Afraid not, sorry,” I answered, “Not very far north of here’s a town called Clinton. I turn off the highway just north of Clinton and go west about 60 kilometers to my friend’s cattle ranch. It’s fall roundup time on the ranch.”
“I’m going to a cattle farm 24 miles north and west of Dawson Creek. It’s a grain farm mostly, but my job is going to be looking after and feeding 60 cows for the winter. The owners are driving to Arizona for 3½ months while I feed the cows—December, January, February and half of March. I’m looking forward to it!”
“I had a grain and beef cattle farm too, in Alberta, for most of my life. You must have some cattle experience too, but how did you ever find this job way up in Dawson Creek?”
“The internet, on-line,” she smiled. “Everything’s on the internet now! And I know more about horses than cows but I know quite a bit about cows too. I’ve worked on dairies in Indiana and Illinois milking cows, and this farm I’m going to has both—horses and cows! I’ll be feeding the cows using a team of Belgians—I can’t wait!”
“Wow!” I said “With horses! I didn’t think there were any farmers left in Canada feeding cattle with horses anymore— small square bales of hay?”
“Nope, large squares!” she replied. “They load them with a tractor in the yard onto a wagon or bob sleigh if there’s a lot of snow, on a flat-rack. Then they hitch up the team, haul the feed out to the cows and feed ’em.”
“How can you feed big square bales by hand?” I wondered out loud.
“Well, they said they load the big bales with a tractor, with the twines on the side...when you get out to the field, you stop the team, cut the twines and put them in some big container. Then you push off flakes of the baled hay with a fork while the team is walking along.”
“The team’s walking along, by itself? No one driving or holding onto the reins?” I asked.
“Nope! They just tie the reins loosely to the front of the rack. The horses walk along and the person on the rack— that’ll be me—pushes off the flakes of hay! Can’t wait!” She added, “And Belgians are the quietest, most gentle of all the draft horses. They don’t spook easily.”
“You’re right,” I said. “My brother had a team of Belgians— they don’t spook easily.”
I rolled all this around a bit and some questions about the entire procedure entered my mind.
“You’re not that tall,” I noted. “How are you going to get that heavy harness over those big Belgians?”
“I’ve told ’em they’d have to build me a couple of steps up to a small platform, like the farm women have behind their houses in the mid-west to stand on to hang clothes on their clothes lines. You seen ’em in Canada?”
“Maybe I have, seen them,” I said, thinking.
“Just a couple of steps, seven inches each to a platform, that’s about 21 inches high—plenty high enough and sturdy—strong but light enough for me to drag it around if I need too. I used one before when I worked with draft horses. The farmer in Dawson Creek said he’d build one for me just like I wanted after I got there. I got almost a month and a half before they head to Arizona, enough time for me to learn all the ropes.”
“You said they have beef cattle, beef cows. Do you know the breed?”
“Yup,” she answered confidently. “Black Baldies, all Black Baldies, breed ’em to some French breed—Limousin or Maine Anjou, I think. Sell all their calves in the fall so there’s just the cows and a couple of bulls to feed in the winter. They buy their replacement heifers from a friend or neighbour who uses Black Angus bulls on his first-calf Hereford heifers. That’s how they get their Black Baldies.”
This woman, in her 50s I guessed, was very knowledgeable about cattle as well as horses.
“You said you worked on dairies or horse farms in Iowa?”
“Horse AND dairy farms, not just in Iowa. Indiana, Illinois, even Nebraska and Ohio too. Got so’s I didn’t really care for the milking part of the dairy jobs. Always wet, and sometimes cold and wet too. That’s why I wear gloves a lot now. She held up her hands. “My hands can’t take the cold.”
“But it’s going to be cold in Dawson Creek in the winter,” I pointed out.
“Yup, I know, and I’m ready! I’ve got lots of winter clothes in the back,” she mentioned. “Winter clothes, winter boots, winter mitts, all back there. They told me to bring good winter clothes. I’ve got everything with me I’ll need, all but my dog. Didn’t bring my dog. Hard to hike all this way with a dog along. Nobody wants to pick up somebody, and a dog. So I left the dog with a friend. She’ll look after Suzie real good. That’s all I have is a dog. Used to have a horse too, but had to have it put down a few years back. And it’s even harder to find a job or move to a new job with a horse. And expensive too! Somebody told me I should have married an Amishman; could have worked with horses and had my dog too! But usually Amish women don’t do the horse work: they stay home and cook and bake and sew. Maybe they look after the hens. But I didn’t marry an Amishman, didn’t marry anybody. It’s just me and my dog and some friends. Besides,” she added, “if this job pans out like I think it will, becomes permanent like I hope it will, maybe they’ll let me go back to Iowa for my dog before next winter, if I can show them I’m the one they’re looking for! I think I’m the one,” she added.
She was enthusiastic, confident, likeable, probably reliable and dependable. She said she worked on dairy farms. You’ve got to be reliable and dependable to work on a dairy farm.
“Have you worked or travelled a lot all over the U.S.?” I asked.
“Nope,” she said, “just those states I mentioned mainly. Worked in Arizona for a time and I’ve been to California, that’s all, not worked there. I liked California, it’s a big state and it’s got a lot of vowels.”
“Did you say vowels?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes, I said vowels. I like states with a lot of vowels. California’s got five vowels, that’s a lot, but California’s a big word. Arizona, it’s not as big as California but it’s got four vowels. But take Iowa or Ohio—four letters each but three of them are vowels! Three out of four are vowels! How can you beat that? Nice states too, both of ’em, Iowa and Ohio!” she affirmed, “and Indiana and Illinois, four vowels each, they’re nice states too. I like them both! But I’ve lived a lot in Iowa, born there. Now I’m moving to British Columbia—two pretty big words but only six vowels altogether. But Canada,” she added emphatically, “Canada,” she repeated, “has three vowels, all “As”, and every second letter is a vowel! I like the sound of it…Ca-na-da.”
“Well, I hope you like Canada,” I said, thinking about my vowel geography lesson. “And I hope your new job will work out really well for you. I think you will fit that job! And the people of the Peace River area will be good, welcoming people.”
We were almost at the village of Clinton.
“Clinton’s a nice little western town,” I said, “a few motels and restaurants. It’s ranching and logging country. Not too many hours before dark, if you want to spend the night here.”
“Don’t very often stay in motels,” she replied. “I’ve got a big, heavy, quilted, waterproof sleeping bag with some other stuff in my duffel bag. I can sleep outside if I have to. but I don’t like to be wet…cold and wet. I was planning and hoping to get to a place called 100 Mile House tonight—crazy name, isn’t it, for a town or a city?”
“It’s a small city,” I said. “It’s called 100 Mile House because it started as a stopping place 100 miles from Lillooet, which was mile zero. That was the start of the Cariboo Road leading to the gold fields—Barkerville was the centre. There was a gold rush in British Columbia in 1858, nine years after the California gold rush in 1849. That’s how 100 Mile House got its name.”
She nodded, absorbing the new information.
“I’m turning off the highway to the OK Ranch about 10 or 12 kilometers, seven miles north of Clinton. There’s a rest stop and truck pull-out right at my turnoff. 100 Mile House is only 70 km from here, less than an hour, you’ll probably get a ride.”
I stopped at the rest area across from Big Bar Road, my turnoff.
“You know,” I said, “some of the long-distance hitchhikers I’ve picked up say they like to use a piece of cardboard with their destination town written on it, when the town’s not too many hours away.”
She smiled, “I use cardboard too, and a marker. It’s in my suitcase.”
I put down the tailgate. She pulled back the big black suitcase, got out the piece of cardboard from a zippered pocket on the top. She found the marker too. She didn’t even need to open the suitcase.
This woman was prepared.
“How am I going to get 100 Mile House on this little piece of cardboard?” she asked me.
“Just print 100 MILE on it, as big as you can. People around here will know.”
I wished her luck, we said goodbye, and she thanked me for the lift.
I turned onto Big Bar Road, the Big Bar area, the OK Ranch and our cabin. “BIG BAR,” I thought, “Six letters, two vowels.”
I didn’t tell Jeanie about the hitchhiker—until now.