HEDONIST

KOOTENAY NATIONAL PARK, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Kootenay, BC. First time driving internationally and I didn't know what or how long a kilometer was and honestly didn't care enough to find out until the gas light came on and I had to do the conversion in my head at 11pm on a highway in the middle of nowhere Canada which is a terrible time to rediscover you're bad at math.

We were somewhere around the BC border on the edge of the Rockies when the reality of what I'd left behind began to take hold. A failed relationship, a semester that was slowly winning, a version of myself I wasn't totally proud of. Django was in the passenger seat because he didn't have a say in the matter and also because he's a dog and he's the best thing that came out of the worst thing so he goes everywhere now. Something something Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but I'm no attorney and I didn't have a journalist with me. Just a dog and a truck that probably shouldn't have been in Canada.

The drinking age in BC is 19. I was 20. Overqualified and making the most of it. Cross the border, leave whatever I'd been carrying in the US at the customs booth, spend a few days in the Rockies doing whatever was available with zero shame and zero explanation. Mr. International. An outlaw running from his responsibilities at a blistering 60 kilometers per hour which I'm told is fast but I had absolutely no frame of reference.

Found a campsite. Met some French Canadians who didn't speak much English and honestly that was fine because we were all saying the same thing anyway which was let's make some bad decisions with good liquor and see what happens. What happened was I ended up in the woods at some point returning everything BC gave me back to the forest floor. The girls spent the whole night paying more attention to Django than to me which was the correct call by every metric. He's better looking. Better behaved. Didn't throw up. I'm not bitter about it.

Woke up in the truck the next morning held together by a dog who had already forgiven me before I even remembered what I'd done which is more grace than I deserved. About forty yards out a bull moose was doing what bull moose in rut do which is to say he was absolutely sending it with a cow and had zero shame about any of it and zero interest in my opinion on the matter. Pure instinct. No apology. No explanation. Just an animal being exactly what it was because that's all there was to be.

I watched him and thought yeah man. Same.

He finished. Looked at me. Walked off like nothing happened.

The audacity. The inspiration.

Called it Hedonist because I wasn't exactly in a position to judge.

We're all Hedonists. Some more than others.