Steve
How I lost a campsite turf war to an organized crime syndicate that weighed less than my helmet.
This is an excerpt from Throttle On: Unstuck on the Way to the Arctic Ocean, a travel memoir about riding a motorcycle from Austin, Texas to the Arctic Ocean and back. In this scene, I’m camped at Wapiti Campground south of Jasper, Alberta — settling into a week that was supposed to be quiet.
Wapiti felt practical, peaceful, close to the bone of nature. Hot showers, pine-scented mornings, evenings that opened into blue sky. That first night, sitting in my chair with the last coffee of the evening, the stars were blazing — bright, innumerable. The sound of water rushing nearby.
While preparing meals each day, Columbian ground squirrels emerged from their burrows like curious spectators — stocky tawny bodies sitting upright in the grass, dark tails held bushy behind them, whiskers twitching, waiting for a stray crumb. They’d vanish into one burrow and pop up from another nearby. One particularly bold squirrel (I named him Steve) developed a system. He’d approach from the left while his partner flanked right. Ocean’s Eleven, but with rodents and granola.
By day three, they’d recruited a third accomplice who worked perimeter security, only identifiable by a black streak across its back. I was being conned by an organized crime syndicate that weighed less than my helmet.
Throttle On is currently seeking publication. If you’d like to follow the journey, subscribe below — you’ll get monthly excerpts and occasional essays about motorcycles, grief, and the things we carry.