Cursed (I don't believe in it!)

Have you seen the people who bring excuses for everything they mess up?! I have! I was on Highway #22 again this past weekend on my way to Bob Creek to bag Thrift Peak and was listening to the news. I learnt that Toronto Maple Leafs just had lost to Boston Bruins in gave 7 and was eliminated. There was this guy who was saying: We are cursed! 

What kind of stupid nonsense is that?! Why don't you simply admit that the opponent played better and kicked your ass?! Then you can focus on the next season and perhaps come up with a plan to beat them or simply play as hard as you can despite the fact that you most likely cannot beat them! 

Now going back to my the second trip to Bob Creek in the current year, so far: I can say that I was quite confident. I rented a Frod F-150 to be sure that I won't get stock in the gravel road and woke up quite early. This trip was filled with weird things! First of all when I pulled into the trailhead's parking lot, I think, I saw the same two trucks that I had seen the previous week! I thought to myself: How could that happen?! The guys have been lost in the woods for a week and no one has come for them?! 

Then I started my hike under the cloudy sky. One usually reaches a set of short rocks after a little more than one hour. This time I saw someone from distance. A guy in hoody. What came to my mind was the stories of the hikers who had been killed in the US, at that moment! I thought to myself what if this guy has a gun and shoots me while I was closing! Nothing! I'll be done and there's nothing I can do and the knife is not even useful! I usually carry this long knife and I don't know why! Probably because I've paid for it! I'm just waiting for a morning that I walk into a coffee shop on my way to a trailhead with this thing hanging from my side and someone says something to me or call the police! So I kept going and I think the guy either didn't notice me or simply ignored me. 

I continued and passed the creek twice and got myself on the trail going up the hill at this point I saw a few White Tail Deer but they noticed me even I could get my camera ready. They disappeared in the woods. Then I saw a big house-like tent on my left or perhaps I shall say at the west side of the trail. This was not there last year I was going up with Stout. I decided to sneak by before triggering anyone to come out and shoot me in the middle of nowhere! 

It looked like bears or one bear, I don't know how many of them are there, were active in the area. This paws print a few more was seen on the fresh snow, possibly, from the day before. I also saw a leg, a deer's leg perhaps. The rest had been used as a meal, most likely

The trail took a strange turn at that point when I went a few meters higher and I found it difficult to follow. Not only because there was no sign of it anywhere but on my GPS but also because of the snow on the ground. I was hoping that I could see the damn lookout but looking around the foggy mountains showed nothing. I decided go back to the trail and that was when I realized the pair of boots I had on, instead of the heavy work boots of the last week, were not good either! The snow started at that moment and I decided to go back down! 

When I got back to the main trail in the valley the snow had turned to rain when I reached the rock, I realized the guy or guys had left. I walked the rest of the trail in the rain. It was a little passed 06:00 hours by the time I reached the parking lot. The two trucks were gone! So it's possible that the tent-rock guys were the owners of the trucks. 

(Photo, top: This hut/tent in the middle of the woods freaks me out! Who the hell builds a home in the middle of nowhere and how do they live there?! I didn't dare closing and passed by quietly. The closest community to this area is Pincher Creek. It would take someone at least 1 hour to get there in a normal day)

Who is Backward and Primitive?

 Sally Field, the great actress who plays Betty Mahmoody (nee Lover) in a scene of movie Not Without My Daughter in the 90's calls Iranian society of post 1979 Revolution, backward and primitive, which it was and to some extent still is. Iran and generally most of the counties in the region, and I can list many, are male dominant societies. A very recent example of this concept for the world is the way Taliban treats women but the fact is other countries are not much better than Afghanistan, including Iran. People, generally, and women specifically are deprived of their basic rights and that is not only that. People are deeply tied with centuries-old religious and non-religious beliefs. Iran, as I said, is just not as just restricted and because they have natural resources, they're well-off or perhaps I shall say were well-off! Now with the sanctions, the whole country is screwed-up! The country is  not much better than the Taliban-ran Afghanistan!! Same in other nearby states: Look at what has been happening to women in India, with rape and humiliation. That is another country which the news gets out with not much difficulty.

Now we're going back to North America, where people are modern and civilized! Yet the so-called indigenous people, a very small minority, have lots of power, simply because they are in inhabitants of this continents for centuries! 

There's this guy named Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse who claimed to Medicine Man and had sexual relationship with or without consent with under-age and legally-aged if I could say women in Canada and the US because he apparently talked them into healing their spirit and fix their mental issues. And this people are not backward and primitive?! An indigenous boy was in a hospital because he had been diagnosed with a serious sickness and Chasing Horse, as a Medicine Man, claimed he could heal him based on the permission he got from his father! It was believed that the man has healing power which is better than today's science and technology! This is certainly is not being stupid, backward and primitive! Is it?

It was a few weeks ago, I think, that a so-called chief, or someone prominent(!) from a tribe, an aboriginal tribe was travelling by air with a big feather head covering! The crew asked her or him (in today's modern, non-primitive, civilized West, it doesn't matter! Everyone is equally worthless!) to remove to later-found-to-be(!) sacred head-covering and she or he refused and started an argument with the poor air crew! Imagine how selfish, self-centered, and primitive one could be to get into an argument with anyone, let alone with the air crew, over a piece of thing(!) covered in either natural or human-made feather which only has symbolic value! Does that feed a hungry man on the street? Does it give advice to a young who is clueless? It's absolutely worthless! 

What happened then? Air Canada had to apologize to that person! Who is freaking primitive and backward in addition to being selfish now?! Get your hat and shut the hell up! 

It was said nicely once: A small minority has been given too much (unnecessary) power, and this is just not about the aboriginal people of Canada, it's about everyone who tries to show others that they are better and shinier than others and we have plenty of these creatures in Canada!

(Photo: Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse, an American aboriginal actor, I believe, first was seen in Dances With Wolves in the 90's and had a tremendous performance there, seen here in the scene that the natives save Lieutenant John Dunbar from the soldiers)