Made It

I like to think I got to liking the wilderness because of my dear old dad, Beer Sr. I live in Canada, however, a land bigger than all the hockey rinks in the world combined, where if you do not like being in the wilderness, being in the wilderness as often as possible, you really ought to fuck off.

Just as I do, my dad likes the quiet of the wild. Not that the wilderness is all that quiet. It was the lack of human noise he liked. No television. No country. No religion. No war. No bullshit. Some people cannot stand it, to which I add, see the above paragraph's last six words.

When not in the wilderness my dad did what he could to re-create the Freedom from the world's troubles and inadequacies he found beneath green canopies or upon still water. That is what the liquor cabinet was for. After a couple it was all hummingbirds, crooked paths and rainbow trout cooking on a sizzling campfire.

I cannot remember my dad without a liquor cabinet. A fully stocked liquor cabinet. Enough liquor to knock out his whole regiment of army buddies if they showed up at once on a Saturday afternoon.

Took me a long time, decades, to get my own liquor cabinet looking like his always did. A little of this and a lot of that. Enough liquor to knock out East Van.

I fucking made it. Thanks dad.