◌  Memory: inland BC

3 February 2009

It’s late May 2000, probably the 18th. Several of us unschoolers are riding Greyhound into the BC Interior for a combined eighteenth birthday party. It’s an overnight transect of the North American Plate’s crumple zone. I’m sitting with Noam and we’re trading music and stories.

Halfway there, the mountains relax to hills – the Okanagan Valley – and we get out to stretch at Kelowna. I’ve heard the name of the city on the radio hundreds of times and assumed it was Colona, so the spelling makes me laugh. My laptop’s almost out of juice, and I quietly plug it into an outlet while it’s in my pack. Noam is worried he might have squashed his sandwich but it’s okay.

At 1:30 or so we get back on the bus. Everyone’s curled up for sleep. I’m listening to Noam’s Moody Blues and watching the full moon over the hills.