00:00:04 Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trotlining and just general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the Store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. Air Canada and the Lost Baggage Blues. We need an introduction to this episode about like I need an excuse to cook fish. I don't need it. I am bear hunting in one of my most favoritest places on earth. So join me at the fire. Let's get started. My boss, Garrett Long called me after the first of the year and said, be thinking about what projects you want to do this year. And by projects he meant what we call long form films like the Manitoba moose Hunting my good friend, the cinematographer Dave Gardner, and I shot last October where the northern lights danced above our heads for a week. That's a big question and one that I didn't take lightly. My mind raised around the globe was I thought about places I wanted to go and the animals I wanted to chase. The working at Meat Eater is not a free ticket to hunt wherever and whatever you want. We're in the storytelling business and that weighs heavily on the decisions that we make about the content that we produce. It's not just closing your eyes and chunking a dart at a map to see where you're going. Oh, there are emails and meetings upon meetings about getting the storylines approved, as in what the Hunt is really going to be about? What story are we telling? Then we have meetings to get the budget approved. Following that hurdle, licenses and permissions not just a hunt, but for filming the hunt and moving people plus their equipment to remote areas is tackled by the producer and associate producer, whose job it is to ensure that all the eyes are dotted and all the t's are crossed. Traveling to another country to work, even a neighboring one, comes with a lot of paperwork and documentation. By producer Jason Rarig and associate producer Omar Lopez worked their hind ends off to ensure that Dave and I had everything that we needed. Now I call them mine, but I don't want to infer that they work for me, or better yet, infer that they answer to me. They work for me, all right, but in the sense of coordinating all the moving parts of a big production that takes a focused attention to detail to be successful. One unsigned document, one negated fee or permission, and the folks at customs will look at you like they finally caught the dude that was breaking wind at the supper table. They will turn you around and send you home and will have forgotten you even existed before you can get out of the airport. And when you see Jason and Omar's names at the end of the Schauffeur less than a second in the credits, it's pretty easy to look over their participation. But you shouldn't. They made it easy for me and Dave to get ourselves in all our gear from different locations in the good old US of A, across the border at two separate crossings, only to link up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I would be in three different airports before I went wheels down in the fourth at Saskatoon. But the hiccup came in the third when I checked in through customs in Toronto. With my passporting hand and hope in my heart, I made my way through the maze of rope lines to be met by a Canadian border agent who flagged my boarding pass with a purple highlighter. When I answered her question of had I brought a weapon with me? And I said yes, ma'am, she looked at me all over and said as if she was looking for it, and I told her that I didn't have it with me. It was urchier equipment, and that it was locked in a case and it had been checked in my baggage when I left Little Rock three flights ago. She held her hand in front of my face and said, wait here now. I looked at my watch. My next flight would start boarding in an hour. Hopefully this wouldn't take long. Upon her return, she said, take this paper and go downstairs to the customs office to declare your weapon. Have taken it off the aircraft? All right, Well, this shouldn't be a problem. Just follow the painted line on the floor down past the other border edge and hit the stairs at the lower level. How long could it take to check a bowl in a half a dozen arrows. When I got to the top of the escalator, the den of noise from the lower level grew more intense as I descended into the depths of that airport. Halfway down the wall, petition to my right disappeared, and I saw a sea of people and baggage carousels. It was utter chaos, and I assumed that this would be the place where I died. No Jason or Omar to help me get through this one. I was all on my own, and there wasn't a soul in this Canadian fire drill that was taking place before me. They gave two hoots in hades whether or not I made my next flight much less. Eventually jobbed to hole in one of their bears. I was absolutely lost the agent id who made it seem that there was someone waiting for me at the lower level. But when I stepped off that escalator, the only folks I saw were travelers like me, most of them that were speaking languages that didn't remotely sound like English. At first, I wondered what language they were gibber jabbering back and forth in that congestion of humanity. Then I remembered how I almost felled Miss Glenetta Burk's Seventh Great English Class, a language I'd have been speaking for over a dozen years to that point. Didn't matter, but they were speaking. The only thing that mattered was me finding someone who would say, Brent, you're all checked in, not gonna get on that airplane and get ready to poke a hole in the old black Bear. But I did not see that person. I thought about going back upstairs, but those clever canoocks had already thought of that. That escalator was a narrow one way street and set at a speed that I don't think Carl Lewis could have been fast enough to get back up. No, sir, I was at the mercy of my wits and navigating worked this problem. I started to sweat. I hung a right and walked toward an open area with fewer people, to the only empty baggage carousel, numbered eleven out of thirteen. I went back and forth like a metal man in a shooting galler until I heard the voice of an angel say, Sir, can I help you? In an accent I didn't recognize or care to desire. All I knew was that I had just drafted my first confidant to Tim reeves. Out of eight point three billion people on this planet, I had somehow managed to find one of them, taking an interest in my obvious look of confusion and my old panic. I didn't know what kind of uniform she had on, but I think she worked for an airline that I wasn't even flying. But she had a radio and she wasn't scared to use it. She asked me how I got there. I explained as best I could, how I started out up in Southeast Arkansas at nineteen sixty six and just hit the highlights until I got to the park. About meeting her here today, And after she came to she asked form, I checked back receipts and told me to wait right there, and she hurried off, out of sight in a mass of people moving in every conceivable direction. I looked at my watch forty minutes until my next flight started boarding, and she told me to wait right there. And I promise you had that airport caught on fire while she was gone. The pile of charcoal with a Southern accent beside carousel number eleven would have been yours. Truly, I wasn't moving. I checked my watch, and with thirty minutes left until the Air Canada flight eleven twenty five started boarding out of Gate thirty four. I saw my most favorite person in Toronto making her way back to me like an Olympic downhill skier, bobbing and weaving like she'd done this many times before. She walked right up to me, handing my baggage claims and said, you're good to go, mister Reeves. Your luggage wasn't even removed from the plane. Okay, nice, So it'll be in Saskatoon when I get there, right sir, it's already loaded on the plane. Thank you, ma'am. I appreciate it so much. Now, how do I get the gate thirty four from here? Well, unfortunately, you have to go back through security. Go back the way you came until you see the customs agents just outside of carousel nine. Go through that checkpoint, then up the stairs and you'll see the security that you've already been through and the signs for the gate that you're looking for. Well, I thank her, and I took off like I knew where I was going. I did not. The customers agents beside carousel number nine snatched me out of line. I was still holding that paper slip but the purple highlighter marks on it, and he saw it immediately. Can I help you, sir, No, sir, I got all my questions answered, just trying to get Tom the gate my flight boards in twenty five minutes. Well you have to take that form you got there with you. Down to declared weapon, sir, Go to the see the customs agent down the hallway. Well, I don't have a weapon to declare, sir. It's archie equipment and it's already on the plane that leaves in twenty four minutes. You have to go see the duty officer, sir. After that, I was not about to argue with anyone who could make me doing about face, and told my person back to the other side of the border. I think back to the untold hordes of folks over my thirty two year career as being a police officer who could have stayed out of jail by practicing the same thought process. I hot footed it down the hall and stepped up to a row of desk where three customs officers stood shooting the breeze. I showed one of them the paper and he said, you're already cleared. Go down this hallway, up the stairs and back into the security. Apparently they didn't even offload your luggage, so it's on the plane that leads from Gate thirty four in twenty minutes. Already there pal good deal. Back through security, I went, we're regardless of if you're pre checked or not. Your shoes are coming off your feet. I did all of that again and made it to my gate with five minutes to spare. A fellow traveler stood nearby as I collected my wind and began to calm down from the near calamity that I thought they wrecked my trip before it even got started. Good you an American, Yes, sir, I am having a little issue with Airic Canada. Well I don't think so, just a little confusion going through customs with a bow and arrow. But it's all good now. They assured me my luggage is on the plane. He smiled at me, and he leaned in as if taking me into his confidence. He said, I've been flying Airic Canada for years. You know their motto is We're not happy unless you're not happy. Well that was funny, and then it brought some levity to what had been a stressful fifty five minutes of trying to get myself positions for the last three hour flight of the day. It had been a long time since three point thirty that morning, and I had been zigzagging back and forth through time zones like a man possessed all over North America. The route from Little Rock to Saskatoon had been anything but direct. Now, with one last hurdle before me, I could rest. Once I got the Saskatoon, gathered my bowcase and duffel bag, and met Dave at the Saskatoon in for a late supper before our five thirty departure the next morning. Once on the plane, I found my seat, and I filled my ears full of electronics and dozed on and off as a movie played on my phone while fourteen hundred miles clicked off below me. From thirty six thousand feet, I could finally relax. The whole custom thing was but a mere anecdote in this story that had really only just begun. That flight went faster than I expected. I'd been snoozing through the most of it, so when the pilot came on and said we better get all our plunder in order so he could land and caught me by surprise. I checked my watch, but I really had no idea what time it was. I'd lost track of which time zone I was currently in, but it didn't matter, and I didn't really care. I was about to see my buddy Dave and get some supper. I hadn't had anything to eat all day, and I was hungry as a hostage and ready to relax. Twenty minutes had gone by since we went wheels down in Saskatoon. We all deplaned and gathered at the baggage carousel like expected ranchers, waiting for that stainless steel animal to start pushing out luggage babies for all of us to pick over and take home. We waited and waited. Finally, that creature buzzed loudly as the yellow strobe light flashed, announcing to the world that the last activity of the day had begun. I watched the deformed portion of that belt make lap after lap through that curved track as one by one passengers claimed their property had made their way outside with their possessions. Stared at the deformed panelwin When the belt stopped moving and the light stopped flashing, I looked at my boarding passing corroborated again what I already knew. Air counted a flight eleven twenty five to run through the Saskatoon baggage area one. There was no more luggage. My bowcase and duffleback had definitely not been on the same plane as me, as I had been assured by no less than three people in uniform. Well, Eric Canada should be happy now, because I wasn't. As I stood there alone, staring at the empty baggage collection point, knowing that in less than eight hours I was supposed to be back in that airport on another flight with those two bags, one of which contained my bowl, Joscelyn said, having trouble. Ah why I knew her name to be Joscelyn, because that's what her Airic Canada name tag displayed. Yes, ma'am, I'm missing two bags. Then I briefed Joscelyn on everything she needed to know, plus something that got us to the point where she found me sadly sending alone like I'd been stood up at the altar waiting for the bride who wasn't coming. Joscelyn took my baggage receipts and walked to the opposite end of the airport, where she took her position at a computer terminal and began machine gunning that keyboard like her life depended on it. I suddenly felt relaxed, and with Joscelyn handling the issue, she turned a stressful moment of panic into a solvable problem, assuring me that she was going to ride the storm out with me. Mister Reeves, I found your bags. They're coming in on the next flight, which gets here at one am. We will have the courier bring them to your hotel. Now we fly out in the morning at five thirty. No worries, mister Reeves. Your bags will be at your hotel when you get up in the morning. They told me in Toronto they'd been saskintooned when I got here. Well, sir, that was them, not me. I like you, Joscelyn. I also believe you. I'm going to eat supper and go to bed, so your bags will be waiting for you at the front desk. So that's what I did. I walked out of that airport with my full faith and confidence in Joscelyn, a lady I had only just met, but that had taken an interest in helping someone she didn't know in as professional and personal manner as I could have hoped for. By the time Davi and I met up, had a short visit, and gone back to our rooms and finally laid down. It was after midnight. I stepped off the elevator and into the lobby the next morning at four point fifteen, and their stack, securely behind the front desk were my two missing bags. When Jocelyn tells you something, you can believe it. That morning, David and I did the whole routine again, shuttled to the airport, baggage, checked security, waiting at the gate. Then everything but moving like the cattle we were simulating as we moved and heard form from one point to the next. At the direction of our handlers from Saskatoon, we shed our earthly bonds tracked almost due north for five hundred miles. We stopped off in Faudelat, a community formed one hundred and fifty years ago by the Dunessa Lein or Dnay First Nations people, some of whom still lived the subsistence life and fishing there. First Nations man who introduced himself as Floyd and sat down behind me and Dave on the long pull mort from Saskatoon. He was a fishing guide in a trade and had recognized us back at the airport. Now, having someone like Floyd tell you he enjoys watching what you do on YouTube was quite a pleasant surprise. We had a great visit, and once he and the rest of his family deplaned in Fond of Locke, the fifty mile hop over the Stony Rapids was a quipment Stony Rapids would be our jumping off spot. Situated fifty one miles south of the border of the Northwest Territories. Stony Rapid sits on the south side of the Fond of Locke River, the river that our last flight would leave from, a floatplane flight of a little over half an hour in Assessina. Caravan would be the final time for a week that we had to load ourselves in gear and to an air worthy conveyance. Nick Goffs met us at the airport. Airstrip I'm not sure which one better describes that particular area where aircraft come and go. But don't get the idea. I mean that disrespectfully. On the contrary, in a world where long driveable roads only appear when water freezes, the aircraft is king and the quickest way to get from one spot to the next. Those two paved and well kept airstrips and fond of lock and stony rapids were the literal hub for everything coming in out of those communities. Nick got a squared away and we loaded our gear for the short drive over to the floatplane base, where we packed it and ourselves on an aircraft piloted by Wayne. Wayne is a local legend with a million hours of experience flying in the Canadian North in all kinds of weather, and just the guy you want driving you on the most treacherous portion of the trip. Its takeoff was buttery smooth, and at thirty six hundred feet ten times less than what I'd been cruising at from Little Rock to Toronto. The world didn't look any smaller, but it did look more remote. I was reminded of eight months earlier, when Dave and I were sitting on a similar aircraft in the neighboring province of Manitoba, surveying the vastness of what appeared to be an endless patchwork of water and rocks, separated by undeveloped tracts of jackpine, willa, aspen, birch, and spruce trees. This would be our home for the next nine days. For nine days, we would be traveling by boat in search of Ursus americata, the American BlackBerry, a monikered beast whose name would lead you to believe it referenced the United States, when in reality it identifies its vast and growing distribution over North America, which keyed to a stop at the floating dock at Camp less than two hundred yards away. In the center of that camp set a log cabin built in the nineteen sixties by our fur trapper and floatplane pile, a man that lived the kind of life I dreamed of living while growing up in Arkansas. Over eighteen hundred miles southeast of where I currently stood. This was bear Country and we were just getting started. However, y'all that have been watching the clock new we weren't going to be doing this all in one episode. I only know one way to tell a story, and that's to tell it all and the rest will have to wait until next week. Brent, that is a terrible thing to do. You did that the last time you went to Canada with Dave Gardner Hunt moose Well. Blame it on Dave. Regardless, we're in Barry Camp now and next week the action starts pretty quickly. Now, oh, you would be world champion. Squirrel chefs out there, You've got an opportunity coming up on September the twelfth to be the world champion. Get on Facebook or Google World Championship Squirrel Cookoff. Fill out the forms, get your team together, get your recipe together, and join me and some other folks that you know and love at the JB. And John L. Hunt Ozark Highlands Nature Center in Springdale, Arkansas, September the twelfth. Get your recipe, get your folks together, get your permits filled out and your fees paid so you can come have a great time with dolls until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off. All be careful