Sunday 22 September 2013

Thursday, September 19th, 2013

Movin’ On

Bow Island, Alberta

Surya, the sun, made a presence again.  Clouds moved on.  I moved on, Highway 3, westward.  A jovial Dutch farmer pulled over and had a chat with me.  I informed him of the Nedarlantds blood in me.  He was happy to know.

A couple with a New York license plate changed directions when they saw my robes.  Turns out they are Sai Baba devotees.  We exchanged our ‘Namaste’s and our ‘Haribol’s, which are Vedic verbal greetings.  They offered me yogurts, fruits and a granola bar.  Bless them.

At Seven Persons’ School, over 200 students came to the town’s community hall to hear about a Hare Krishna monk’s adventure across the country, what it means to do so with companion Daruka, and what it means to have a talking and squawking bird with you all the time.  The most profound question for me came after the presentation from a young girl.

“What do you do (in the open roads) when you need to go to the bathroom?”

Answer, “You really have to control your eating habits, otherwise, keep walking until you find a bush.  It could take hours though before you find one.”

By evening time, Daruka had taken me to the Dairy Queen where he had made contact with some young Indian chaps with the surname Patel.  They were so excited when he handed them a hard bound Gita in their own language, Gurjurati.  The other young Caucasian workers there took a curious moment to look at the exotic script and pictures.

Speaking of sweet encounters, reporters can offer that too.   Jamie from the Weekly Commentator paper from Bow Island agreed to meet us at the town park.  She was educating us on local history and social matters as much as we were informing her on the goodness of a combined walk and chant program.

So from the town Seven Persons to the town Bow Island where the pinto bean grows in abundance, I covered a distance of…

30 KM

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