Why the Fuck am I still alive?

A Meditation on my 35th Birthday

August 30th, 2022

Today is my 35th birthday.

Living this long wasn’t part of the plan. From the time I was 14 or so, my life plan was simple: Live Fast, Die Young.

I swear to God it’s not my fault. No one who knows me would accuse me of failing to tempt fate. I’ve ridden suicide on freight trains, crashed my motorcycle multiple times, and hitchhiked through some of the sketchiest parts of Mexico at the height of the drug war.

Just a few months ago, I almost got burned alive by an angry mob. And all this is honestly just scratching the surface.

So why am I still alive? Am I really lucky? Do I have the best guardian angel ever? Do I just have a killer knack for figuring out what risks are worth taking?

I don’t claim to know, but I woke up really early this morning for some reason, and decided I wanted to write something to mark the occasion of my 35th birthday. And this is what came out - an account of some of the close calls that I’ve had over the years.

The closest that I ever came to dying was probably when I was nineteen or so. I was at a punk festival in Quebec somewhere and overdosed on PCP, ketamine, a ton of alcohol, and God-knows-what-else (I was blacked out). I kind of feel like I died and came back to life, though I don’t know if my heart ever stopped. All I know is that I woke up in a hospital feeling like I’d been in another dimension for a thousand years. The nurses told my mom that I was lucky to be alive, and I for sure would have died if my friend Sarah Reid hadn’t gotten me to an ambulance somehow.

I’ve been in a number of car accidents as well, including a time when my friend Ben flipped this guy’s truck after a failed attempt to rob an amethyst mine while high on acid.

One of the craziest things that I’ve ever done in my life is go swimming at a place called Cape Spear in Newfoundland, which is the easternmost point of Canada. I went there with the intention of going swimming East of Canada, just so I could say that I’d done it. When I arrived, I saw that the waves were massive, but I was psychotic at the time, and not easily deterred. When I got close to the water, I could see the roaring waves crashing against the craggy rocks with incredible force. I can’t really explain here how insane it was to swim there, other than to say that even though I was psychotic at the time, it seemed insane to me even then. After mulling over my options, I decided that my best shot would be to jump in right after one wave had broken. I figured I could dunk my head underwater and that would count.

When I entered the water, however, all did not go well. I hadn’t counted on the mighty backwards momentum of the wave after it broke. I felt the power of the ocean pull me with unbelievable force. By some miracle I was able to grab hold of some rock and hold on for dear life, and in the momentary lull between the subsiding of one wave and the onslaught of the next, I was able to scramble to safety. I think that moment was the second most scared that I’ve been in my life.

The most scared I’ve ever been in my life would have to be the time that my friend Kit and I started sliding out on an ice road up on a mountain in the Kootenays, but I’ll let him tell that story.

But the strangest close call that I’ve ever had was in Northern B.C. when I was eighteen. After hitchhiking to the Yukon, I decided to hitchhike down to the port city of Prince Rupert to take the ferry to Vancouver Island. I got picked up by an American couple who were returning from Alaska. There is a remote road called the Stewart-Cassiar highway that joins the Alaska highway with the Highway of Tears, which will take you to Prince Rupert. It’s pretty much impressive that this highway was ever built, given the ruggedness of the terrain, but I guess the asbestos business was booming back then. It’s over 700 kilometres long, but the biggest town it passes through is the Tahltan reserve of Iskut (population 300).

The road cuts through some deep wilderness, where wildlife abounds. Near Iskut is an area called the Klappan, or Sacred Headwaters, which is a roadless area the size of Switzerland. In Northern B.C., herds of wild bison still roam free, and are not even shy of humans. Sometimes they take over the highway and cars have to wait for a chance to pass.

All this to say - we were a long, long way from civilization. It was a summer day and I don’t remember whether it was foggy, or whether it was the windiness or steepness of the road, but we didn’t see the moose until it was too late. The driver slammed on the brakes, but there was no time to stop. From the back seat, I had just enough time to realize what was about to happen. I braced for impact, knowing full well I might be living the very last moment of my life.

Long story short, we hit the moose and didn’t die. In fact, all three of us walked away without a scratch. Miraculously, the vehicle was still driveable. But that’s not the interesting part of the story. The crazy part is what happened soon afterwards.

Soon after getting over that feeling of “Holy Shit - we’re alive!”, we continued carefully on through the vast wilderness. Not long thereafter, we came upon something that made no logical sense at all.

In the absolute middle of nowhere, hours from the closest town, there was a group of people on the road. This alone would be strange enough, given how far we were from civilization, but something made the scene much, much stranger - they were all dressed completely in white.

Never before or since have I seen such a sight anywhere. I have no rational explanation for what they were doing there, nor how they had gotten there. There were no vehicles on either side of the road. They didn’t have backpacks or anything; they weren’t on a long distance hike. Weirder still was something that can’t easily be put into words. They seemed to radiate some kind of soothing, mysterious force. They were gathered on and around a bridge, and they were facing away from us, gazing out at the water below.

I remember that one man turned to face us as we were going by. He had a stoic face, and looked right at us as we passed. His look was full of meaning, but what it meant, I cannot say.

He too was dressed in white, but there was a black bird on his white hoodie, which I recognized as the logo of the Ravens, the sports team of Carleton University in Ottawa, my hometown. What a strange coincidence!

It made no logical sense. There was only one explanation that I could come up with - they were angels. I expressed this belief to my fellow-travelers and they pooh-poohed it. They didn’t believe in such things. When I asked them what could possibly explain the bizarre apparition we had just witnessed, they hemmed and hawed. Eventually one of them suggested that maybe these people were part of some kind of cult. But when I asked what could possibly explain their presence in such a remote area, and the absence of any vehicles, they were at a loss for words. They were weirded out. I wasn’t. I was amazed.

I think I was an atheist then. I was all about being a punk at that stage of my life, and it wasn’t punk to believe in God.

I don’t think I was a very committed atheist, though. Maybe I was mad at God, but I think that deep down I always believed in some kind of higher power. I’ve never bought the materialist myth that the universe popped into being out of nothingness for no reason. I consider that nothing more than an unproven hypothesis, no likelier than the theory that the universe was created by an omnipotent being in six days.

Anyway, now that I’m 35, I’ve come to the conclusion that there must be a reason that I’m still around. I don’t chalk up my success in cheating death to dumb luck or my own cleverness. I’ve taken a lot of stupid risks in my life, and I’m still here. Maybe I’m incredibly lucky, but I favour another explanation.

I believe that I’m protected by angels, or spirits, or whatever you want to call them, and I believe that God has a plan for my life. There’s something that I’m meant to do in this life, and I don’t think I’ll die before doing it.

What it is, I can only guess.