After Dad died, I fell in with the wrong crowd and started dating a much older boy who smoked a lot of weed and was nothing but trouble. At this point, I had made a decision that I wasn’t responsible for my life, and so this seemed like a great way to prove that.  He drove a big truck, and we spent hours together exploring the backwoods of Alberta, in Waiparous.  

Driving a 1985 Chevy pickup with 44” Superswamper boggers on it, we were unstoppable. We could disappear into the bush where no one could get to us.  We could smoke weed, ingest mushrooms, and basically do anything we wanted because the cops couldn’t get to us.  We were invincible.  

That truck was my high school graduation limousine. 

I had photos taken of me climbing into that truck in a ball gown with 6-inch stilettos on my feet. I thought I was the coolest girl in school because of that ride. It had power, it had prestige, and it was covered in mud most of the time. Too bad no one else at my high school recognized how cool I was and didn’t see the irony of the big truck and the big heels. I left my high school graduation dance early, didn’t attend the after-party, and instead spent the night in a shady motel room watching porn with this older guy.

The real adventure occurred one dark night in Cochrane, Alberta. Driving around in the truck, we were stoned, drunk, and looking for trouble.  We were driving up and down gravel back roads, which to this day are still common in Alberta. Loud music pumping, searching for an adventure, we came across a D8 Caterpillar in the ditch beside a railroad track. 

It seemed like the perfect opportunity.  

My boyfriend and I parked the truck and ran down the ditch to explore the machine. I knew very little about the equipment, but I was dating a wise and mature older boy, whom I assumed knew everything.  Turns out he even knew how to hotwire it. And so, in the middle of the night, we fired up this huge construction machine for no other reason than to destroy something. 

Cheering him on beside him inside the cab, we started moving dirt around and wreaking havoc on the construction site. We were on a mission to destroy whatever hard work the crew had done that day. I laughed and laughed, not thinking of the harm that we might cause. I wasn’t responsible. I didn’t hotwire it and I wasn’t driving it, so how could I possibly get in trouble?

And did I even care if I did get in trouble?

We eventually got bored with moving dirt around and decided it was time to do something really wild.  Pointing this giant machine toward the railway tracks, he started driving up the side of the hill that the tracks were on. Now, these machines don’t exactly move quickly, but he had it going as fast as it would move. And as we came up over the rise of the railway tracks the front end of the machine rose straight up in the air. I screamed, thinking that we might flip the machine over backward. Teetering in the air, with only the back end of the machine hanging onto the earth, I thought for sure we were going over.  I braced myself for impact. 

In limbo, the machine wavered back and forth, deciding our fate, and which direction it would fall.  Thankfully, it fell forward, with a colossal bang, and I smashed my head against the window of the cab as it fell forward onto the tracks. The engine stalled, and we sat there in silence for a moment, stunned by what had just happened. 

That’s when we saw the lights.

Headlights were careening toward us, quickly. We had a fast decision to make, and it wasn’t one that we really thought through.  We ran. We ran as fast as we possibly could, abandoning the machine in the middle of the railway tracks, and running back to the truck as fast as our legs could move us.  

Jumping into the truck, we roared away, just as several vehicles arrived at the scene of the crime.  Laughing, a combination between adrenaline, fear, and excitement, we drove away as fast as we could. 

My first crime had been committed.

It was a turning point in my life, where I decided it was fun to be in trouble, so long as I didn’t get caught. The incident was on the news the next day, the culprits were never found.