When I picked up my friend TZ from the 1:30 ferry, our intent was to drive to my sister’s house where she would drop her stuff, pick up Ellie and then drive me back to the Haven for my afternoon session. And then, as we drove up from the ferry terminal onto the North Rd that circumvents the island, we saw a woman hitchhiking. She was laden down with two big bags of groceries so I stopped and offered her a lift. It is common practice on the island, to give people lifts as there is no transit and as far as I can tell, no cab service either.

“Where are you going to?” I asked when she loaded herself and her groceries into the car.

“As far south as you can take me,” she replied. “I usually take the South Rd. but wanted to check out the GYRO (an island flea market). I’ve only been living on the island a month,” she added in a rush of breath that filled the car with her smoky exhalation.

And so, we drove her, all the way around the island back to where she’s rented a room in a house. The long way. The scenic tour, as I jokingly told TZ.

After dropping her off, and learning she had moved from Winnipeg to Nanaimo to the island after losing the job she’d found there, “I don’t like Nanaimo. At all,” she asserted, TZ and I continued on the long route back to my sister’s house.

Along the way, we spied another hitchhiker. A scruffy, bearded man of indiscriminate age, he reminded me of clients at the homeless shelter where I used to work.

Now, to be clear, I do not normally pick-up hitchikers. But, on Gabriola, it seems a natural thing to do. And so, when Clyve climbed into the car there was nothing uncomfortable about having him there. Though he did smell a bit…. rank.

“I live on Munch,” he told us. “I bring my boat across. Just going to the Town Centre.”

“Been there 14 years,” he told us in response to my question. “Health reasons. I couldn’t do the hard labour I was doing any more. Needed somewhere cheap and truth be told, somewhere I could be alone. Must of us on Munch are like that,” he added. “We tend to keep to ourselves.”

“How many people live on Munch?” I asked.

“Well, in the winter months it’d be ‘bout 40 maybe 50 of us. Summer of course is different. It’s crazy busy with boaters.”

And he chatted away, sharing stories of his health concerns, his decision to quit drinking and smoking dope, other than for medicinal purposes, six years ago. By the time we dropped him off at the Town Centre, he was chattering away like a magpie.

I imagined his words were held close on the Munch. No one but nature to share them with. He needed the release.

While I do not suggest picking up hitchhikers, I do believe it’s important to make room for strangers to tell their stories.

In their telling, we are all ‘made different’ by the sharing. And in the sharing of our stories, we make way for ripples that connect us to spread out into the world.

Namaste.