Sleeping with someone who wears a tinfoil hat is difficult.
Not impossible.
Difficult.
Fernie nights are supposed to be quiet. The coal trains rumble through. A snowplow scrapes the street. Somewhere a dog barks at a deer.
Normal Fernie night sounds.
But then the person beside you rolls over.
Crinkle.
The hat shifts.
Crinkle. Crinkle.
At 3 a.m. they sit upright.
“Did you hear that?”
Yes.
It was your hat.
But NO.
Apparently, it was a signal.
Possibly aliens.
Possibly Ottawa.
Possibly a secret transmitter hidden somewhere above Island Lake Lodge.
The explanations vary.
The hat remains.
There is something dangerous about sleeping beside tinfoil. The edges are sharp. Not knife sharp. Paper-cut sharp. The kind of cut you do not notice until later.
Then it stings.
Maybe the cuts are real.
Maybe they are not.
Either way, after several months of late-night warnings about weather-control aircraft, government tracking devices and suspicious lights over the Lizard Range, you begin to feel wounded.
Tiny cuts.
One after another.
Fox News murmurs from the television. Someone is angry. Someone is always angry. The volume is low, but anger carries.
It gets into the room.
Into the bed.
Into your dreams.
Suddenly you are skiing Currie Bowl while being chased by black helicopters. Griz is standing on Polar Peak wearing mirrored sunglasses. A secret society is holding its annual meeting in the Day Lodge.
Everyone has a laminated pass.
You do not.
You wake up.
Crinkle.
The person beside you says Griz Days is not what we think it is.
Really?
What do we think it is?
A winter festival involving snow, beer, costumes and a large man with a musket.
Apparently, that is exactly what they want us to think.
The tinfoil hat is no longer confined to basements or the darker corners of the internet. It rides chairlifts. It stands in line for coffee. It appears at trailheads.
A conversation begins with bike conditions on Hyperventilation.
Five minutes later, the United Nations is controlling the Elk River.
Someone asks about the snow forecast.
Cloud seeding.
The price of groceries?
Globalists.
A bear gets into a garbage bin.
Government bear.
There was a time when Fernie skepticism was practical.
Will the highway stay open?
Will the power go out?
Did the forecast really say five centimetres?
Is that trail actually dry?
Good questions.
Fernie questions.
But healthy skepticism is different from believing every shadow has a board of directors.
Question authority.
Question corporations.
Question politicians.
Question the weather forecast—especially the weather forecast.
But occasionally question the person on the internet telling you that aluminum foil is protective headwear.
There may be nothing in the Elk River water.
There may be no transmitter in the Lizard Range.
The strange light over Coal Creek may be the moon.
Again.
So, before climbing into bed, remove the tinfoil hat.
Place it on the dresser.
Turn off the television.
Go to sleep.
The aliens will still be there in the morning.
Keith Liggett has a writing career with one foot in the literary and the other seeking a different angle within traditional journalism. Read more from Keith.
