Do not visit Pickle Lake. It's really just a matter of Pickle Lake
being a negative energy sink. Once you fall into the vortex, about the only
way you can pull yourself out is to transfer your bad karma on the next unsuspecting
dupe who passes through town. To make a long story short, I was trapped there
at the bottom of the well when along came an unsuspecting American. I unloaded
my burden on him to such a degree that his plane went down. For those
with nothing better to do with the next few minutes, here is the full story.
Last spring I had a court date in Pickle Lake, which is a small community
in northwestern Ontario. I live in Thunder Bay, so normally it is only a
short flight. Unfortunately, the Pickle Lake psychic sink struck early, for
my staff messed up on the booking. Instead of placing me on the party charter,
I was booked for he commercial passenger flight, which involved a transfer
and almost twice the flight time.
When I arrived at the airport, there was a delay of over an hour. Unfortunately,
the pilot and co-pilot both slept in. They came running through the terminal
and out onto the tarmac about forty minutes late, but no sooner were they
in the plane than an alarm went off in the terminal, sending the gate staff
scurrying about and adding another twenty minutes onto the delay. At
the transfer station in Red Lake I missed my connecting flight. While waiting
in the terminal, a woman sat down with a couple of fellows at the table beside
me. She said to them in a loud voice that she had just been promoted the
previous week (she was a nurse in Osnaburgh -- we'll get to what that entails
later). Yesterday she had bought a truck. Later today she was to make a down
payment on a house. Then she turned her head, looked directly at me, and
said that the next think on her list was to find a man.
Having a keen sense of survival, I retreated to the men's washroom. Unfortunately,
a valve broke when I flushed, which flooded out the entire washroom and a
fair bit of the terminal. I spent the next couple of hours in a very nervous
state. Eventually the connection to Pickle Lake arrived. Aside
from the bobsled run down the Red Lake taxi-way (a steep hill with a couple
of tight curves), the flight was uneventful. When I arrived at the Pickle
Lake terminal (a small steel shed), I was unable to use the telephone because
it did not accept money -- too many thefts, so the gas guy (the fellow who
refuels the planes) kindly called in to town for the police to come and pick
me up.
It took quite a long time for the officer to arrive. When he finally showed,
he explained that the cracked windshield and mud on the sides and roof of
the 4x4 were due to a shortcut he had taken when he received the call to
pick me up. A delay had been incurred when he had to radio for a friend to
pull him out of his 'stuck'.
I arrived for court just as it broke for lunch, which was just as well, for
my client's circumstances had changed without his notifying me. The deal
that had previously been arranged with the Crown was on hold due to my client
facing half a dozen new charges. Unfortunately, no one quite knew what the
charges were, so my client and I hiked on up the road to the police station
(no ride was available, for my driver had to pull out the fellow who earlier
had pulled him out of his 'stuck'). Between the officer at the station, myself
and my client, we eventually figured out what all the new charges were about,
so we hiked back down to the community hall to face the judge.
Well, things were not too pretty in the hall. The judge was a bit miffed
because a busload of defendants from the nearby community of Osnaburgh (where
the nursing station is surrounded by barbed wire) failed to show. The bus
arrived full of people who wanted to visit the grocery store and the liquor
store, rather than full of defendants. It seems that when the folks at Osnaburgh
heard that there was a bus going into town (usually there is none), they
did not understand why only the criminals should be allowed on it, so they
tossed the bad guys off, and took their places for the free ride into town.
The shoppers were happy. The bad guys were happy. Only the judge was not
happy, but no one really cared too much for him anyway.
The result of this was a further delay while the Osnagurgh mess was straightened
out. Eventually the bad guys arrived, but they were pretty drunk by that
time of day. The folks who had shanghaied the bus ambled in, but they were
also quite drunk following their visit to the liquor store. There were no
extra police available to deal with the matter, for they were off dealing
with the stuck vehicles. Things eventually settled down, but the delay made
me miss the outgoing party charter back to Thunder Bay, and again I had to
fly the milk run via Red Lake. To add to my misery, I had to wait at the
airport shed for a couple of hours. Just me, the gas guy, and the ticket
girl upon whom the gas guy seemed to have a crush.
I was frustrated; I was tired; I was bored. I was also a little disgusted
by the gas guy's behaviour toward the ticket girl. I was not just under a
cloud, I was under the Pickle Lake depression. I was trapped in this shed
in the bush, and I knew that I would remain there until I transferred my
cloud to someone else. I reached out, trying to make a psychic connection
to my family and friends in hopes that they could find me and rescue me.
In particular, I reached out for a friend, Karen Smith of Gaia's Garden,
who is a wicce of the White Goddess with neo-Buddhist leanings who has some
inside knowledge on navigation, and
my cousin Nadine’s hubby Ray LeCote, who sits at the top of the world with
all sorts of electronic equipment.
It worked. No sooner had I psychically reached out than a wee plane flown
by an American landed. Then another, and another, and finally an old Stinson
biplane. A big smile grew across my face, for I knew that my karma was soon
to transfer away from me onto these poor unsuspecting tourists. They were
loud and friendly and ridiculously over dressed. They obviously had no idea
of the negative vortex into which they had descended. I had a moment of doubt
upon learning that their photographer was a Canadian, but all was well when
out from under his big fur hat (it was shirt sleeve weather) he said that
he had been in California for many years.
While the gas guy filled their tanks, the group chatted with me as I quietly
let my bad karma bleed onto them. Their story was that the fellow in the
biplane intended to fly to the north pole and back, while the ex-Canuck filmed
him for National Geographic. I wished them luck as I left the hut for my
flight, knowing full well that the only reason my flight had finally arrived
was because these poor Americans had now inherited my bad dross and no longer
had any chance what so ever of making it to the pole and back. Obviously
I did not tell them this. I just smiled, gave a verbal 'good luck' to the
Americans, and a silent 'thank you' to my family and friends whose energy
had pulled me out of the hole known as Pickle Lake.
Remember my mentioning my cousin’s hubby Ray? Well, for about four
months each year, Ray runs the Eureka meteorological station. I guess the
electromagnetic reception up there must be pretty good, for he sure picked
up on my calling out for help from Pickle Lake. When the Americans
arrived at his station, they needed some gas, but had not made any previous
arrangements. Ray had a drum of aviation gas that was about a decade old,
but there was water in it due to condensation. He explained that if they
wanted it they could have it, but they would have to filter it before using
it, and sign a release to that effect. The release was signed and the National
Geographic film crew recorded the final tanking up of the biplane. Note that
I make no mention of the film crew recording any filtering. The pilot pumped
directly from the barrel into the biplane without filtering, and National
Geographic was there to capture every moment on film.
Surprisingly, the biplane made it to the pole, and even made it part way
back to Eureka before it went down. When the pilot was eventually returned
to Eureka he was pretty miffed at Ray. He hollered and swore and threatened
to sue (talk about matching a stereotype) because the bad gas caused him
to crash land and abandon his plane. Now Ray is a pretty smart
fellow, and certainly not one to get in a flap. He saw that the American
was trying to shift the Pickle Lake cloud onto his shoulders, and he was
having none of it. While the American was making legal threats, Ray pulled
out his ticket book, and proceeded to charge the pilot for polluting by leaving
the plane out there in the middle of nowhere rather than bringing it back
to Eureka.
Eventually the plane was recovered. Ray figures it cost the fellow
an additional $25,000. I figure that crash and the cash are just at the tip
of the iceberg for the polar pilot, for until he realizes that the Pickle
Lake low is over his head, he is in for some very rough times.
Like I said, avoid Pickle Lake.