The Legacy of Garry Currie - Dad, Taxidermist, Inspiration

The Trip that Changed my Life

There is a defining moment in a family when everything changes.  Mine happened December 3, 1983. I was a little girl and  my dad ended up in a wheelchair after a tragic accident on the drilling rigs that left him paralyzed from the nipple line down.  A few months later my mom lost my grandpa to colon cancer.  It was ground zero for my family
. 

My dad would say it was the best and worst thing that ever happened to him.  It was the worst because he had lost the ability to walk but, the best because he now was given the gift of spending every day with his family and being retrained in a profession that he loved.  The oil field doesn't give you much of a family life so he loved every moment he now got to spend with us.  I was a pretty spoiled kid in that respect.  My dad was a really incredible guy.  It was also very hard to feel sorry for yourself or limit yourself when your dad would remind you every day the fact that limits are something you set and that if you keep an open mind, get creative, you can do anything!  Because my dad was paralyzed when I was so young lots of times I didn't even realize he was different.  Even as an adult I would often forget to even tell my friends that my dad was in a wheelchair.  They would always point out that a heads up would have been nice. 

My dad was given the choice to retrain in any career he wanted.  He could have picked anything at all!  He chose taxidermy in my dad's words "the art of preserving nature". He loved to hunt, fish, and the great outdoors.  He actually got more into hunting, fishing, and camping in a chair than before.  More time he would always point out. So WCB sent him to the worlds best taxidermists in the USA for training.  I was about seven and we got to camp, stay in hotels, and travel in the states.  My mom home schooled us for a bit and it was an amazing experience!  My dad made lifelong friends with his teachers and we got to see some of America's heritage in the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, and all sorts of museums. 

My family toured all of these attractions with ease and what I felt was VIP service.  People in wheelchairs from my seven year old eyes got special parking, entrances, guides, first in lines.  I never once associated a disability with limited access. I realize now that said more about my dad's attitude on life than his ability to gain access to buildings. So when my family heard about Jewel Cave National Monument  we were all excited.  It was the third longest cave!  My dad loved caves!  He loved all of the crystals, stalactites and stalagmites, and the sense of adventure.  We were definitely going.  At first it was business as usual, our family got the preferred treatment.  Special entrance, first in line, front row seats in the first viewing platform, elevator service.  It was so cool!  You could see all of these really vast formations, the guide was giving us the explanation of millions of years of history.  To a really geeky kid like me it was heaven.  Then the tour was to continue and I looked at the rest of the path..stairs.  How was my dad going to come?  I looked at my dad and he had this expression that I will never forget.  It was this really big smile with sad eyes.  He said "Go girls!  I will be right here.  You have to see the rest of the tour!  I am just going to wait here.  You can tell me all about it so listen carefully".  I knew then what it meant to have a dad in a wheelchair.  It wasn't special service it was minimal service.  I was devastated but, I didn't want my dad to feel bad.  I knew that if I didn't go he would feel guilty like he was holding me back, but I didn't want to go on this adventure without my dad.  I knew he was going to miss out.  I looked at him and he said, "Don't worry about me. I can see lots from here and I want to hear about the parts of the cave I didn't see".  I went. 

I saw pools of water that had dripped from the ceiling over millions of years, unique rock, crystals, and dark caverns but, I couldn't shake the image of my dad waiting for me.  So when our guide wasn't looking I crouched down and pocketed a little rock by the pool.  It was a bit of calcium and orange colored.  I looked around and no one had noticed I took one.  I nervously held this little stone in my pocket and focused on everything the guide said so I would remember everything to tell my dad.  They eventually led the tour back to the beginning and there was my dad!  Waiting patiently and looking at the original cavern.  I began telling him all about it and he listened to my enthusiastic description.  He had all of the appropriate ooohs and ahhs to my story and we started out of the caves.  Back in the elevator and into the parking lot I grasped that little stone thinking about the still waters of the little pool. 

Later on that night before we all went to bed I finally pulled the stone out of my pocket and gave it to my dad.  I told him where I got it, the pool, and how the rock was formed.  My dad held the little rock up and marveled at it.  He loved it!  It was my dad and I's unspoken communication.  It was my way of bringing a little piece of a place he couldn't go back.  It was my way of telling him that I knew he wanted to go but, couldn't.  It was my way of thanking him for making me go without him and for planting a little spark of exploration and adventure.  My dad knew what I was trying to say without me saying it.  My dad told me how much he loved me and how he wanted to hear every detail of that tour.  So it started. 

My entire life as I grew older and started down the my career path as a professional camper I would bring my dad back a stone, a cool little piece, or in one case I used a little Nalgene and brought him melted snow from a back country ski trip I went on.  My dad and I would always sit down and  he would ask for every detail and then he would share his latest fishing trip. It was a routine and a way to acknowledge that my dad was the one who planted the spark for the outdoors for me and he was in a way the reason I was out there in the first place.  I had so much fun and the outdoors were becoming my life and my passion.  Every trip I wanted to try going longer, every rapid I wanted to try a bigger one, every river I wanted to see where it went.  Complete freedom.

When I was blessed with twin sons in July of 2010 my dad, of course, was over the moon for them.  I was very lucky for twins as they were very good about being easy on their mom and dad for the most part.  The biggest transition for me was more learning about mortality.  Before my kids I was immortal!  I could go where I wanted, paddle what I pleased, and hit the trail. Suddenly, I was up to my eye balls in diapers and I couldn't just take off or go where I wanted.  Suddenly, rapids looked different to me.  I would judge rapids based on what could happen to me instead of classic river class 1,2, or 3.  Suddenly, I was worried about a bear eating me.  Suddenly, I was mortal.  Don't get me wrong I was happily mortal.  I love my sons and their fascination with the outdoors is so much fun.  Like my parents I raise my boys outside.  We fish, canoe, camp, build fires, and look for caterpillars and worms. Of course, having a mom who owns a Canoeing Company helps.  My dad was right in there too.  Buying them bikes, life jackets, and living at the lake with our family in a van in our camp. 

My dad was sick.  I looked after him, changed his bandages, and fought super bugs and doctors with everything I had in between canoe trips, and hospital stays. And after every coma or near death experience my dad had (there was a lot in the last six years) my dad would fight harder, go salmon fishing, get inventive on how to take antibiotics and still camp with us. He would pick up his taxidermy every time he would come home even though some of the comas took away his ability to use his hands. He got an electric chair but, went to physio every Wednesday to get back in his push one. Nothing would stop his iron will.  I still brought him little rocks from new rivers and now so did my little sons. 

We lost him last year.  Going threw stuff in my dads shop I keep finding little rocks, the melted snow I brought him, and little pieces he put away.  There is so much you discover losing a parent.  My dad died thirty years later almost to the day that he ended up in his chair.  I would not trade a single day of that thirty years.  One thing you realize when someone you love is gone is the things you thought they would pass on to your children.  I thought about hunting this year.  I always  thought my dad would take my sons hunting and now I realize if I want my sons to appreciate that part of my childhood, one of my fathers passions, I would have to take them hunting.  It was now my responsibility to pass on my dads, my grandparents, my families history and stories to my kids or they would be lost too.  It was an opportunity to let my kids connect to my dad without him being there.  It was a small rock brought from a cavern in a Jewel Cave. 

It was then I realized that family stories need to become legends.  My families legends, my families morals, beliefs, passions if taught to my children would move from legends to legacy with the hope that they too will pass down stories of all of the moms and dads before them.  Small pebbles. 

 

A couple of week ago I gave birth to a daughter, Anna.  My dad wanted a granddaughter so bad that when he would wake up from his many comas he would always assume I had his granddaughter.  She will never meet him but, she will know him.  And listening to my boys playing in the kitchen making up a campsite complete with tent and looking down at my daughter sleeping on my chest I once again feel...immortal.