MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Fall / Winter 2017

FALL/WINTER 2017 MLCM 57 After months of chasing him around trying to nail down this story, I join Rory and Stacey, a wilderness horseback guide who has ridden shotgun on two-years worth of Bushy-fuelled adventures, for dinner in Squamish with Jan Phelan, Sar- ah Burke’s mom. Over hit-and-miss Thai, Bushy excitedly updates Jan and I on the progress at his Squamish Valley land, demonstrates how his injured foot (dirt biking) is healing up nicely, and relives the best moments of a modelling gig he and Stacey just returned from, starring as “the couple” in a promo video for a high-end BC heli- copter company. The gig included plenty of airtime and a chance to learn from some accomplished aviators. “I’m still a young pilot. I just got my one thousandth hour,” Bushy explains. “So it’s incredible to get to fly with these experienced pilots, to just watch and learn and soak it in. I think in the beginning, a lot of the guys at the airport thought I was some spoiled rich kid ‘cause I paid for all my flights with my hot dog cash. I’m sure they all thought I was an idiot when I started wing walking and stuff, but now it’s ten years later and I’m still out at the airport flying as much as I can. I think I won them over.” “He always wins them over,” Stacey says. “Because he makes everyone feel like they are the most important person in the world. Kids idolize him because he rarely has a filter with them. Adults too, he just gets right in there with you, appreciating every moment. And letting you know how much he appreciates it.” (She’s right. He treats kids as equals and includes them. My own eight-year-old son considers Bushy a superhero for letting him chop down a tree on the prop- erty and then ignite the burn pile. I asked what his favourite thing about Bushy is and he replied, “He lights big fires. And I like Dex.”) Dex has to stay in the car after dinner while we go help Jan mount a large, flat screen TV (pulled from Bushy’s storage unit) in her living room. We share memo- ries and laughs while Bushy quadruple reinforces the TV mount, reassuring Jan of its stability. It’s a touching moment full of love, and I start to realize that for all the calculated stunts and high-risk payoffs, Rory Bushfield’s ultimate Edge is not out there on the end of an airplane wing or the top of a cliff. It’s inside his soul, a spiritual cornice shaped by loss and pain that he’s found a way to peer over, dance along, and ultimately drop off of in order to be the best person he can and chase a life worth living. Walking back to Machete, Bushy’s larger than life truck, Stacey sums it up. “He has a huge heart,” she says. “It’s way bigger than his brain.” instagram.com/bushywayne MACHETE Like every self-respecting small town Albertan, Bushy’s truck is enormous– a massive crew-cab Dodge with a full vinyl wrap of flames, knife blades and a 3-foot portrait of cinematic Mexican superhero ‘Machete’ on the hood. The graphic facelift is new, and significant, because Bushy’s truck has recently changed names. It used to be called “Red Denzel” but… “We drove down to Mexico last winter,” he explains. “And Den- zel got stuck in the mud, like really stuck. We tried everything, sticks under the tires, lifting the camper off, we weren’t go- ing anywhere. I was ready to write everything off, just grab the boards and whatever else and walk away. But my girl Stace walked to the beach and flagged down a bunch of fishermen who came ashore and somehow, I don’t even know, but to- gether we got unstuck. It was a miracle, this truck was Denzel when he went into that mud, but he came out the other side as Machete!!!” TOP LEFT Bushy channels his inner Zoolander on a modeling gig with Stace. JEAN MARIE URLACHER ABOVE Slow and Low. It's like a float plane, without floats. JEAN MARIE URLACHER BOTTOM LEFT Dex knows and Machete slays. MASON MASON