Saturday morning at the hatchery and when I got up I immediately looked outside wondering if I was going to be flying out or taking the bus up to Anaheim Lake. The ceiling was low and I was leaning towards it being a bus-out again. I have bad luck in getting out of here by plane. I always seem to get in ok, but more often than not the weather turns and the plane can’t get in. It’s just an expected factor of this time of year and I have had a long streak that broke last year. Around the other side of the site though, I could see a few holes in the clouds, so there was a 50:50 chance.
But first, time to strip the bed and wash the sheets, towels, and kitchen washcloth and dishtowel, sweep and vacuum the suite, clean the bathroom and kitchenette and make sure the fridge was cleared out of anything that will spoil. It’s not a hotel with housekeeping service and I try my best to leave everything in good condition so that the next visitor has a clean start, and so that I am welcome again.
My flight wasn’t to leave until just after 11am but when the clouds are low I always call the airport around 9am to get a feel for what’s happening since bussing out means one needs to be at the airport a lot earlier. Today the verdict was that they were delaying the plane out of Vancouver by about 20-30 minutes to allow the ceiling to lift, but the flight would go out.
Perfect.
Enough time for a quiet little walk along the berm and around the site. After a couple of close calls with bears on the creek on the other side of the bed, I no longer go over it without first walking along the road and over the bridge to have a look-see down the creek first. All clear today, but definitely some evidence of bears, though not in the last day or three.
The hatchery has been undergoing a rebuild for far too long, and it’s extremely frustrating (more so for the staff) that it hasn’t been completed. It had some good momentum for a while, and then it seems like it isn’t the flavour of the day back at headquarters, which is aggravating. Newer projects get the limelight and this facility feels left to its own devices to sort itself out without sufficient support. It should be so much farther along than it is.
My ride to the airport arrived and, after we walked around the site and checked water flows, looked for any holding mortalities, and sat on the picnic table for a chat about work topics for a bit, it was off to the airport. A few more topics to touch on during the short drive, and a bit of chatting at the airport before he had to leave, and I know I forgot a few other things I’d wanted talk about but had been too busy throughout the week to touch base on, so those will wait for a conversation another day. We said our goodbyes and I settled into a chair at the little airport to wait for the plane’s arrival while processing a few photos. About ten minutes later, in my peripheral vision, I saw someone come in the door and walk towards the line of chairs agains the window. The person sat in the chair next to me and said “Sorry” as if to apologize for sitting directly next to me.
I looked up and started to say “No worries” but instead it turned into “Marie!! What are you doing here, are you meeting someone coming in on the flight?”
“No girl, I came to see you. I saw that you were in town and stopped by the hatchery the other day to see you but you were on the upper river, so back late. They said you were flying out today so I looked up the flight and came down to see you off.”
I was so touched. She retired from the hatchery some years ago and it was lovely to catch up for a bit before the plane landed and it was time to leave, but not before one last hug with another amazing valley resident. “Thank you so much for stopping in here, that was so amazingly sweet of you!”
When I walked through the door for boarding and passed my boarding pass to the guy who runs this largely one man operation at the airport, he smiled at me and said “Have a good flight Paige, we’ll see you again next year I hope”. You have to love small towns where you are recognized as not being a resident, but also for not being a tourist. Once a year this guy sees me twice, once when I arrive and typically am looking for keys from him for a vehicle that has been left in the lot for me (sometimes I am picked up by hatchery staff), and once when I am either dropped off by someone from he hatchery or am leaving keys with him for a hatchery vehicle that I’ve left in the lot. Either way, I am associated with the hatchery.
The plane took a different flight path out than I am used to. Typically it flys up the Valley but I’m guessing that a combination of no one to pick up in Anaheim (not that we could anyway, all 19 seats were full) and prevailing winds and cloud cover meant we took off down the valley and out over the inlet. It was nice to be able to look down over the estuary and the tidal flats before banking south for the flight down he coast, with the ocean on one side and the coastal mountain range on the other. I was directly over the wing so not really any great shots this flight, though it was clear enough to be able to see the plumes of smoke from several still burning major fires along the way.
Kirk picked me up at South Terminal and we grabbed a quick lunch at the Flying Beaver on the river before a long slog home in horrible traffic. BCIT has an aerospace campus on Russ Baker Way at the airport and I love the glass building that sometimes houses a plane; today there was no plane inside but it reflected the traffic on the road in an interesting way.
And that wraps up another season for me on the Central Coast. I am always glad to be able to visit and share knowledge while still being useful in the field. It’s a nice way to engage in some soft education and help put context to the work, in both directions. I come up here to work, not to play and it feels fulfilling to be appreciated for trying to contribute as much as I can rather than use it as an opportunity for just getting out of the office.
The first year I came up I could sense the “Oh great, another office biologist we have to entertain on the river”, but after so many years I feel a little bit like part of the crew, if temporary, and I definitely don’t receive any special treatment while out in the field. It’s nice to spend time with the old guard and touch base on how this change or that idea worked out, or didn’t, to always learn a little bit more about their personal lives each visit, and to provide some biological context to the newbies so they have a better appreciation for how what they do with fish out on the river can impact how the eggs fertilized back at the hatchery might do in the coming months. Sometimes there are people working here for a season that Iv’e met elsewhere, or meet again at a different site later down the road, like this time where a fellow I met on the Squamish system is up here for a couple of months.
And I am always sad when I leave. It’s a beautiful part of the world filled with beautiful people, and it keeps me grounded and, as always, reminds me that I work for them, not the other way around.
There is a cost though….I really need my chiropractor after this trip, but he’s not available until early October. I also have two thumbs and a few fingers that are a bit battered, but I did manage to get out without any bruises this year, so that’s a plus 😉