I don’t have the opportunity to travel for work as much as I used to, it bothers me and the job is less satisfying because of it. Most of the time I feel that my travel is discouraged. Every so often someone requests my presence on site, as was the case today. An afternoon walk around a facility with the engineering team, with an eye for some ideas they have, some of them very bad ideas, but which are being pushed forward despite concerns. That’s where I come in; another voice, possibly some considerations that others hadn’t made, questions others may not have asked because of different eyes on the same topic.
But ugh, the hours.
An alarm at 4am to drag my ass out of bed for a shower, make a coffee, pack a snack, and head for the ferry earlier than in the past because now there is pretty much a requirement for a reservation for the 6:15am ferry, which means I can no longer come skidding in ten minutes before sailing and know I’ll be on the boat. The reservation requires one to be in the terminal a half hour before sailing.
Double ugh.
To be fair, I could have taken a later boat, but then I wouldn’t have been able to make two other stops and capitalize on the trip by dropping off a carload of supplies for a course I am teaching at a hatchery in a few weeks.
So the early boat it was.
I’ve taken this photo before, but it always looks different than this, because it’s typically in the fall when the leaves are turning and falling. I love the feeling of being enveloped by the forest canopy.
I blew over the old E&N train tacks and hit the brakes on the other side….reversed and looked back down because I’d seen a person, far in the distance, so perfectly framed by the converging lines of the forest and the tracks. I kicked myself for forgetting my camera this morning in my sleepy haze. All I have is my phone. So be it. Not as good a photo as it could have been, but it evoked emotions given the events of last week and the feelings that are constantly just below the surface.
During a three hour site meeting and walk around, which included walking the site down to the new wells, we stopped at one of the wellheads and discussed water supplies. I didn’t take a photo, because it couldn’t have done any justice to the plant I was staring at, but I turned and looked at a plant that I was standing with my back up against. A leaf had brushed my shoulder and as I glanced back at it my eyes landed on the spines along the underside of the massive leaf. Recognition set in as my eyes traveled to the stalk, and then upwards. I was standing next to, and somewhat beneath, the single largest Devil’s Club I had ever seen. There were more, some even bigger. Nasty plants, but I’d never seen them this size.
As a child, my father used to yell at me to “Look out for the Devil’s Club!” when I’d go running into the forest at our cabin. I knew what to NOT run headlong into and never did hurt myself on one. But they’d never exceeded waist height. I guess they didn’t have the opportunity to get so large because the winter cold keeps them smaller? I don’t know, but these things were prehistoric and looked like they belonged in the jungles of Brazil.
When we emerged from the bush and walked back across the clearing to the facility I saw one of the many concrete salmon that can be found at salmon hatcheries across the province. But the sign amused me for some reason.
I left the facility and drove back to Nanaimo where I met a friend who came over from Gabriola Island to catch a drink with me while I waited for the 6:20pm ferry home. They’ve messed up the ferry schedules in a way that catching the earlier vessel is impossible without cutting the work time short, and then they’ve taken off the one that I used to be able to catch, and hour earlier than the one I was forced to take.
But the upside is that it does provide an opportunity to catch up with people I rarely see. We raised a drink to a mutual friend lost last week, and cried a bit into those drinks. But it was good to share the loss together.
And then the ferry was delayed because someone stalled on it….and by the time I got home at 9:30pm it had been more than a 16 hour day.
I used to do this on an almost weekly basis? Actually, when I was teaching on the Island I was doing this three times a week.
I don’t know how.
I am tired.