Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 3:51 PM
Subject: Next Edition
So last night I wrote out a new edition and sent it… And it promptly disappeared into cyberspace. As soon as that occurred, the message turned into the most profound and eloquent piece of writing I’ve ever done–or ever read, for that matter.
Sorry you missed it.
My Introduction to the North Country–Part 1
The atmosphere of the highway is quite striking. There are tourists here in plenty, of course. We’re all dragging campers and stopping to photograph everything in sight.
But this road is about work at least as much as tourism. The highway is lined with dehydration stations and compressor stations and fracking operations. Heavy trucks, often carrying even heavier equipment, roar by constantly in both directions.
At every campground there is a ‘permanent’ section for workers–campers surrounded by muddy pickups and resounding in the evening to the sound of country western music. And at intervals we’ve passed ‘dormitory’ camps that appear to be totally dedicated to the men and women who come for the summer construction season.
The breathtakingly beautiful Alkan Highway also has an aura of sweat and diesel fumes.
When I found myself thinking about my father in law–dead these twelve years now–most of the day yesterday, the banks of the Sikanni Chief River seemed a reasonable place to think thoughts like that. The quiet riverbank surrounded by partially wooded cliffs, birds soaring high overhead… You all know the routine.
Most of you didn’t know Tim, but I’m sure those of you who did would agree that an appropriate brief description would be something like “sweet old man”. What better place to remember a sweet old man than the bank of the Sikanni Chief.
But that wasn’t what had me thinking about him. None of that had any relevance at all.
It was the mud and the diesel fumes. The atmosphere on the highway brought those pictures Chris is posting to life. This has always been a place people come to wrestle with nature. And the building of the Pioneer Road was the ultimate bout.
Tim came here as a young man to sweat and freeze and muscle equipment through the mud and the muskeg. Then he left and never returned. He had a wife and kids and a career. And then he was a sweet old man.
See. You thought I’d changed the subject, didn’t you.
But life is, ultimately, about work. It’s typically raw and physical when we’re young and more and more removed from that as we age. But work is still the justification for getting up in the morning.
The tricky part is how we define ‘work’. It’s all too easy to confuse it with ‘job’ or ‘career’. Do that and when you leave job and career behind? Well, hell. Let’s see how that works out for you.
If any of you are expecting a definition here, then you don’t know me very well. Sorry.
I’ll be working on that and keeping you posted.