The reality of work

So some friends came up on Friday. Brought Jeremy with them. Three ridiculously fun unemployed 20somethings. Free to do things like move to Bella Coola or leave their homes for a week and go visit Bella Coola. I've given this freedom up, at least for a little bit, in order for what I have. A job, a salary, a "purpose". For the most part, I like my purpose. I like getting paid well for what I do. I like doing what I do. But sometimes, and often on Monday mornings, I don't. I don't like having to fight with kids to get them to read a few paragraphs. I don't like having to fight with kids period. I don't like liars and I don't like being lied to. And this morning, I kind of wish that I was the unemployed 20something, visiting someone who supposedly had their life together...

No wonder it killed people....

It took me a while to get bored. It all started on Monday, and by 2 am, it was unavoidable. I went to school Tuesday, but left at recess. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.... I didn’t do much but sleep. Couldn’t have a real shower because our shower head had fallen off during our prolonged absence and was lying rather deprecatingly on the floor, looking much like a little candle in a glass jar, and, somehow, does not fit back on the spout thing.

Side note - it’s half snowing and half raining out, yet snow keeps piling up on the roof, and then falling off in big and thwumping piles. I wonder if one of these piles is going to go through my deck.

Back to the shower... I wouldn’t be extraordinarily surprised if there’s a secret camera around somewhere, watching me trying to fit the two pieces together. Well, I’ve tried, and tried, and I’m not dumb and this appears to be a shower that could be put together by a dummie. But it doesn’t fit. So showers that are to be had are to be had with one very strong jet of water pointing precisely at the door to the shower, and, in such, pooling out onto the floor. Great.

What does this have to do with being bored? Well, nothing really. I’m bored because I can’t really leave my house because I have the flu. I don’t know if I’ve ever had the flu before. Maybe I wanted to a few times... wanted the attention, wanted to be able to say “no, sorry, I can’t come to your boring party tonight because I’ve got the flu”. But I don’t think I actually had the flu. I don’t know if I’ve taken a week off of school ever... except for maybe when I had beaver fever. And I don’t even know if I did then...

So here it is Friday, and I’ve still got this disgusting cough, but the fever’s gone and at least half of the other symptoms are gone... by that I mean that the symptoms are mostly half gone. But I’ve been in Bella Coola since Monday afternoon, and have only seen 2 people since I got home from school on Tuesday at 10:30, for less than a combined 10 minutes. I’m bored and I’m lonely and I’m sick of being sick.

Influenza is dumb. No wonder it killed people. It sucks. And now I’m going to try to post this on my stupid dial-up....

Sometimes even your favourites are jerks...

It's hard not to play favourites sometimes, because we all know that we have them. Hard to have the same rules for everyone. Hard to kick out the student that you know may not come back because he's being a jerk. But a jerk's a jerk, and circumstances are circumstances, and on and on, but...

But I kicked him out. His choice. Participate or go work in the office. Participate or pay the price. He left. Signed out and walked out the door. It's a disappointment. It hurts and it sucks but I know that if I consistently change the rules for him because life is hard and life is a disappointment and life hurts and sucks... because sometimes life walks out the door... well, I know that I've lost everyone else. I know then that I'll lose him too. I'll lose his respect by treating him differently, and once you've lost their respect, they'll never come back.

Respect is earned here. No one gets it free. Especially not some new white teacher. And fair enough. I don't deserve it any more than those who walked before me. And I won't lose it now.

Burning the forest that's already down

They’ve told us that it’s going to snow a number of times… I wasn’t ready to believe them until now. Last time they told us it was still October. Now it’s the middle of November, my snowshoes have arrived; I have a coat, 2 cords of wood, and a spare body in the bed to keep me warm. Wood. We were supposed to get beetle pine from up top – the top of the infamous hill that keeps people away. Don’t know exactly what happened to that plan, but it went awry. Ended up getting old growth salvaged Douglas fir instead. I started counting one of the logs. Got to 286 and got bored. Was probably 2/3 or ¾ of the way through. Some of it is soaked with sap and weighs 3 times as much as it should. Sizzles and pops and crackles and hisses the night away. It’s beautiful to come home to a warm fir-smelling cabin after a day at work. Home feels like home now that Jeremy’s here. Food and warmth and lots of love. We’re going to try and go up, up, up a mountain this weekend to find more snow, lots of snow. That makes me smile.

Lists and lists and lists of things

I tried to write, meant to write, and didn't or couldn't a few weeks ago. A little girl, 12 years old, died and I wanted to write it all down, but... well, I didn't. She got drunk and got in a car and drove home. Almost made it, but didn't. The community hurt, still hurts, will probably always hurt, but I think and hope that it changes. That something changes. I hope. We all do.

And now there's everything else. Mom visits and pumpkin carvings and students that are wonderful and students that are less wonderful. Or at least have less wonderful days. There's birthdays and snowfalls (not here, but not far away... drive for half an hour and you're covered in the stuff. It's -4 in the morning when I go to school these days... COLD when the fire's gone out). There's Halloween and Halloween costumes and parties and parties and costumes and pumpkins and candy and fireworks.

And there's other visits. Special ones, long ones, ones that aren't vacations because they last 6 weeks. They may last a winter and a spring. They make your heart beat a little off kilter and they make you smile looking at the ground because you know you've already started to blush. Just a little bit.

Or maybe a lot.

The Lake

One of my students told me last week that he couldn’t wait to go to the lake. I asked him about the impending weather, and what he did at the lake in the fall. Where I come from, when folks talk about going to the lake, they usually mean Windermere - condos, cabins, a lake and a beach. Vacation time. In Victoria folks usually mean that they’re going swimming, tanning, gallivanting at one of the many many nearby lakes. I assumed the same in Bella Coola. There isn’t really a place to swim at the wharf, and it’s DARN cold. Maybe there’s a lake where people go and fish or hunt or just hang out. Ends up there’s a city (or somewhere that’s big enough to have a Tim Hortons, a McDonalds, a KFC AND a Zellers) where people go to spend money and buy stuff. Really, that’s what people do in Williams Lake. The Lake. 487 km away. Up The Hill. “The Hill”. It’s a hill alright. 1 hour of the 5ish hour drive is unpaved, and about 20 or 30 minutes of that is on The Hill. People make up stories, and I’m sure some of them are true. Someone went over on it last year. Dropped a LONG way. And parts of it are 1 lane... but only kind of. It’s like a logging road, but it’s our only road. And it SURE is beautiful in the fall.

So I went to the Lake. And it was good. I went and I shopped and I spent money and I bought stuff. I drank coffee and ate out at restaurants that didn’t make my stomach feel gross. I bought organic cheese. I went to the river and drank beer and ate chocolate and hung out with my friends. I bought my dog a bone. I bought myself new bright red sheets. I missed my home and was over-stimulated by people and lights and noise. I hung out with another grizzly bear, this one smaller than the last, probably a female. I hung out with Heather a lot. She’s my Teacher Assistant, and my best human friend in town. Her and George duke it out for best alive friend. Sometimes the cedar tree with the rope swing tries to get in on the bets, but she doesn’t follow me and laugh at my jokes and slobber all over me.

The Lake. The Hill. The Valley. My home.

Sometimes they're really really big.....

George starts it all off. Or at least he did today. And yesterday. 36 hours. Twice in 36 hours his bark, not the loud and persistent bark that announces the arrival of my car, my bike, my feet, but that other one; the deep, aggressive, protective bark, announced the arrival of something much larger. Or not... my car, I suppose, is still larger.

We figure he’s 5 feet tall at the shoulder. Heather, a friend, my teacher assistant, saw him about a week ago and says his eyes are a foot apart. I’m not sure, but his head is probably as long as my torso. Silver and auburn. Tall, thin but not gaunt. He’s been eating well these weeks. Berries, apples, plums and fish. Guess is that he’s 5 or so. Wenda, the woman who owns this cabin and who is still living at the house a hundred feet or so away, says he’s been seen in the valley before. They always knew he’d be a big one.

I’ve never spent enough time living in bear country like this to get to know the animals. I’ve never seen the same animal often enough to differentiate it, known them well enough to tell them apart. This isn’t the black bear I saw my first week in town, not the first grizz I saw either. This one is special. I thought this one was going to climb my stairs. I locked my door and wondered what a deadbolt would do in a door full of glass against a paw as big as my head. I called my neighbours as I stepped outside to call George. Wenda says to stay inside... George will get closer as you call him, as your own danger increases. In order to keep him safe, be sure to keep yourself safe. Oh, the things we learn, oh the things we see. I pray for this bear. I hope we can continue to share our spaces, our homes. I hope my safety isn’t counterintuitive to his. I hope he doesn’t climb my narrow stairs after all. And I’ve set aside any notion of walking and cycling between 5pm and 9am... I guess I’ll be carpooling to school everyday until winter after all. And no late-night meanderings under the stars through the fields amidst the trees either. The things we give up are incomparable to the majesty we earn when living in places such as these.