Taken early, on the way to a meeting yesterday morning.
I found myself on the road between Ucluelet and Port Alberni, heading to a committee meeting scheduled for a 10:00 start. The round trip is three hours on a good day, but those days are rare due to a large construction project on Kennedy Lake Hill.
The road is being made safer, widening it to prevent larger and taller vehicles on the cliff side moving across the dividing line and scaring oncoming traffic into a choice between a lakeside plunge or a head on collision. Currently, the road is often closed for a number of hours each day, and when it is open, it is single lane and flag controlled, potentially adding quite a delay to your journey.
All this is a long winded way of saying I’d left plenty of time to make my meeting, and the traffic gods were beaming down on me as I experienced the briefest of stoppages. This left me time to make a stop before Alberni at Sproat Lake, take a short wander under the trees and along the shore, sip my travel coffee (prepared in anticipation of a long flag stop!) and gather my thoughts, such as they were.
I could tell you about the dozens of new education acronyms I’ve encountered but as yet have failed to decipher, or about some of the policy initiatives to be discussed, but I won’t. Was there cell coverage to check work messages? Nope! Instead, I’ll share that the parking lot was empty, as were the trails and shore. Rain was trying and failing to fall, with barely a patter to be heard on the turning leaves. The chattering squirrels and angry-sounding crows had the place to themselves, or they did once I finished my coffee and remembered I should be working, or at least on the way.
I made it to the meeting fashionably early, left with a head full of new and exciting information, and some more acronyms. I’m happy to report there were no chattering squirrels or angry crows on this committee, so that went well.
Best of all, I was back in time to join a homework zone and hear from a confident young man sharing his experience about becoming an outdoor leader to his peers. He was eloquent in his expression of how he wanted to further his outdoor leadership skills and continue to mentor younger students in wilderness and traditional activities.
The success he was sharing reminded me that a lengthy round trip, coffee stops (LCB) and all, is a worthwhile use of time. It is heartening to witness new policies being shaped by representatives from the communities searching for better ways to educate and engage their youth. As I wrote last week, and hope to write again and again, young people can and want to be engaged in their communities and in their natural surroundings. That’s pretty good news (and it’s real!)
Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful weekend!
Sometimes the best way to tackle report cards is to leave them at home and go take a nap. Rest your eyes, stare off into the distance, empty your head, or fill it with something else. Be lulled by the river song, rest and recharge, and then head back for an early evening beer. A beer? But what about those – never mind. I can’t write under the influence. Have to finish them another day.
At school, we’ve been learning about the Solar System. Heads were spinning as students grappled with the idea that our Earth rotates on a 23.5 degree tilted axis. The fact that we live on a speeding ball, traveling at thousands of kilometres per hour had heads tilting in thought. Learning why we have seasons, why they are opposite in each hemisphere, and about the intricate celestial dance that stars and planets have been engaged in for many millennia has been a cosmic experience. More stars than there are grains of sand on a beach. Far out.
We’ve been measuring the increasing daylight hours, and slowly shedding some of the winter layers. Evidence that seasons are changing. It’s a long winter, and you take your fun where you can find it. Like watching in amusement as twenty-five students stumble around a murky cloakroom designed for fewer and smaller children. They bounce off the walls and each other in their attempts to pull on snow pants, snow boots, bulky coats and assorted knitwear. Gloves and mittens are dropped and lost underfoot. It’s a brave student that falls on hands and knees to try and find a missing mitt. It’s grim in there. They do this several times each day. I stand well back…
Studying the sky puts things in perspective. Grains of sand, and all that. Maybe you feel that the world is off balance, tilted somehow, especially since the turn of the year and all the dreary noise and nonsense. All that extra unpleasant hot air and bloated nastiness emanating from the DC area. Still, maybe we’re only experiencing a bit of a blip, if you take the longer view. Yes, the air will be less clean, and harder to breathe. Water will be more contaminated. There will be fewer trees and more greenhouse gases. People will be marginalized, discriminated against, and freedoms and environmental protections will be curtailed.
It is bad, yet it helps to remember the planet really is tilted, and that part is ok. The sun does come up and go down each day. The real dance has been going on for many years, and will continue past the next four (or eight – heaven help us) years of irritating sideshow, and then far, far, beyond. Our young people are truly interested in the big picture, and their small part in taking collective responsibility for the speeding ball they inhabit. The students I’m teaching this year are (amongst other things) Canadian, First Nation, Somali, Indian, Lebanese, Russian, Pakistani, Tibetan, Haitian, Afghan and Ethiopian. These little Earthlings love to look up at the sky. And even if they drop a mitten and are looking down, they can be tremendously resilient and good natured. After all, how many of us could emerge unscathed and happy after nearly six winter months of the cloakroom dressing challenge? They are stellar.
A tilted and disjointed piece this week, and an attempt to recognize disequilibrium is in fact part of a greater pattern. Groovy.
OldPlaidCamper 