The golden hour is that brief period of time, which is rarely an hour and often only minutes, that occurs just after sunrise and before sunset, when the sun is low on the horizon, creating a warm golden glow to the light. Pair that with morning mist, and what you have is ethereal. It’s that flicker of time when unicorns and faeries might be seen when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest. It’s the briefest of time when magic seems possible…because the scenery takes on a peaceful serenity and you just have to pause and take it in, because it will vanish as quickly as it arrives.
Every year I take a few weeks off at the end of summer, spanning the end of August and the beginning of September. The time is usually spent doing my fall preserving, responding to student emails and requests for permission to take courses in the absence of prerequisites, getting my fall course up and ready for teaching, and trying to take in a bit of peace and quiet before everything autumn-related takes over.
I think it goes back farther than that, because I used to avoid the campus the first week of September while I was in grad school…because it was just so chaotic and I’d wait a week for everything to settle down as the thousands of undergraduate students flooded back onto the campus. And, more recently, over the past four or so years, I’ve needed the period of time to reset; to take a few days off the vacation to lend a pair of hands on a couple of field projects, and then to head up to a more remote facility for a week, to remind myself of “who” and “what” I actually work for. These things have kept me from leaving.
This year has been different.
Different because I retired from teaching two of my three online courses, meaning that I have no class to teach this fall. This is the first time, in my life since entering school in kindergarten, that I do not have school (in some form) in September. So strange. (I still do have one class in January to teach though).
Different because, as a result of not teaching a fall class, my UBC email inbox has not been flooded with emails from students requesting permission to take the class in the absence of prerequisites and/or because the class is full.
Different because there have been organizational restructuring that will see some positive change in capacity building.
Different because, for the first time in a few years, I’m feeling a little bit hopeful about a number of things.
I feel calmer.
That’s probably not going to last, because there is significant change on the horizon and, although that change is good, it’s going to be challenging. It’s been quite some time since I’ve felt professionally challenged and I’m hoping that I’m up to it.
But that’s all for tomorrow (metaphorically speaking).
Yesterday I felt like I found my eyes again.
With the frustration of the past few years I had put the camera down and just wasn’t seeing the simple beauty in the world, in the little things, in the random objects, not the way I used to.
Even though I’m technically on vacation, every year I give up a couple of vacation days to lend a pair of hands on the Pitt River sockeye program, with some amazing people who work with amazing fish 
Some years the lake is completely socked in with fog and the sun isn’t strong enough to seep through and burn it off. Some years it just rains and soaks us. Some years it’s hot and sunny and there isn’t enough of an overnight temperature differential paired with humidity to form that morning mist.
But every few years I get lucky and the weather provides a little bit of morning fog on an otherwise clear blue day, and the fog only lasts a short while once the sun crests the mountains.
Unless it’s already raining, I always arrive at the meeting point, at the top of the Lower Pitt River and the bottom of Pitt Lake, half an hour before I need to, in the hopes that I will get lucky and experience those golden moments when the morning mists form and the blazing sun crests to wash them away.
Yesterday was one of those rare and magical days.
I (foolishly) had my main camera in a protective neoprene sleeve and half buried in a closed dry-pack, so when I came down a cross-road a few kilometres before the lake and saw the most amazing scene of a fog stream rolling across a field and over a farm building as the sun was just coming over the hill and bathing everything in an incredible and blinding gold light. In the two minutes that it took me to pull the truck off the road to the side of a field, dig out my camera, and frame the shot, I’d lost the most amazing scene; the fog was alive and had already rolled mostly off of the buildings.
It was a reminder to always have the camera at easy access.
The scene was still lovely, but it had changed from something so much more incredible in just a minute or two. I am still grateful to have had a chance to see that breathtaking scene regardless of not having caught it with any permanence, it’s in my mind.
There is something about the mists that is so hauntingly peaceful. I love the sense of solitariness when I am alone in the mists or under a blanket of fog. When I was young and the fog would settle in, I’d often go to the school and stand in the middle of the field by myself, particularly if it was dark. I enjoyed the sense of complete isolation, the way the fog muffled both sight and sound. I still do.
So when I saw that scene I was hopeful that I had some magic a few minutes ahead. And I wasn’t disappointed.
(Clicking on any image should bring up a larger gallery...they do not all display in this smaller grid in the full aspect ratio)
I watched Earl, the water taxi operator, untie his boat and set out from the Polder towards the camp at the other end of the dyke, where our group would meet him in a half hour or so, for the ride up to the top end of the lake, from where we would drive up to Corbold Creek to seine the river for sockeye. As he passed the dock he recognized me and called out… “Don’t get lost!”
There is something so quintessentially “West Coast” about mist and water and birds. Sometimes it almost takes my breath away, even when there is rain involved in the equation, which there was not on this day.
(Clicking on any image should bring up a larger gallery...they do not all display in this smaller grid in the full aspect ratio)
Eventually I wasn’t alone anymore; a woman from another program who was volunteering to help some of the day son the river, arrived and walked down another dock to take in her own solitary moments in the mists and to take collect some of the morning magic on her phone’s camera.
Minutes later the mists evaporated and others started to arrive. We drove up the dyke, boarded the boats, and spent a busy day, with a smaller than expected number of people because two of the crew had emergencies to attend to. The trip back down the lake was as smooth as could be, a far different ride than the lumpy and windy trip two days ago.
(Clicking on any image should bring up a larger gallery...they do not all display in this smaller grid in the full aspect ratio)
And so ends another year of the Pitt sockeye program for me; tomorrow I head for Bella Coola. I feel like I am finding my eye again, and I am also feeling like I am finding solid ground again.
Thanks for taking a look and joining us on “The Pitt” …and many thanks from me to the crew for allowing me to be a part of it all 🙂