I’m playing catchup after a busy period. I took a few weeks off at the end of August/beginning of September, as I always do. Typically I take a week to do my canning (mostly tomatoes), a week to get my online courses ready to go and to deal with the onslaught of student emails that comes just before the fall term starts, and a week to try to catch my breath and maybe read a book before all the fall field travel starts.
It didn’t quite go that way.
I retired from two of my online courses, one of which I’ve had a 30 year association with. The faculty finally hired a new full time member and I decided that it was a perfect time to step away from two of three of the classes and let someone newer, younger, with different experiences and more recent knowledge of the industry and its practices, take over and build new curricula. So that was weird, because it’s the first time in my life, since I started school back in kindergarten, that I haven’t had anything to do with school in September. It was a bit discombobulating.
I did get my canning done, though I had a few empty jars left at the end so that felt a little unfinished 😉
And I didn’t get to read a book, because I gave about six days of my holiday time back to work and filled a few slots for some spawning activity on two projects. I typically tell myself that it’s not really like work because I enjoy the company it brings, but it also left me without any more than three consecutive days off across the three weeks I was on leave.
It wasn’t the best decision, particularly at a time when I really needed to turn off after too many very challenging years in a dissatisfying work situation. On the flip side, those field days, and the work trip that typically follows the first week back on the clock, are a bit of a panacea for the unhappiness because they always remind me who and what I work for. It’s not one person above me, it’s all the people doing the hands on daily effort. Those are the people I work for.
The second week of September brought a bit of a reset. A trip to the Central Coast, collecting and spawning broodstock on the river, alongside amazing people who care deeply about their valley, its environment, and the animals that inhabit it.
It was a week for letting go of anger and focusing on tangible things.
I’d thought I’d get a couple of days on the river and a few at the hatchery, that I’d have some time to prepare a presentation I’d agreed to give the following week at a meeting on the Island. But the fish were less abundant than usual years and so I ended up on a river crew every day. It was great to reconnect again with the crew, to be back on that river, to be handling fish again.
The days involved nicks and cuts from fish teeth, bruised knees from kneeling on rocks while untangling fish from nets, and looking over one’s shoulder for bears. But they also involved unusually sunny and warm weather, interesting conversation, laughter, and learning – in both directions because I always learn as much as I teach when I visit.
And photos…lots of photos.
I usually process and write each day when I travel, but that seems to have fallen away and I had too much to do in the evenings….so here I am a month later finally getting around to it. So fewer words….more photos. Probably more interesting than my ramblings anyway 😉
On September 11th, I left the smoky skies of Vancouver and headed north. I was surprised how far the smoke reached. It was thinner, but still there in the valleys below. Even in Bella Coola, there was a haze to the air for the first few days, but it was a brighter, bluer, and cleaner sky. It’s weird how often I seem to be in an airplane on 9/11.
So day 1 in Bella Coola was really just getting there, a brief visit to the Fall Fair, going for a quick drive (and discovering a pretty little log house I’d not seen before (just down by Snooka), picking up groceries and getting settled, and going for a run.
Day 1: Click on the first photo to launch the gallery
Day 2: Click on the first photo to launch the gallery
Day one on the river was about getting my feet back under me and remembering how to navigate the slippery rocks, how to untangle fish from a gill net, how to launch myself onto a raft like a beached walrus…and other nifty skills. I think what was the most surprising though, was the weather. I’ve been up here when it’s nice’ish, but not like this. There aren’t usually this many mosquitos or black flies… and there is usually some rain. I have had a pretty long streak of not being able to fly out because of weather, and having to take the little airport bus up The Hill to Anahim Lake to be able to fly home.
But this year, the skies are blue, the clouds are few, and the rain has largely stayed away.
And the fish are fewer than usual, making collection a slow process. For every 5-10 Chinook in the net there are 50 or more to pick out. 50 or more little thrashing kitten fanged fish to superficially scratch one’s fingertips. By the end of the week I was kinda sick of pink salmon.
I was told that there hadn’t been many bears, but the first thing Denis said when I saw him the day before was that he recalled me being the bear attractant.
He wasn’t wrong.
We saw tracks as soon as we crossed the river to the first net set spot, and saw a bear later that afternoon. The first of maybe 20 or more bears that we saw across the five days. Presumably some were repeats, but there were definitely several different moms with cubs.
Day 3: Click on the first photo to launch the gallery
Another day on the Lower Atnarko searching for broodfish. It’s a lot of work with relatively few fish to show for it at the end of the day, and more than one net repair required. I’ve not seen this few Chinook in the ten years that I’ve been coming up here. The fish that we do catch look good, but there just aren’t many.
More bear prints, a couple of bears that I didn’t take photos of, one that I did….but little toadlets in fairly high numbers in one set spot. I don’t know if toadlets is the right word, but someone up in Kitimat once called them that and it stuck. They are juvenile Western Toads and I remember catching them when I was a kid somewhere out of Prince George. I thought they were adorable then, and I still do now. The only problem is that they blend in so well and I am always afraid I am going to step on them!
