Douglas_Ringer_Amex_My_First_Day

Amex - my first day June 1969 - Age 23

 

My first day at Amex was the day I thought would be my last day on earth. My arrival into the world of Amex came strangely thru the concept of nepotism. The previous summer I had worked for the City of Kamloops in the water works department. Actually a very interesting job laying water pipe in the new subdivisions, repairing broken water lines and contending and pretending that sewer lines were jolly good fun to fix and an anatomical look at the under belly of Kamloops, so to say.

 

One must also mention... at that time getting a job "in" Kamloops was a highly prized nugget. One could maintain one's normal weekend routines as opposed to being a way out there...somewhere...where telephones, television, the theatre, flushing toilets, hot water, springy mattresses, beer and that essential whiff of femininity hadn't quite made their mark yet.

 

So I went back to school in the fall and hoped to find at the end of the term summer work back with the City of Kamloops.

 

My brother Bud had just got a job there and when I applied they said…,” Sorry”. It was sort of like…"we don't hire members of the same family due to the potential, possibility of collaborative, nefariousness. I was just hoping for a summer job not to hijack…with my brother in tow...a shipment of sewer lids....and turning up at the local junkyard… hoping to turn some revenue. I was laid low! My summer plans in tatters!

 

Returning home with these sad tidings…. Pete Kirby… who boarded at Mum's place...said. ”Oh, I know someone in the survey business. He might be looking for someone. Here's his phone number." So I called and much to my surprise...I talked to Ab right off. He said ..."Can you be ready Monday morning at 5:00 A.M? I'll pick you up." So brief! In my excitement I didn't even ask him one important question… like: What should I take? How long is the job? Where are we going? How much is the pay? Any pain involved?

 

I wasn't too worried about my initial lack of curiosity though. A couple of years before, I had spent a wonderful summer up in Valemount working for the Department of Highways on one of the many survey crews creating the new Yellowhead Highway. I had some idea about the basics of surveying. In our case there were three of us. The transit man, with a vest full of pens and pencils all used in order to deal with many a triangulation. Red…he did have red hair…the rod man and me… the ever so steady holder... of one end of the steel chain and carrier of armfuls of short-sharpened pickets.

 

We strolled along…I don’t remember ever running…measuring the initial gouged out route and indicating on the pickets how much fill and how much cut was needed for any particular section. Lots of pauses due to the transit man doing the necessary calculations…in that time... we’d do the chats…watch blasters drill, load and blow rock to smithereens, occasionally, an exception here, having to run like hell as falling rock started landing all around us,…marvel at earth movers and bull dozers…till it was time to move on. Indeed, a very interesting, pain free way in which to earn money and pass the summer surrounded by all that majestic scenery.

 

Basically, I thought I was pretty well prepared for this, as yet, unknown job. Intact clothing in spades, the ever too thin sleeping bag….and a major purchase…the new work boots with a tin of leather grease…Dubbing, I think. But ,none the less, I felt I was ready for this adventure... I was ready to fly.

 

So up with the birds on that sunny Monday and sure enough at 5:00, Ab was outside the house in a pickup truck with canopy. I nimbly dashed out with my Dad’s old duffel bag in tow, stowed it in the back, hopped in the passenger side and realized there was another passenger sitting beside Ab.

 

Holy shit!!! It was Gordy Siemans!

 

In Kamloops, even in 1969, you didn’t have to know people personally to see or hear about their do-daring deeds, their bravado and generally their crazy times. Reputations…like the smell of the pulp mill…. could invade even the tiniest, mental crannies, creating, sometimes, catastrophic pictures of vast destruction. Gordy, in his teens already carried somewhat of a dare devil, difficult-fisticuffs sort of lad. I wondered what could have attracted Gordy to this rather passive job of surveying. Did he do some kind of survey course? Or?

 

I think mentally I went… “Whoa! Whoa!” Alas, many seconds too late as we were now racing up Columbia and shooting out Savona way. A strange silence filled the cab. Ab wasn’t saying anything. Gordy wasn’t saying anything. I thought it best to remain nonchalant. At least we all smoked…and that, at least, was a vague puff of communal sharing.

 

Right at the Savona Bridge… before the whirr, whirr, whirr part… Ab finally spoke. He said…”Is this where it happened?” Gordy said…”Yes.” The silence continued till we stopped at Cache Creek to tank up. Ab got out of the truck to pay and Gordy turned and looked at me with that irrepressible grin of his and said…”Ab’s really pissed off at me. I rolled his truck coming off the Savona Bridge on Saturday.”

 

Before I could utter anything intelligible…Ab was back in the truck and we zipped through Ashcroft and headed up to Logan Lake.

 

This was all new country for me so I was content to check the scenery out while the frosty silence was maintained until we bumped our way into the Logan Lake Lodge.

 

I think I remember a sprinkling of rustic cabins with a larger cabin which seemed to be the Amex nerve centre. Milling about were various people in various states of, what I would learn later was, bush dress.

 

Bush dress was once new but has been roundly savaged by whatever hell lurks out there in the bush. You just sensed that waving a needle and thread around would seem a futile gesture. I gathered breakfast had just been finished and work prep was underway. I was told to grab my bag and find a bed inside the large cabin.

 

Probably many a soul has not experienced the smell that can stick to a place inhabited by a community of humans who toil and sweat all day and live in those clothes for what smells like a really long time. Those have really missed one of live’s infinite slices.

 

Upon entering “The Lodge,” I immediately felt some gravitational force trying to draw me back outside. It’s hard to find a word to describe a place where so many different bad smells can coalesce into one major, nasal-hair burning, unforgettably, mind boggling stench. I was to learn later that when you add your own stink to all those other difficult to describe odours…you could feel almost right at home.

 

“The Lodge,” was one big open space. Filled with beds along the sides. A large wood stove in the middle and kitchen with a large table for the meals. On first sight this dwelling might be deemed chaotic. There was such a spread of “things” covering and filling the whole space. The area where the wood stove was located was surrounded by every item of clothing known to man. That was only the stove. Rank clothing hung everywhere!

 

Trying to avoid socks hung in artful ways…socks that you knew could walk on air…..sweat-stiffened T shirts draped on anything that you could hang something on…in fact… you could have used them as kites. Not so white-in-rags, fart-stained Stanfield’s underwear badly in need of some, as yet, un-invented, heavy-duty detergent. Truly overly mature underwear seriously hoping that someone would take mercy on their beggarly state and build a pyre and cremate them. You just had to be visually impressed at all of this! Trying to find a new way to breath, I located a bed and quickly eased my way outside.

 

Up to now, there had not been a formal introduction made to anyone. A friendly…” How do you do?” would have, somehow, seemed excessive. Except for Gordy… I knew no one. But slowly, I realized that there were two other new guys standing about wondering what was in store for them, and, as I remember, they were from Ontario hitching to Vancouver. Some Amexer had picked them up and offered them a job.

 

Obviously, the customary job interview with the padded resume was not considered a necessary appendage for Amex workers.

 

We chatted a bit until I heard Ab say…”give the new guys an axe and file.” Some person brought them to us and said for us to sharpen them. I had never sharpened an axe before and holding the axe in one hand and the file in the other, was real foreign territory for me. Scrape, scrape, scrape was not really doing it. Before I could even peak on that learning curve we were forming into work groups.

 

When this was happening, a car pulled up and out popped 3 guys… Bill Metcalfe, Gary Lyall and Bruce Bried. I think they were returning from doing a recon on a property near Kelowna. There was a very animated discussion with Ab over the horrors that they had encountered there. In reality they might have been communicating in Japanese for all that I understood.

 

There was a lot of new vocabulary in this biz to assimilate. What I did understand was that some evil force dwelled there and that overwhelmingly large widow makers with flexible-steel limbs and bad-tempered, massive, piles of windfall would render any person who entered their realm into garden mulch.

 

So back to work groups. I found myself with 8 other guys crammed into Bruce’s car. A wonderfully, fading late 50s something or other. In about 20 minutes Bruce dropped 6 of us off and left to some other unnamed destination. So there we were… 6 of us…three rookies and three compass men and not a transit between us.

 

Still no real explanation as to what we were expected to do. We lit up our cigs and looked across a flat expanse of what my eyes could see was a very damp marsh. It looked like a very damp, 400 meter marsh. I could definitely see an infinite array of water-like blue specks held in place by little grassy hillocks. The water was being tenderly rippled by a light breeze.

 

Gordy and the two compass men (names unknown) were actually discussing if there was another way to reach our work area. It seems there wasn’t. I think Gordy said…”Well fuck it! Let’s go!” Before you can say…”Excuse me guys! What about my new boots?” There they were and us heading out into that marsh. We were very reluctantly following… but following we did. First there was a vain attempt to hop from hillock to hillock but they were too wet and wobbly so you just slipped off them into the water anyway. It was a long, wallowing haul to reach the other side… every step a little water-logged heavier.

 

The other side was where something called a base line was. As water seeped out of me boots, I gazed at my first hand-made picket. There was B/L 0+00 something on it. If you really looked you could see that there was a cut out, blazed and flagged line running up this big hill which you could not see the end of. We had to climb this big hill. For a guy like me… at this time in space…exercise was a short walk to the corner store for cigs and changing gears and stepping on the gas in my car. Without a thought about a massive coronary… up we went.

 

Wet, new boots are like wearing massive, saturated sponges, taped onto old automobile transmissions. Weighty, very weighty! Feet in wet work socks are like fine sandpaper on soles and… you know…you never thought about bringing an extra pair, did you? At this point, you realize you didn’t think about very much. But how were you to know?

 

So, with baptized boots, the ascent began, squishing ever upwards. Soon…legs screaming! Lungs gasping! Upwards! Ever upwards! God! Please make it end soon! I was ahead of the other two rookies and I occasionally looked back to see how they were coping and I thought… if I looked like them… it was very scary…their faces were twisted and contorted into some orgasmic form of the grotesque.

 

Eventually, up ahead, I could see the three compass men sitting having a smoke. As I slowly came closer to them…I was quickly composing myself…tiding up the pain and trying to get my breathing and throbbing-beating heart under control. That is, I sure and hell didn’t want them to know that I had just gone through a near death experience and I was really trying to exude some semblance that all was well. This was my everyday! Splashing around in swamps and dashing up mountains was all quite the norm to me. In fact lads, a real lark. The other two rookies were pretty good actors too.

 

Yes! The pause that refreshes and I didn’t know if I ever could get up again. Cigs out and Gordy says I’m going with him. Now I find out what my job is. The other four headed further up the line. Adding to my vocabulary, I find out that I’m a “tail chainer” and would be “tailing the chain.” We were working on a “grid.” I find out that we are standing at a “station.” There is a handmade picket that proudly proclaims this… B/L 0 S+28 W. “From this point we will head south so many hard feet. You have a few things to do. First you must follow me. I have here a chain. It hooks on to my belt here.” He shows me a nylon cord a 100 feet long. “When I’m out a hundred feet and the end is even with this B/L picket… you must tug the line and yell out…”CHAIN!”

 

“Then follow me to the next station. In between throw some blazes and tie some flagging. You must as well make the pickets. First cut something this high, shows me…he expertly cleans both sides off the top of this young spruce and tells me to write…for example…L 28 W 1 S then, L 28 W 2 S etc.”

 

Gordy, quickly made three pickets for me and presents me with some rolls of blue and yellow flagging and a black Pental pen. “When we get to the end of the line we will turn around...clean out the line…limb the branches axe high… back to the base line and then we will go out the opposite direction and repeat the process.”

 

Did I get it all? There was no formal question period as I was trying to stick flagging in my jeans pockets, balancing three pickets, wondering how to hold my axe, while Gordy took a compass shot and disappeared into the bush. I intently watched the chain. It was moving quite rapidly. In fact, I almost missed grabbing the end. Catching and holding it up to the B/L picket…I hollered my first…”CHAIN!”

 

Starting off from that cut out base line, I plunged into my first real bush. On that first day, I didn’t really notice the infinite variety of vegetative forms that abound there in. It was simply, ”the bush.” By the end of that first day I was to find out how malevolent it could be. There are so many different ways in which the bush can inflict painful reminders of just how weak and sensitive our human vessel is.

 

On that first line, or was it the first 100 feet… I was slapped, poked, jabbed, tripped up, slipped off a knee high deadfall landing on my shin, received quite a few whacks, mostly facials from sneaky, spring-loaded spruce boughs . You bet they all hurt. Worse, a bough gently waltzed across my eye ball, temporarily blinding me. Fuck! Did that smart! By the way…where is that chain? GOOOOORD!!!!

 

While Gordy is waiting for me to find the end of the chain…I must digress and add this interesting psychological observation. When you are being Amexed out there, flailing about in all that greenary, ”The Bush” is different.

 

For example, when you are in your car driving by it, normally, you consider it to be a beautiful, inanimate force of nature. All art forms have praised its visual majesty… but you don’t normally talk to it... do you?

 

For example, I didn’t walk the streets of Kamloops having the chats with various trees. Nor did I see others so occupied. Indeed, exceptions do exist…shamans, wizards, magi and others so gifted who can connect with vegetation on other wonderful levels… but… the norm excludes somebody coming up to you and saying…”Jesus! I just had an interesting chat with that maple tree over there”.

 

On my first day, when I was really in the bush, getting quite intimate, much to my surprise, I found out that trees and shrubs or anything trying to impede me…did really take on personalities of their own. I slowly, became aware of an intelligence that I had never met before.

 

Later, I always thought of “the bush” as an experienced, well armed gladiator that I had to outwit and everyday, on the job, you were back in the coliseum. I even thought, more so, that they really communicated in the spirit of The Old Testament. Acting out scriptures full of smite, smoke, sulphur and sacrifice. They spoke and acted in such a way that you clearly knew that you were not of the chosen.

 

No poop here. They could communicate in their way, and, I, in turn, was actually now talking to them. In fact, as I experienced the wonders of Amex in more detail, I overheard conversations that others had had with the bush that were truly masterpieces of base eloquence. The bush induced truly awe-filled, vocal pagan calls for respite, mercy and down on your knees, seeking forgiveness for vile acts nobody ever did.

 

These oral outpourings were, unfortunately, never recorded to my knowledge. In my imagination, I see a Canadian library filled with inventive words of cuss with a dash of fear. Shelves bending!

 

I think the norm was chatting to them in the way one talks to somebody who wishes you grave ill. In fact, my emotional-vocal range covered begging and pleading to rage. I’ve begged and pleaded with the bush in a situation like finding yourself entangled in the embrace of a large, dark spruce that is trying to eat you… frantically looking for that fucking chain.

 

I have politely said… ” Please! Please! Let me through!” I might, on occasion, have even offered to pay a toll. In fact, I would have given anything to have been allowed to keep up to that chain.

 

On the other hand, I have also found myself turning into a psychopathic, raging lunatic. In a situation like… a big Spruce branch that your dull axe can’t quite cut. You smash it and it swings way out and comes flying right back into your face. You smash it again and it comes swinging back once again… right into your face.

 

You get really pissed off… drop your axe and attack it with your bare, fucking hands. Yes, you give it a sound drubbing! You rip that limb off that tree…throw it to the ground! You repeatedly jump on it! You pick up your axe… and lay into that poor booger and do your best to reduce it to sawdust.

 

All the while…during this give and take with the bough… you are talking to it all the time as if it’s human. Mostly… it is a fairly coarse conservation…but a conversation, none the less. Screaming, the most basic of Anglo-Saxon cuss words like a religious, manically-incantation. You are doing your damnable best to put a hex on it and you know it’s getting the message. It knows that you want to lay it low. It’s fighting back and “he” knows what you are all about.

 

He knows a lot of under bush tricks that he, in turn, is going to lay on you. That is why you soon find out that there is not a bush type out there called… Bobby, Dick, Jane or Sally… but many a bush type so named… that if your mother heard you using such a name… not only would she drop her drawers... but she would vigorously wash your mouth out with soap.

 

Back to that first line and I quickly realized that the chain was moving quite faster than I was. My trot was moving into a gallop in order to grab the end of the chain at the next station. My attempts at tying some flagging and blazing a few trees was indeed rather paltry. The most crushing anxiety came after I had used up my first three pickets that Gordy had made for me, and now, I had to start making my own.

 

Sometimes, within the station area, there was not to be found suitable picket material and you had to go further a field to find one slender tree that was useable… and that really ate up valuable nano seconds. That chain simply wasn’t waiting for you. Even trying to stick that bloody picket in the ground could create some time consuming but very deep and involved conversations with the earth.

 

I was now in full flight chasing that chain. Smashing and crashing through the bush changing quite rapidly from a genial human being into some other animal form. I know I wasn’t multi-tasking but it sure felt like it. Frantically, tying flagging, blazing, looking for and making pickets, pounding after that cursed chain… I was certain that it was really happening all at once.

 

Why were my eyes the size of saucers? Why was I so recklessly running through this shit? Why wasn’t Gordy walking normally? Me! Who collapsed after one lap at Kamloops High and got a C minus in gym. Was I participating in some sadistic, Olympic event, sans medals, lost in the wilderness without a grain of blessed humour?

 

I really noticed quite quickly that Gordy wasn’t politely waiting for me at every station. Making an occasional picket or two for hapless me. All I could occasionally see was his back disappearing into another dark, green maze as I dashed desperately towards the next station.

 

Eventually, we got to the end of that first line. It was to me 1500 feet of the most punishing work experience I had ever fallen into and, by golly, we had to go back up it. As I walked up to Gordy, it was really hard to suppress the shock waves thundering through my body. I just could not imagine what kind of wicked, wicked force could have formed all of this unpleasantness? If there wasn’t that element called pride… I would have fallen down on my knees and begged Gordy to get me out of here. Trying my best to prevent my shaking legs from collapsing under me I did manage to ask him for a smoke.

 

Gordy rolled up the chain and we proceeded back up the line cleaning it out. It does take more than a few days to become conversant with the power of an axe. It’s historically a mighty work and war tool and deserves a lot of respect because you can create lasting scars on your body even when it is really dull. Probably, your first days swinging an axe are your safest because you are a little frightened of it and haven’t developed, as yet, that carefree, disdain for its deadly powers.

 

The formula for heading back to the baseline was that I ran up a hundred feet cutting and blazing to upgrade our initial pass. Gordy would catch up to me… then I would run up ahead until he got up to me again. I was hacking and trotting, hacking and trotting cause Gordy was pretty fast at limbing, dismembering and disembowelling anything that offended him. As he got closer to me I could hear his axe going…Whack! Whack! I was getting…chip, chip, out of mine. Soon Gordy was breathing fire down my neck and off I ran.

 

Back at the base line we had a quick smoke before we headed off in the next direction.

 

Believe me it was the same theme. I’m trying to keep up to that ever elusive chain, blazing, tying flagging, making pickets, jousting with the bush, and trying to keep the pain level low. Somehow, it seemed like a long, long, punishing marathon before we finally ended up back at the base line for lunch.

 

I think we completed 3 or 4 lines. We actually met up with another duo and settled in for some chats. I pulled out my sandwich, but it didn’t look like the sandwich I had made this morning. Someone had played road hockey with it. I tried to find out how the other rookie had found the job so far. I can’t really remember what he said… but I like to think that when I looked into his eyes…I saw the same horror that he saw in mine.

 

I found out another interesting aspect about the job when Gordy’s first question to the other compass man was. “How many feet have you done?” He said something like 3000 feet and Gordy said…jokingly… but not really…if you know what I mean…”Is that all! We have done 4,500 feet so far.”

 

In spite of my fatigue I really perked up at that. You mean the other rookie had not been dragged through as much bush as I had! That Gordy is much more, fleet of foot than the other compass man! That the other rookie perhaps didn’t have to run! That the other compass man might have been a compassionate sort! That… in the big axe throwing contest in the sky… I won a trip with an apparent over achiever and, perhaps someone, doing his best to atone for a rolled, pickup truck!

 

That underneath all of this shared pain, comrades-in-axes fellowship, I was involved in a very deadly, serious competition based on, “footage!!!” A competition… I was quickly finding out…that so far surpassed the rigours of a decathlon or the labours of Heracles.

 

The “footage” competition was totally unfair! It was not played on flat ground or placid waters! It was not a level playing field! The game’s grounds were determined by massive geological forces that had bent and twisted this playing field into infinite arrays of extraordinarily, confounding patterns of contour lines that made every foot earned a conquest of appalling magnitude! Add the vegetative aspect and you are now facing a natural force so omnipotent that it demands unconditionally not only, your clothing and new boots, but, as well, your body and your soul!

 

Man! That was a short lunch! Before I could shake the kinks out that had settled within my body…I was again up and running. Was it me or had the pace picked up? Or was I experiencing that famous last blast? Had I broken through that barrier and was gliding on pure energy? In hind sight, I think, my body sensory capabilities had just shut down… no doubt due to excessive jolts of pain. Survival instinct turned up really high. I was literally running on auto pilot. Blaze, flag, chain! Cut, cut, cut! Blaze, flag, chain! Cut, cut, cut!

 

We finished the last line around 5:00, I believe. I can tell you now what it feels like getting a reprieve from the hang man after spending most of your life in jail and being finally set free. Forget about fornication because this feeling is so much deeper. It’s that feeling where you just might pause one day in front of your local Salvation Army band-choir and hum along a bit…tapping your foot ,build a few roadside shrines, or, perhaps, become better acquainted with Psalm 23 and contemplate all the good deeds you could do for your fellow man. For lack of a better word…it is a very “holy” feeling.

 

Time wise, on any other job, it was a reasonable day. But in that day I had blown out about as much energy that I would normally use in a year and now all we had to do was get off this fucking hill and Bob’s your uncle.

 

Walking down that hill proved worse than walking up. Stabbing pains ran up and down my legs as I tried to brake myself going downward. My legs were all rubbery with nil shock absorber effect. I did my best to stifle the moans. If other people weren’t around I would have probably cried, wailing at my fate and rolled down or slid down on my ass just to see the end of that hill.

 

At the bottom was that swamp. This time I didn’t give a shit! I plunged in like an eager beaver. I could see that road off in the distance and Bruce’s car waiting to pick us up and I focused directly on that spot and who knows I may have even walk on top of that water. Bruce’s car…Bruce himself… what a beautiful sight! A really, really, truly, heavenly vision! I thought I saw halos over that car and you don’t get that too often.

 

 

We again crammed into his car and the game of footage was a hot topic. I wasn’t really listening. I was fascinated by the strange seizures that my body was going through. I couldn’t feel certain things. I had trouble unfurling my pitch-sticky hands. They looked like claws. When I tried to straighten them they would spring back into claws. My feet seem to be missing. In all that dampness they had floated off somewhere.

 

So it made it quite fun when we arrived back at the lodge to discover that sitting up and getting out of Bruce’s car was quite a physical event for me. Muscles and joints were seizing up fast and it was easiest to crawl out on my hands and knees, pretending I was looking for something. Slowly, carefully, standing up…while still acting the jocular…mind… was excruciatingly painful.

 

I walked like Frankenstein into the lodge hoping that the more intense footage conversations were so involving that no one would notice that I had become a physical oddity. I heard Ab ask Gordy how much footage he had got and when he off handily said,” 9000.” Ab, really didn’t say anything… but you sensed that Gordy had made a small but substantial down payment on that rolled, pickup truck.

 

I was so happy to be out of that bushy horror that the lodge reek that had scared the shit out of my nose in the morning had taken on a more subtle tang and was actually quite comforting. I really stank myself and could hardly wait to don some fresh clothing and dry socks. My new boots had been reduced to boots that had walked around the world a 100 times and I felt I would be lucky if they could hold together for another two days.

 

No need to tell what a job it was to get undressed and dressed again. Finally, getting those wet socks off and having a look at my feet really scared me. They were all soft, red and wrinkly, rather outer worldly, as if they belonged to some other alien life form. They seem to have aged tremendously, all in one fell swoop a swamp.

 

All my clothing was now hanging just like everybody else’s and I felt big time bagged and definitely not firing on all cylinders. Post traumatic stress, the 1000 yard stare, battle fatigue all wars rolled into one.

 

Some lads were making supper. Can’t remember what it was but do remember helping out with the dishes in some sort of daze… then walking over to my bed… laying on it… then it was morning again! Truly a sleep of such deepness that when my eyes flashed open for a couple of minutes I really didn’t know where I was. When I did realize where I was... a very dark, depressing cloud of horror settled in. I was still in hell.

 

A loud tapping was coming from the roof area and after some thought I realized it was really raining outside. I tried to move and realized I couldn’t! Yes…I could move… but every atom of my body was in extreme pain. Wrinkle your toes and spasms of pain rolled upward. Wink, and die the death of a thousand cuts. My body said don’t move! It said it very loud and clear! Totally immobile… and realizing this, I began to feel a growing sense of panic creeping through every suffering, molecule of my body.

 

I couldn’t imagine how I was supposed to cross swamps, ascend mountains, swing that axe, tie that flagging while running after that chain in my present condition. I might as well have been in an iron lung.

 

People were starting to roll out of their beds, someone making coffee, belching and farting away while I am trying to deal with my rather serious, anxiety attack. I believe I began to think of desperately, viable excuses to explain my present inability to rise and shine. Take my axe to myself! “Oh! Look guys what my axe did to me!” Jesus! I couldn’t think of one way that wouldn’t have had me melting into a deep pool of shame. What could I say to my mother? Again, pride does have its kill side.

 

I tried ever so slowly to ease myself into something that looked like a sitting position and to this day I can remember the agony. I can’t remember how many minutes it took. During this slow motion process…I tried to muffle many a long drawn out moan… which I foolishly tried to disguise as a long drawn out smoker’s, cough attack.

 

Lifting my arms to put on that T shirt. Sanding to pull my pants up, are what legends are made of. The ultimate pinnacle of dealing with this pain was putting on my still damp boots. They seemed to have shrunk. That was the total Spanish inquisition all in one go. Jesus on the cross stuff.

 

But now breakfast was ready and grand smells of bacon and coffee had me ever so slowly inching my way over to that table and ever so slowly easing myself into a chair. My hands curiously, were still doing claw-like things and made... picking the fork and knife up and dealing with my coffee cup… a little challenging. Even crunching on bacon and toast was causing pain, but, at least, with eggs, a less painful option, if you carefully let them slide down on their own.

 

With breakfast over, I gingerly helped out with the dishes. The rain continued to tap dramatically on the roof and I could see out the window that the rain was really coming down. Big puddles were turning into ever growing mini Amazons. I really tried not to think about the possible transformations that were taking place out in the bush. I felt and sensed that more evil things could even be multiplying out there.

 

An ominous fear of getting close to that bush was now added to all my other fears. With my body….the all over…really, stiff-painful body that I now inhabited… it was sure going to make it more than difficult to put on a chipper face and fake the cheerful…this is, “ really a lark lads, ” thing.

 

Over on the cleaned off dinner table a major conference was taking place. Ab, Frosty, Gordy, Jack, Bill, and others were peering down at a map and discussing strategy. I didn’t really hear what it was they were talking about but I did hear this, and this is the point in your life where you learn that miracles are not only confined to biblical scripture. That, just perhaps, there are really angels perched on your shoulders lending, in times of extreme duress, a much needed hand and flap of wing.

 

Ab raised his head and the golden chords of his voice filled every nook and cranny of that lodge. Ab said…”Hey you guys were going to knock off work for few days and let this rain clear up.” For a sec you couldn’t hear a pin drop. Nobody said much…. but if overwhelming relief was measured in water we would have flooded the total landmass of British Columbia.

 

In a pain free world…I would have fell on my knees …first thanking every God and Goddess out there… and then leapt up off of my knees… hopped, skipped and jumped into Ab’s arms and kissed him all over. My cup was truly running over with pure, blessed thankfulness.

 

Unable to express my true physical feelings in my current state …I remained frozen at the wash sink...gazing out the window as the river built upon the mini Amazons. So relieved as ecstatic waves of love sponged away my fears. Oh! Blessed rain! Giver of life! I wasn’t going to die out there today.

 

Getting back to Kamloops was made really easy because Bruce was heading there himself and offered to take me and a few other lads as well. I think the other two rookies who were hitching to Vancouver were also in the car and were placed back on the road outside of Ashcroft.

 

I just knew that after we headed off, that they both got down on that pavement, and kissed it many, many times. Never in the annals of history has a road ever looked so good in the pissing rain.

 

When I got home the first thing I did was take a very hot shower and took my trashed body off to bed. I actually slept that day and night away and knew in my heart of hearts… even then… that I would never-ever forget what I had experienced on that first day for Amex. It added a whole, unforgettable dimension to the world of surveying and a lasting blaze on my heart.

 

 

 

Done