entelechyproject

>The tundra swans have arrived in Goldstream. The snow is dwindling. The seasons have changed.

I was supposed to be shuttling someone up to Coldfoot this morning, so I was up early packing snacks and busting out the little used iron. Just as I was gathering things to walk out the door the office called to tell me that the shuttle had been canceled. I was and am still pretty bummed, as I’ve been looking forward to heading up to the Brooks range all week.

Later in the day, I got a call that the first official tour of the season has been booked for Saturday and would I be available to guide? It is our most popular tour, and the most lucrative for guides in terms of overtime and tips – a 400 mile out-and-back to the Arctic Circle. Of all the tours we offer, it is my least favorite, despite the money. It comprises eighteen hours of on-duty time, yet only gets you within sight of the mountains before you turn around and head back to town. Guests are tired and cranky by the end of the trip, no matter how well the day went. Long out-and-back road trips will wear on anyone’s nerves. It also means that the summer season is starting in earnest (already!) and things are cranking up at Little Tour Co.

I am training three new guides for their Commercial Drivers Licenses this season and two are just now starting the behind the wheel portion with me. They have a minimum of thirty hours each to complete before ‘sitting’ for the driving exam at the DMV, plus the fifteen or so my third student has left. Between training them, summer tour schedules ramping up, trainings and shifts at the fire station and my Red Card class in two weeks, I am unsure of how I’ll even find time to work my ‘steady’ job at the kennel. And then wildfire season will start, shelving everything else until fall.

But for all the busy that this change brings, I am mostly enjoying the return of green, of birds, of warm sunshine.

In the mean time, I have been sitting on pins-and-needles waiting to hear back from the university about my application to the Paramedic program that starts this fall. When I arrived home this evening, I had an e-mail from a friend who works at the University and had a meeting with the program director today. Since the decisions have been made and letters posted, I guess he felt fine letting her know about my status. And so I found out through a nearly after-thought line at the end of a longer missive:

“OHHHHHH – you got in – you’re in the Paramedic Program – I totally forgot to let you know … Celebrate!”

And I feel in a weird shock about it. At this point, that is all I really can muster to say. When I head to water rescue training tomorrow at the station, word will have spread and I’ll get slaps on the back and congrats all around and maybe then it will sink in. At the moment, I am just bracing myself for Saturday’s tour and can hardly process a sudden solidification of my usually-murky future.

(Speaking of Murky Futures … plans continue to solidify that will have us paddling towards Tanana on the Yukon in June to deliver a canoe. Video from a tour this winter … before I froze my video camera at the Quest start this year. Hopefully the ice will be gone by then.)

>This morning, I woke up to this:

Technically, it is still April. But May is less than 24 hours away. The snowplows are scraping along on the road outside the cabin. For my part, I’m eyeing my skis and wondering if there is enough pack on the recently thawed trails for a last horrah.

>Sunday’s Fire Medic training was much improved. Our sponsoring doctor came in to discuss protocols and standing orders. We played with pigs feet, cleaning out nasty contaminated wounds with days of transport time and swelling between them and definitive care. We poked around one another’s ears and eyes with examination tools. One of the lecturers from last month’s EMS symposium came in and gave another excellent presentation on orthopedic injuries. Department folk were a little less standoffish this go round. My falafel and hummus was spectacular, and I spent lunch hanging out with another department medic’s dog Quark in the parking lot and chatting with Pete on the phone. Much better company.

One of the things I am most excited about with the Fire Medic program is that we have protocols and training that allow us to do a fair bit more care than our state EMT levels allow. The reasons are twofold. On a fire line, we are doing significant preventative treatment to keep fire crews healthy and mobile and on the fire. On the remote wildfires in Alaska and in a lot of western states (Idaho, Montana) transport times for significantly sick, burnt or otherwise wounded firefighters can be days, not hours. We have to be able to provide more significant, long term pre-hospital care to prevent complications later down the line. I think this summer will be an invaluable learning experience as an aspiring paramedic.

In other news, I passed the forestry pack test tonight with over three minutes to spare and three firefighters behind me. I was barely out of breath. I was elated. Hauling fifty pounds of sand up and down my neighborhood hills for the last several weeks has paid off. I even spent the last leg of the test chatting with a firefighter about his day-job as a 747 pilot and his dog team.

Back to the dog kennel tomorrow. Despite waking up to snow every morning for the last four days, things are clicking along towards spring.

>I woke up early this morning to attend the first of four training days for the Alaska Wildland Fire Medic program. On Monday, I will take the pack test – and endurance test that is one of two steps in earning my Red Card. In May, I will complete my Red Card requirements by passing four days of Emergency Fire Fighter training, and in doing so be given a green light to work on any wildfire line in the country. In June, when the fires start, I will hope for a call telling me that I have two hours to be at the helipad on the local army base to meet a lead medic and four hundred pounds of medical equipment. All summer, I hope to be camping in the smoldering taiga treating burns and dehydration and blisters and intestines plugged up by too many MREs. And maybe a cool chainsaw wound or two or three.

Sounds cool, right? But in order to pull this off, I have had to reign back my already dwindling kennel hours, despite the lack of training pay for the summer. I have also had to reschedule things with the Little Tour Company, where I am helping prepare a new crop of guides for their commercial driving test. I have had to do this a few too many times this week, as non-negotiable fire trainings keep getting shifted around. I am afraid that I am blowing my good will and credibility with the tour company and my friends there – especially the friend who helped me snag this training position. Also, around fire fighters at the station and medics at the training, the language and talk is loud and rough. Kayak guiding and deck handing on Resurrection Bay and working in a shelter in Chicago set me up well for this. But the corporate culture at Little Tour Company runs on a different track. I thought I was doing well going back and forth until I received a reprimand this week for using the word “freaking” in the staff room at LTC.

Then there is the reality of Fire Medic training itself. This first day consisted of fire-medics showing cool slides of flames in trees, billowing smoke and pretty vistas they have camped in while waxing on about this fire line and that fire camp and how much it rains and floods and how dark smoke is. Interspersed between these slide shows were acronym strewn arguments about the politics of helicopter procedures, ICS structure and lower 48 crews and assignments. These heated conversations meant nothing to me. I felt like Charlie Brown when the grownups talk. We only got to relevant medical stuff (debriding burns, dealing with AMS, how the pounds and pounds of gear is allocated) in the last couple of hours of a long day. Already over an hour behind schedule, it was given short shrift.

In addition, although the majority of those at the training were from my fire department, there was a clear inner circle of veterans of the program. I felt my friendly hellos rebuffed by folks I have been working and training with since January. It stung, and I got a little pissed. Although I packed a lunch to eat (peter made hummus and falafel, horrah!) I decided to cough up lunch money to eat with the group at the mess hall on base. I thought the cold shoulders of the morning were perhaps due to a lack of coffee. I was wrong. It was elementary school lunch all over again – both in food quality and cool-kid table politics. I could hardly believe what was happening. I will be eating my own pita bread tomorrow.

When I got home, I threw on my training pack and slogged around the neighborhood in the break-up mud. Peter and Nyssa came along for moral support. I have two days till the pack test and I am terrified of failing, especially in front of department captains and firefighters I’m trying to gain credibility with. By the time we got back to the house, snow had started spitting again. Is it going to be a long weekend.

>fuzzies, for the weekend. Spring is almost here, but there is still a foot of snow on the ground and frost-nipping evenings. Perfect cuddling weather. Or co-napping, at least.