Wolf Creek

I’ve never been an avid golfer, nor have I ever been a particularly good golfer, but I do try to get out and play at least once a year.  This year I was a little late getting started.  My brother Wes, who has been working at Wolf Creek the last two years, took me out for my first round of the season on Saturday.  I was pretty rusty and the west nine at the Wolf is very unforgiving, so it wasn’t long before I stopped pulling out the scorecard to mark down the embarrassing numbers and we were soon counting our success by the number of balls we lost and found.

But even though we both played absolutely awful, it was a lot of fun just having that one on one time with Wesley.  We walked instead of taking a cart so it was good exercise too, and the weather could not have been better. I just love having time with Wes where we can talk and joke around and really connect over something we have in common.

I too used to work at the wolf.  In grade 9 and 10 I spent the summers and many fall days after school at the golf course, picking the driving range and washing down golf carts.  So being at Wolf Creek always takes me back so vividly to many memories from those times, some good and others not so much.  It’s incredible how memories of things I’d completely forgotten about, from 13 years ago, can suddenly seem so clear after going back to the place where they happened and recognizing the little details, the smells, the sounds, and all the tiny things the brain leaves out when it fabricates a place in your mind from the limited materials of a distant memory.  Even the wash bay behind the tee box on hole #1 where I’d washed hundreds and hundreds of carts, looked exactly as it did 13 years ago.  The hose wrapped up and hung just like it always was, and the same garbage barrels in the same place.  It was like going back in time.

So what does all this make me think about?  Well, as cliche and predictable as it may be, it makes me feel like I’ve grown up a lot in the last 13 years.  I no longer feel so easily intimidated and unsure of myself.  Walking through the places where I’d let myself be bullied and teased, I now look back on it all with so much more understanding.  I no longer feel I have anything to prove to anyone, and I realize also some of the reasons why my peers tortured me the way they did.  I don’t feel any regret or animosity over those memories.  Just an acceptance of it all as part of the journey that brought me to where I am now.

What will #3 be?

After a six week stretch with no fire calls I should have known there would eventually be a bunch in a row.  We were all pretty exhausted leaving the fire hall last night at 10pm, after 8.5 hrs at the scene of the train wreck.  What an intense experience.  I don’t even know where to start to describe it all.  I just wish I’d been able to get some photos but my phone battery had died early that morning.  I took a lot on the fire department’s camera, but won’t have access to them for a week or two at least.

And then, after staying up until 3:30am last night working on a FarmOn video that I was supposed to have worked on in the afternoon, I was awoken at 8:30 this morning by my pager again.  A farm shop on fire near Fernitosh, my first structural fire.  On the way out, Mike and I got into full BA gear in the back of the rescue van (BA = Breathing Apparatus).  When we got to the scene, the Ferintosh fire department already had the fire mostly under control, but there were some trusses still burning in the attic near where the fire originated, and we had to help them remove the metal siding of the building to gain access to the attic and fight the fire from within.  It was pretty exciting going into a smoke filled building in full BA for the first time, and the work was pretty tiring, moving ladders and siding and carrying hose.  It sure feels good to know you’re doing something that makes a difference to the community, and I do love the adrenaline rush when you’re heading out to an emergency with the sirens blaring.  But, I really felt bad leaving Kelly to take care of Aubrey by herself two days in a row, plus the time away from FarmOn work when we’re right in the middle of some really important and time sensitive stuff.

They say bad things come in threes, so it makes me wonder what might happen tomorrow.  If the pager does go off again, I just hope that like yesterday and today, nobody is seriously hurt or killed.  As for the driver of the gravel truck that was hit by the train yesterday, it was a miracle that he survived.  The cab of the truck was pushed about 500 or 600 feet down the track before it finally stopped, and it was an unrecognizable ball of twisted metal when we got to him, yet he was so alert he kept saying “guys I think I can walk out to the road”.  Unbelievable.