Please Just Tell Us To Go

May 2011 Slave Lake, Alberta

Thousands of northern Albertans wait for the news

Are we safe?

Should we go?

They listen to the radio.
The TV.
Social Media.

No one tells them to go.

The flames lick the edges of their town and immediately they’re in their cars and trucks frantic to get out of town.
Trapped, every road a wall of flame.
They wait in parking lots till the road clears, escaping with nothing but their lives.
They have nothing.
They would have packed their treasures.
If only someone had told them to go.
Terrified their neighbours have not been so lucky.

Days later.
Volunteers search the charred remains
Will they find  bodies?
They are sure they will.
But they don’t.
A miracle.

November 2018

Next time.
And there will be a next time.

Please

Please just tell us to go.

Because we would rather wait a million years in a parking lot surrounded
By flames
Than search ashen basements for bodies
Bodies of friends and families who waited
Waited too long to be told

Just go.

Find Your Tribe

Somewhere during our student teaching, we decided we should form an organization. Someone had the bright idea it should be a sub-local of the ATA. That’s how SELAC was born. A group of starry-eyed U of A students who dreamed of becoming high school English teachers. Shortly after founding SELAC, Liz recalls that it was at a subject-specific competition between departments where we got our street cred. This (mostly northern) bunch of English majors roundly trounced the would-be Shop teachers in the nail hammering competition.  

Just fresh from student teaching, we had one year of university left before we would have students of our own. We were enthusiastic. We were energetic. We were eager to inspire. We couldn't wait to "make a difference." 

We met regularly, planned social events for students and professors, discussed job openings and shared hopes, motivations and dreams. After graduation, we attended the ATA English Language Arts Specialist Council conference at the Banff Springs Hotel where we met our senior colleagues and made believe we knew what "being a teacher" was all about. Shortly after that we spent a long weekend rodeo-ing and camping. And then we went our separate ways. SELAC disbanded but its members went on. We became English teachers. 

We taught in remote northern villages and urban centres, online and face to face, in public schools and private ones. We coached sports and sponsored clubs and took kids on trips and volunteered. Some branched off into Drama, World Religions, Social Studies, Math and administration. Some furthered their education. Some took time off to raise their kids. And through the decades, we persevered.

Although we mostly lived far apart, we stayed in touch. Sometimes we shared teaching ideas, discipline strategies, funny stories from the trenches, unit plans and resources. Occasionally we held reunions. More than that – we shared in each other’s lives. Marriages, births, new jobs, moves, graduations, new homes, travels, grandchildren. Retirement. We suffered together with family issues, aging parents and mourned deaths, including the loss of our beloved Donna who died much too soon.

This summer, thirty-eight years later, at the edge of a sleepy northern lake, we met again to share good food, reminisce and talk about travel and books and curriculum change. We shared what we were doing in retirement, from supporting a family of Syrian refuges to volunteering with the local Legion. We talked about kids and parents. Thought provoking conversations and new memories. 

All teachers need a tribe of colleagues who mentor and support them through their journey. SELAC was my first such tribe, although it was not my last.

Was teaching what we dreamed it would be? Did we make the connections with students we hoped for? Did we inspire? Did we "make a difference"?  That is not for me to say. But as I looked at the faces of these lovely women as they sat laughing around the table, I am glad I found them. I am glad I found my tribe. They made a difference in my life.

And I bet most of them can still hammer a nail faster than any shop teacher. 

Well, Liz can anyway.

At the Banff Springs Hotel

Desert Oasis

It seemed like such a great idea at the time.

A friendly park that people would love to visit. A place where you could fulfill the needs of your visitors. You imagined families and retired couples with travel trailers and motor homes en route to the state park or people visiting your city from another state. You thought about how happy they would be with all the services you would provide. You bought land just off the new freeway. You planted trees and installed electricity and water; bought picnic tables, built a pool and a neat concrete office and tidy restrooms with toilets and sinks and showers.

You smiled at the oasis you built there in the middle of the desert. Where there was once just sand and rocks, you made a place for people to call home. And then you waited.

And you waited.

People came now and then. But it was nothing like you imagined. The happy families didn’t come. The desert was deserted.

Then someone asked if he could rent by the week. The weeks turned into months and the months turned into years and suddenly you found yourself babysitting a community of decrepit Winnebagos and moulding trailers that had’t seen a road in decades. Under the trees you planted, now grown tall and luxuriant with foliage, you overlook the flat tires and tinfoiled windows and patch jobs of plywood and duct tape that are the possessions of your tenants- the elderly, the unemployed, the single parents, the people working minimum wage just to scrape together the meagre rent they pay you without fail every month. People who stop by your office every day to chat. People who help show the newcomers the ropes. You fill in the pool and start locking the bathrooms and make sure the pit bulls are chained up. You call the sheriff when you have to, which is becoming more and more frequent these days. Every now and then a hapless tourist shows up and you do your best to accommodate them. But your heart's not in it any more.

And you wonder... how did you get to this?

Utah

Bonsaied junipers twisted by the wind

Black skeleton pinyons

Silhouetted against intense blue

Striated canyon walls

Carved by millennia

The river’s entrenched meandering

Rising up from the paradoxical sea

To which they will one day fall,

Eyeless guardians on watchtowers

Overlook crumbling ochre castles

Pyramids and parthenons

Eroded crenellations and turrets

Ruined skyscrapers

Built layer by sandstone layer

Entrada

Keyanta

Wingate

Navaho

Geology both architect and destroyer