Saturday, Feb. 18, 2012 @ 8:40 am
Plans A-Z
The future is a blurry thing these days. Fog rolls in, obscuring what our lives will look like 90 days from now.
For a moment the fog lifts, and I see us standing on the balcony of a stick frame walk-up in North Vancouver. I see our bicycles hung on the wall, Sunday dinners with my parents, and dusky after-work snowshoes. I see myself riding the Sea Bus downtown each morning, the smell of diesel and concrete and cold transit, seagulls whirling and shrieking, the sun rising through the red painted iron scaffolding of the container cranes. And then the fog rolls back in.
In another instance, the fog thins and I see us renovating a small bungalow in Kitimat. I walk to work in snow boots, and the air is crisp and sunlight flashes off the fjord. Coastal forests patchy with clear cut, a town terrifyingly small, and salmon thick and red in the rivers. I blink, and once gain the fog has rolled in.
Blink again, and it's clear. It's a sunny day, and I'm jogging along the river in Calgary. Snow-capped peaks on the horizon. I work in a high rise and live in a seven year old condo. Weekends we're skiing at Sunshine or hiking in Kananaskis. I meet up with Sarah in Canmore, walking her dog along the cerulean blue creeks. We turn a corner, and there again is the fog.
This happens dozens of times per day. Glimpses of my future life, the possibilities vary from one end of the spectrum to the other. Each time Daniel presses send, I fall into a frenzy of research. I look up real estate. I search for maps of parks, trails, ski areas. I make lists of engineering companies. I examine satellite images, determine where we want to live, and what my commute will look like. By day three, I have a plan ready to execute. Revelstoke? That's Plan R. Salmon Arm? That's Plan S. Terrace? That's Plan T.
In the meantime, I organize my closets and go skiing. Ski, organize, ski, organize. My waistline narrows in correlation to the thinning of my possessions. My clothes organized by colour, spices by alphabet. It's my comfort against the inevitable change.
Driving to work, the fog lays thick against the river. I turn a corner, and it thins to the pink rising sun. Thin tree branches coated in hoar, everything sparkles an effervescent rose. Steam trails from the stacks of the mill. Trains clang together in the railyards. A fox lays low in the ditch.
This is now.
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