A Slimy Splashback

"The individual who has experienced solitude will not easily become a victim of mass suggestion" - Albert Einstein

For the first month here, the weather consisted mostly of rain and snow. Perhaps about 50mm of total rainfall fell during that time, which resulted in low-hazard fire levels along with sopping wet grass. I enjoyed this time as the rain kept the weather cool and the mosquitoes at bay. However, I started to notice a negative aspect of this continuous water oozing from the clouds when the contents of my outhouse started splashing back on me. (Excuse me if that’s a little nasty, but I thought it would be a good way to start the blog.) I alerted my supervisor of this situation and he said to keep an eye on it to see if it went down once the weather warmed up. A few days later, the weather warmed, and I decided that it was time for me to mow the lawn. I knew this would be a big job but I felt enough courage to get it started. It took about an hour and caused significant sweating due to the full-body covering bug jacket. You see, the mosquitoes like to dwell upon the tall grass as I imagine it’s something to hold onto so they don’t blow in the wind. Thus, the obnoxious machine plowing these delicate green handholds caused a disturbance in the life of the blood-suckers and they went wild. Hundreds surrounded me but my bug protection outfit did me well. After I put the mower away and ran inside (I usually have to run inside so the mosquitoes don’t follow me in), I heard a strange sound of a helicopter very close to my tower. I was both excited and confused, wondering who the visitor would be and checked my phone messages to see if I had been alerted of this.

“Ponton Tower, there is a HAC (Helitack) crew coming to dig you a new outhouse hole today. Just wanted to let you know.”

They had called me during our mowing and I had missed it. The helicopter touched down, four guys came out, and proceeded to move my outhouse to a new location. I was very grateful for this but felt a little guilty as my mowing of the lawn had caused an agitated swarm of mosquitoes to bombard this crew the whole time. After they had finished, I used my new outhouse with much glee when I noticed that there was no splashback. Now it has been just about a week and the problem has started again, although there has been no rain. I don’t think I have enough liquid in me to fill up a deep hole that quickly so my only guess is that the contents of the previous outhouse have leaked through the soil into this newly dug hole due to their proximity. Another day in the life of the lookout observer!

The former outhouse location

I’d say that this was probably the most exciting thing that has happened to me in the last two weeks. I didn’t write a blog last week as I was pretty tired and also didn’t feel like I had anything profound to report. I’m feeling more settled in here, and the novelty has worn off slightly, so it all just feels pretty normal now. I did see a beautiful white-tailed deer by the trees one morning, but it ran off as soon as it saw that I was looking at it. The weather has started to warm up, and I’ve noticed that mosquitoes don’t typically enjoy hot and dry weather, so I get a respite from them for the majority of the day. It has been so beautiful to take off the bug jacket and get the sun’s rays on my skin. 

Along with the delicious moments with the sun, I am developing a lot of gratitude towards many other aspects of “normal life” back in society. Firstly, I seem to miss showering quite a lot, which I didn’t expect. At times, I want nothing more than to drench myself in water. Even if I did find a lake around here, the mosquitoes would have me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as soon as I took off any of my clothes. Going along with this, just having normal running water back home is really such a treat. I may have mentioned it before, but I get delivered potable and non-potable water, and have two rain barrels. However, there is always the concern that I may run out of water. It’s amazing how much water I use! It is used for drinking, cooking, washing, bathing, watering the garden and cleaning. Furthermore, I know how happy I will be to walk around in the forest in British Columbia this fall without the fear of thousands of mosquitoes trying to drink me dry.

A large blueberry bush growing in my garden!

This experience will definitely be one of the most impactful that I will have in my life, I imagine. The solitude is at times extremely difficult and at other times incredibly nourishing. When I am able to calm my mind momentarily and just listen to the sound of the wind rustling the leaves of the trees without any human-made noise whatsoever*, it helps me to appreciate the beauty of nature and its importance. In a lot of the reading that I have done here, it has suggested that one of humanity’s biggest issues, and a huge part of why global warming has happened, is that we create this rift between us and nature, excluding ourselves from it. However, it is known that we are just made of the same stuff as everything else (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, etc.) and to even use the word “Nature” as if it’s a completely separate category is exacerbating the problem. I am attempting to work on this here, by getting more comfortable with all of it and recognizing that I am more similar to the mosquitoes than I may like to think, although I am not too fond of the taste of blood. 

Thanks for reading! I hope you stay happy and safe out there.

*Funnily enough, a few hours after writing about the beauty of the lack of human noise another helicopter landed at my tower with a big crew who said they would be cutting down a large swath of trees next to my site for the next few days.