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My brother J just got back from British Columbia, where he spent the summer as a geologist's field assistant, in a tiny camp (just the two of them) above the tree line in the Rockies near Revelstoke (I think). It's just as well they were above the tree line, mind you, since the trees in question were en fuego, which livened up what was supposed to be a relaxing summer of picking up rocks, playing cribbage, and getting on one another's nerves.
It sounds like J's boss was just exactly the sort of person you want to spend eight weeks in solitary proximity with. She had a number of weird hang-ups, barely spoke to him except to berate him, and made a rule that he could come no closer to her than ten feet but go no farther than fifty feet away from her at any time for the duration of the summer.* Of course everyone who hears that asks him in horror: what did you do to her? He swears he did nothing, she just doesn't like people "in her space." And as she instituted this rule on their first day, I'm inclined to believe him.
Somewhat surprisingly, J says he had a good summer, just hiking, rock collecting, reading, stargazing, and growing a beard. No doubt about it, the boy is mellow with a capital Mel. (The beard looks groovy—sorta half snowboarder, half Old Testament—but it may not pass the girlfriend test.)
* I believe she is French-Canadian, so maybe you can see this bizarre "go-away-but-not-too-far" rule as a kind of metaphor for relations between French and English Canada?
It sounds like J's boss was just exactly the sort of person you want to spend eight weeks in solitary proximity with. She had a number of weird hang-ups, barely spoke to him except to berate him, and made a rule that he could come no closer to her than ten feet but go no farther than fifty feet away from her at any time for the duration of the summer.* Of course everyone who hears that asks him in horror: what did you do to her? He swears he did nothing, she just doesn't like people "in her space." And as she instituted this rule on their first day, I'm inclined to believe him.
Somewhat surprisingly, J says he had a good summer, just hiking, rock collecting, reading, stargazing, and growing a beard. No doubt about it, the boy is mellow with a capital Mel. (The beard looks groovy—sorta half snowboarder, half Old Testament—but it may not pass the girlfriend test.)
* I believe she is French-Canadian, so maybe you can see this bizarre "go-away-but-not-too-far" rule as a kind of metaphor for relations between French and English Canada?
