For the first several years of my seismic career, my schedule was ten weeks on, four weeks off. Initially I though this was great. The I did the math. I was just getting all my weekends bundled up together. For a very short while I felt I was getting swindled. After all, my buddies back home had weekends off and they got holidays too!
But then I realized they were only getting two weeks vacation each year while I would get over three four-week vacations each year. And it's not as though there was anything else to do but work in the desert. Each year we'd try to book enough work to take off Christmas Day. But inevitably, come lunchtime, we'd all be catching up on maintenance tasks since we'd grown bored.
This shot was taken when I went to visit a college buddy who'd become a reserve Warden for the RSPB – Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He was watching over the reserve at the Loch of Kinnordy, near Kirriemuir in Scotland. Kirriemuir is the birthplace of J.M. Barrie, who wrote Peter Pan.
A few miles north of Kirriemuir lies Glen Prosen, sometimes written as one word, Glenprosen.
On this trip my buddy had been tasked (by himself) to install some bird perches in the loch. We'd row out in a small row boat and then use a sledge hammer to hammer in the uprights for the perches. Once the uprights were in place we'd nail the crossbar for the perch. Since I couldn't swim at this point in my life, sitting in a row boat being used as a platform for a sledge hammer swing fest was not the best idea I'd ever had. Still, it was apparent that the water was only about four feet deep so I would have been able to stand up had I fallen in. As it was, we got so much water in the boat I might just have well have waded in, except the boat gave us the height we needed to swing the hammer.
Having completed the task we decided to take a day off and hike around Glen Prosen. It was a glorious day and we left early in the morning for our hike, driving as far as the road went before continuing on by foot. In this image, my friend enjoys the view looking back along the glen, the trail we've ascended running down on the left.
The blue day pack is by Karrimor. I bought it in 1985 and it's been around the world with me. My son, who turned 11 yesterday, uses it now when we camp with the Boy Scouts. It's been one fantastic investment!
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