We had just returned from a trip to town yesterday, and Michelle had left to water the neighbor’s greenhouse when Aly called unexpectedly. She’s in Dawson with her field school, and the phone line turned out to be shorter than the shower line, so she caught us up on her activities while waiting to get clean.
She decided not to do the volunteer work necessary to attend the music festival after all. She would have had the last shift of the day, which would have meant the concert goers would be more likely to be drunk and unruly, and she would have had a long walk home after midnight. Their campsite is across the river from Dawson, so she has to take a ferry across. Only a few of her fellow students will attend the music festival, so she’ll join the others visiting the museums and galleries in Dawson. Even though I feel she could have handled the job with help, I have to confess to heaving a fatherly sigh of relief that my little girl won’t be tied into 15 hours of potential crowd control after all.
I got to tell her some exciting news about what will happen once she returns to Haines. I can’t go into details just yet, but she’s been offered an excellent opportunity to further her archaeology here in the Chilkat Valley under extremely favorable terms. It struck her speechless!
She told us she did well on her final exam and paper. I could sense her huge relief at having completed that with a positive outcome. Of course, I didn’t hesitate to tell her “I told you so!”
Michelle came back in time to visit with Aly. We talked about what will happen in Whitehorse, where we’ll meet up, and what she’ll do about housing until we get there. If there’s a plan for their housing on the night they arrive, the students don’t know it, but after camping out in the Yukon bush for 6 weeks, they’ll figure out something, I’m sure.
Her team’s beginning to break up. Some have left already, others need to leave Dawson early to catch flights home. She’s very sad to see them go. They were a tight group from the first days, and those feelings have intensified as they wrapped up their hard work and long hours, and have begun to relax. Part of her plan for this weekend will be to catch up on her sleep.
Her call has made us even more eager to go up and get her. Can’t wait!