Friday, July 27, 2018

The Hungryman Special

I'm roughly at the mid-point of my field season, which is about the time of year when I like to dive on down to the basement of Maslow's pyramid and become a sort of plaid-wearing lizard-brain person. In the summer, a field person's fancy turns to - well, mostly to food, to be honest. (Sorry, DH.) But there's also a pretty consistent refrain of Too hot. Too cold. Too tired. So much pee. Fuck mosquitoes. Extra double-fuck canola. Hate rubber boots. Etcetera. Basically, every thought in my head seems to revolve around my immediate physical state: I would cut a bitch for some dry socks. Fuck this hill, and the glacier it rode in on. If I see a bear I'm going to ride that fucker right out of this forest and never look back.

Oh yeah, parental warning: my lizard brain swears even more than my regular brain. I went with a documentary effect 'cause that's where I'm at today.

I like to think I mostly keep it together, most of the time, but down in the lizard basement you just never know what might happen - sometimes, a gal just snaps. One summer's day a little while ago I was standing in a wetland minding my own business (actually the wetland's business, I suppose) when I was completely overcome by the need for a burger. Like, my very soul needed a burger, and all I had in my field vest was a sad apple and a crushed granola bar. Lizard-me drove to the nearest town (population 382*) and clomped my sweaty, grimy arse into the lone cafe. (It was was basically a self-kidnapping - is that a thing?) I destroyed a burger named "The Hungryman Special", slapped down a twenty and clomped off into the sunset, never to be seen again. I figure the six old coffee-swilling farmers who (after un-subtly rearranging their chairs for a better view) watched me eat, plus the chef who came out of the kitchen to watch me eat, are still talking about that one time that mysterious, muddy New Human stopped by for lunch.

For this precise reason, even at my lizard-basement hungriest I sometimes lack the emotional fortitude to dine alone in small towns - it's the performance anxiety that gets me. Which makes me think how truly terrible it would be to be famous: you would never be able to eat a Hungryman Special in peace, no matter where you went or how self-actualized you were that day.

That's why I like being a regular not-famous field biologist. It's like being the world's crappiest rock star. You get all the glamour of being on the road - waking up in a different seedy motel each morning and not knowing where the hell you are, being openly gawked at by everyone in town anytime you try to eat a meal - without any of the fuss and bother of, say, heaps of money, or cushy tour buses, or groupies. In fact, the only action I get all summer is humping my way over endless logs in the forest. (Platonically, of course; it's just that I have short legs.)

But I think of myself as a crappy rock star in the best way possible, because at the end of the season I get to return to my regular, non-plaid-wearing self, and eat all the burgers I like in total, blissful anonymity.

* Statistics Canada, 2016 census data: http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm?Lang=E