It's not really even sleep on my zips through Vancouver, more like sliding through the sheets. I'm home for a spell after three weeks in Woods Lagoon, quite nice as logging camps go. If you overlook the food. I ate carnivorously, beginning each day with bacon and crowning it at dinner with at least two kinds of roast trophy meat. Last night in bed my chest hurt and I wondered.

The hummingbirds were out in a crazy way, doing these swooping dive-bombs around our heads accompanied by cheeky little "ha ha has." Also, an elite raven named Walter who has been trained to eat sandwiches from the windows of moving vehicles. He's always there at eye-level as you drive, waiting for your crusts.

I don't know what it is about Woods Lagoon, but each time I work there it kicks my ass. I think it's the undulating terrain, the thigh-high salal, the slip-slidey cedar slash, which doesn't look that bad at first glance. But then you climb into it and it seems to reach up and wrap itself around your ankles as you walk. We were wondering, upon exit, about the best way to train for Woods and came up with this: "Honey, could you run me over with the car a few times?" I got into mine for the race down-Island. It felt like a little matchbox car with a paperclip clutch and spongey brakes. Musta been my time at the wheel of the Bush Box, the most long-lived truck in the Bivouac fleet. I couldn't get home fast enough.