Outward Bound

Chapter 1: The Journey

We’re shaking like a can of paint in a mixer. The engines sound like they’re about to tear themselves free from their mounts.

My back’s getting stiff, and I can feel the cold from the bare aluminum floor coming up through the soles of my workboots. My coat’s still on. It’s my only source of comfort just now.

I think about the engines, and the space in back packed tight with all the heavy equipment I watched being loaded. All of it weighing us down.

I’m in the second row, staring at the scratches and scuff marks on the seatback in front of me. Trying to decipher them like some weird kind of Rorschach inkblot test.

I draw in deep, steady breaths of recycled air that smells like it’s travelled through a hundred miles of metal pipe before finding its way onto the back of my throat.

This, I tell myself, is what a bad decision feels like.

There is a disquieting hiss coming from the lip of my window. Like someone blowing through a thin straw. Unnoticeable until a few moments ago, now it’s all I can hear.

The tip of my finger is soon black from feeling around the window’s outer lip for any crack. I’ve done it several times now. Clockwise first, then the other way.

The grit doesn’t come off when I wipe it on the rough seat fabric. I make a small pool of spit in my palm to soak it before trying again.

Funny how I’ve always liked planes. And flying. Up to now, I guess. It’s the same for the wanderlust I first felt for gold exploration in the north. The shine’s come off of that, too, it seems.

“Don’t worry about it,” a woman’s voice says. “You get used to the weird noises on these planes.”

Startled, I look across the aisle. I’m thrown by the inflections in the French-Canadian accent and ask her to repeat.

“The whistling,” she adds.

She is fairly tall, given how high her head is above the chairback. Her bright orange safety pants stand out, even in the darkness, though her face remains completely hidden in shadow.

I give an appreciative wave, though it offers little relief, given we’re now thousands of feet over an endless boreal forest.

You haven’t left your desk in years. What the hell were you thinking?

I close my eyes, hoping to shut out the drone of the engines and the cold.

But that battle’s been lost, it seems. My ears are now completely attuned to every sound. Like the muttering voices of those around me. The hissing window, still. And the intermittent rattle coming from the base of the seat in front of me whose vibrations grow and wane with each hollow throb of the engines.

It is a sound that might otherwise have lulled me to sleep. If my seat weren’t so narrow, and the cushion hadn’t been crushed flat by the countless bodies that preceded my own.

There’s a push against my lower back as whoever is behind readjusts themself. I lean forward, turning towards the window to avoid the brunt of any further jostling, and watch as the green-black forest passes below, just visible in the darkness of predawn.

We’ve since levelled off. The intense growl of engines has been reduced to a soft drone that is easier to ignore, existing only in the elevated voices of those around me talking over it to be heard.

The relative quiet has an immediate effect, and, much like the now placid cabin where I find myself, my nerves have started to calm. I glance back at my fellow passengers, turning my head just enough to assess whatever I can from the corner of my eye.

I was reminded how small planes packed with big people are part of travel in the north. A truism particularly apt for flights like this one, it seems, on its way to exploration camps miles from nowhere.

Just make some decent coin and get out. The voice says.

Nor do carry-on limits seem to matter. Everybody here has at least one massive pack along with heavy work boots they either wear or carry.

Unlike mine, these boots are knee-high black rubber, with heavy soles for work in thick mud or snow. Nothing compared to the weight of drill equipment, I guess, but then I can’t see that.

They’re all in bulky work clothes, even though it’s August. They’ve kept their coats on, too, adding to the cabin’s claustrophobic feel.

The cockpit door opens.

We’re free to get up and move around, one of the pilots says. There’s juice in back, along with a case of beer we can help ourselves to. No coffee, I’m afraid, he adds.

A juice might help with the metal taste, but I’m not fighting my way through this bunch. I’m fine right here, looking through the open door and seeing what the pilot sees.

The door’s been left open, revealing a console between the two pilots with several large, important-looking levers jutting out at various angles. Just above is a rectangular screen with green lines I can’t quite make out. Above that, between their heads, deep grey cloud is visible through the windshield.

I try to guess at what all of these controls are. I have no clue, of course, but at least it’s something different to look at. Until the door closes, taking with it this slight, albeit novel, distraction.

I reach down below my seat for my backpack that has all my joining instructions. I take them out, flipping through a stack of loose-leaf pages to find and review the camp’s rules along with general background about where I am headed.

I try to read the safety procedures for handling hazardous chemicals and waste and the like. But It’s too hard to concentrate now with everyone moving around me, and I am constantly jostled by all who pass.

“Surprised you made it,” the man sitting behind me says in a deep voice.

”You weren’t worried, were ya?” Another answers. I turn half way around to listen as a massive shove forces my seat forward.

“Got a couple of travellers for ya,” the one standing says.

There is a sound of cans dropping into a pack. Each action is a fresh push on my chair back. Unzipped, pushed in and zipped back up.

”Thanks,” the man in behind says. “Where they got you workin’ these days?”

He gives some name I’ve never heard of.

The conversation is mercifully short, the pressure on my lower back soon relaxed. I continue shifting myself into one slightly less uncomfortable position to another, but any relief is temporary. A half dozen knocks and shifts follow, along with a series of angry exhales, before the massive man in behind me finally settles in.

“Here,” the woman across from me says, handing me a juicebox.

I thank her, wasting no time jamming the straw in. I drain it in seconds. I don’t much care for grape. It’s way too sweet. But it tastes a hell of a lot better than tin.

I go to talk to her but she’s already chatting with whoever is one seat up from her. More sporadic muttering carries on ahead and behind me. The guy in right behind is talking to a rough-sounding man standing in the aisle.

The banter is profane, sharp, and friendly. I can’t help but think they’ve been working together for some time.

I get the sense everybody else here takes this flight alot, given how none of this seems to bother them. They just carry on with their conversations, quick to push through to the back as soon as they were told they could take off their seat belts.

Some are in the aisle, leaning over seatbacks, blocking the flow of others pushing through to help themselves to beverages tucked in behind the last row. Despite the early hour, there is a regular ‘pshht’ sound of beer cans.

How many will be at my camp, I wonder. At least one or two given there are only about six operations and only twenty-or-so drills running at any one time. Or so I’ve been told.

But I have no urge to ask. My eyes are drawn to the black and red cans they are holding.

There’s an odd drawing on the side I can’t quite make out. Finally, a can is held in such a way to reveal a black, hand-drawn image. It is the pointy, rounded down-turned beak of a large-eyed bird … wearing a wide-brimmed hat? A buzzard in a hat? No, wait, not a bird at all; a plague doctor’s mask.

Below the image is a single word which takes even longer to deduce as I crane my neck to read it. It ends with an e … que. Another reveals other partial letters. It starts with a C … no Ch. Finally, the entire word.

Chronique. Chronic. A lasting problem or condition. Chronic worrier. I got called that more than once. Or was it ‘complainer’? Chronic anyways. That much I remember.

I check my watch again. Ten minutes since I last looked. Still more than an hour to go.