Banff

Damn, this is some beautiful country!  I'm out hiking around Banff, Alberta, my Sony NEX-7 around my neck, thoroughly enjoying the thin high altitude air I'm sucking into my lungs at an alarming rate.  My daughter, anxious to get out and match her wits against the world, flew the coop while I was away in East Africa.  After a few days reconnecting with home in Nova Scotia, I was westward bound for a visit, a resupply and to deliver her snowboard.  Supporting local micro-breweries in the evenings, and scoping out spectacular vistas during the day, I'm doing a fine job of keeping my mind off of the ever changing uncertainty over future postings. 

While sipping a cappuccino in Zurich awaiting my next leg home to Canada, I received the first email that I was headed to a dream posting in the Far East which featured a much desired new endorsement, but it meant turning around twenty-four hours after setting my foot in my own door for the first time in over two months.  My indecision was for naught as the offer was rescinded by the time I actually did get home, as it seems Tanzania wasn't quite finished with me yet.

Then of course that changed, and soon came the thank you emails for a job well done with base closure photos, with all the good bye emails that go with it, and my future was once again in the air.  With my hours, time with the company, plethora of endorsements, TRE and SAR Captain/Instructor/Examiner status, I'm not worried about having a job, but I have far less say over the "where".  One side of me wants to just roll with it, to go where I'm sent and to make the most of it, to be the provebial leaf floating on the stream, my sense of adventure and the potential possibilities ever at the forefront, while the other side of me wishes I had some control, wondering why someone else is getting this or that choice posting and you're thinking about sending me where???

As always, the only certain thing is uncertainty, the only constant is change.  In the two weeks I've been home contracts have been won and lost, contracts extended and contracts cut short, people have moved from A to B to C and back to B and I've been convinced that I'm probably headed to four different locales with varying degrees of uncertainty.  I know full well that until I've got my ticket in hand and am boarding the plane, and sometimes even then, you just don't know.  My choice?  Well there are some very attractive bids out there, and plenty of existing work as well requiring my skill set, but my fingers are crossed for a return to someplace in East Africa.  That place has seriously gotten under my skin.

And then, there is also the option of giving up this touring life.  There are plenty of attractive options right here at home. Trade adventure for stability?  Tough call and one I'm struggling with.  We'll see where they send me next, as that will certainly help me decide.  In the meantime, I'll chill and enjoy the mountains of Banff.