During this week of November 07 to 13th, I had an opportunity to sit in on the morning meetings with the Fraser Valley Current. I liked how efficient the team was, and I loved seeing how they checked in on stories, divided the workload, offered resources or help to one another, and their dynamic. On Wednesday the 17th, after a week of playing email tag and trying to set up an in-person meet, I had quite a long phone interview with Janne (president) of the Streamkeepers. She invited me to Miami River on November 22 to watch a Chum release and meet the rest of the Streamkeepers.
This past weekend, I spent four days in Squamish in the woods this past week doing my Wilderness First Responder course. The course came up last minute and was sponsored by Indigenous Women Outdoors and The North Face. The course was incredibly intensive, as a course that gives you skills on par with those of a paramedic should be. Even though I have no extra time to do a course like this, I couldn't say no to the opportunity. I brought my laptop in the evenings, thinking I could get a lot of my work done at the hotel, but by the time the evenings came, I was too tired.
I feel like I let many people down this semester because so many career opportunities kept coming up, and I kept thinking I could do everything. I am especially sad that I didn't give the Fraser Valley Current my full attention because I had wanted to work with them for some time. I hope my writing skills will surprise them, but I wish I had shown up better and gained more skills to help propel my career as a writer forward.
Currently, I have 22 out of 64 hours left, which I will have to fit into the next two weeks. I can knock off about ten writing this salmon story and about 5 or 6 with the other interviews I need to do and transcribing. I have reached out to Tyler Thibault at the Department of Fisheries to speak with him, and he's connected me with the DFO's media personnel to okay this interview. He will also connect me with the Chehalis River Hatchery to get a quote about their involvement in this project. I have also reached out to Mike Pearson at Pearson Ecological to discuss the recovery strategy plan he wrote for the Miami River that Janne from the Streamkeepers mentioned during our interview.
Moving forward, I think it would be cool to learn how Tyler or his team prepare for interviews and prepare their stories and the process they go through when writing on as I go off my basic intuition and what I've learned in school, but I am curious what it's like for someone already working in this field. I would also love to learn tips on making interviews more efficient, as my interviews are always super long. This does work in my favour sometimes because I'm really good with people and they often love sharing details with me because I'm curious and ask a lot of questions BUT on the flip side, when I go to transcribe and write, it feels like I have a daunting amount of information.
Here are some photos I took at the Chum release on Tuesday morning.
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