February 9/13

I'm within pages of finishing a book that I took up last year, but have slowly been working my way through since then.

The book is called Moby-Duck by Donovan Hohn.  As the rather lengthy subtitle summarizes, the book is about "The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them."

While it's true that it's the story of the author's chase around the world, following the (sometimes improbable) journeys of thousands of plastic bath toys that were lost at sea in the late 1990's, the search is punctuated by scientific explanations about everything from the origins of the Rubber Duck as a favoured toy for children to the design and deployment of sophisticated tools to capture data about phenomenon known as Irminger Rings.  Very fascinating stuff for amateur environmental sciences people like me (though my bent is toward geology and earth sciences).

Oh.  Yeah.  And then there's the bit about his time spent with one Erin Freeland-Ballantyne on an icebreaker from Resolute to Cambridge Bay.  I'll admit, I haven't read that part yet, but at a mere 70 or so pages from the end, knowing that this part of the book takes place in the high Arctic, I skipped ahead, to see if he talks about anywhere other than Cambridge and Resolute, and out of nowhere, there's the name.  Freeland-Ballantyne.  Believe me, we're a fairly small community up in the North, you see a name, and you know instantly who it is.  In this case, it's Erin who was this absolutely delightful girl I went to high school with.  She was very smart, very pretty, very talented, and very likeable.  Hell, she's even noted in the book as being a Rhodes Scholar.  Believe me, if you've ever met her, she's made an impression on you!  And now she turns up in a book written by a teacher from Manhattan.  Talk about 'Six Degrees of Separation'.

I guess my Northern life turns up in the most unexpected ways, in random places and faces at unpredictable times.

What a trip life is sometimes...

...Wish you were here.