89 - Behind the Scenes on Smoky Days: Personal Experiences and Life Lessons

Lindy: 0:34

Alright, hello there. Hi everybody, it's Lindy here. How are you doing? I hope you're having a great day. Happy Monday to you. I hope you've had a great weekend. I know I had a pretty good weekend.

Lindy: 0:46

I'm just sitting outside here in my backyard. I just came back from a little walk and I have to confess I got winded on my walk. That does not happen to me very often. I'm not sure what's going on with that. It's probably related to the fact that we've had a bit of forest fire smoke on and off in the air here lately. I haven't had that in a long time. Usually I can yak my head off and not run out of wind, but today I did. I was actually trying to do a podcast while I was walking and I couldn't do it. I just didn't have the airflow today. That kind of surprised me. That's unusual for me. So yeah, touching base on that really quickly. If you're from outside of Canada and you're listening to this podcast right now, we're at August 21st here in 2023.

Lindy: 1:32

We've had quite a past few weeks. Really, it's been quite scary here in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories around Western Canada. We've got a lot of forest fires that are happening right now. I have some family that got evacuated from the Northwest Territories this past week. It was very, very frightening. I don't think I'll ever forget getting that phone call on Wednesday and knowing that my family was going to be forced to leave their home because the fire was threatening their community. Yeah, it's pretty scary. So they actually drove all throughout the night to get away from where they were at. They had ordered evacuations and it was really tough for them. They told me that at one point it took them about five hours to get through about 70 kilometers because the smoke was kind of thick and traffic was low moving. Once they got to safety and they sent us a note and let us know that they were in the clear, they were in the safety zone I tell you I was really breathing a sigh of relief.

Lindy: 2:33

You know these things happen and we get these scares from time to time and whenever somebody that's close to us is in any kind of danger or we're concerned for their safety, as soon as you know that they're okay, it's like there's this huge wave of relief that comes over you. You just want to know that everybody's going to be okay. Well, right now in Western Canada a lot of people are not okay. Right now I can't even tell you the numbers. I am not a professional broadcaster, I'm not a news host, so you can't count on me for giving you 100% accurate details here. But I did hear on the news that we had over 30,000 people that were evacuated from their homes in the past week or two. That's a lot of people and I bet the numbers have climbed a lot since then. I'm sure it has, and it's scary. I can't even imagine what it must feel like to just have everything going along Tickety-boo and then all of a sudden, you know those clouds come in and the smoke waffles in. And the next thing you know things have changed and your skies are orange and everything's going dark and suddenly you're breathing smoke 24-7, and life as you knew it is no longer the same. Yeah, that's pretty scary.

Lindy: 3:44

I think my closest experience I ever had to being around that was probably back in the 1990s and it goes back to when I used to flight attend on some vintage aircraft back up in the Yukon. I used to flight attend on the DC-3 and the DC-4 aircraft. So those of you who are not familiar with them, I'm sure most of you are, but the DC-3 is a vintage-era twin-engine airplane and it seats 27 passengers. You'd be familiar with it. It's a plane that you see, like a lot of the movies 1940s movies. They were the passenger planes so I used to flight attend on those. And then the Douglas DC-4 was a lot bigger, it seated 57 passengers and, yeah, that was a big airplane and we ended up taking the DC-4 to that northern community.

Lindy: 4:33

During that evacuation we got called out at three o'clock in the morning. We were told that we needed to get up there and start getting people out of the community because the fire was threatening the community. So that was my first time that I had ever flight attended on any kind of an evacuation trip. And keep in mind I was pretty young at the time, early 20s so I really didn't think that much of the whole thing. Other than grab my uniform, grab a spare pair of socks and underwear and some contact lens solution Figured I'd be back home at the end of the shift or maybe tomorrow. Well, it didn't work that way. We got up there, we evacuated the community into a nearby community and where they could, everybody could be safe, and then they kept us there. The government can do that If it's a safety issue and they need to use your equipment, the government can commandeer your equipment and tell you that you mandatory have to stay. So that's what happened and we ended up staying. And I remember being there for two or three days and at that time I think one of the RCMP families the wife and the family had left and they had been evacuated. She really kindly offered me some of her clothing because I hadn't brought enough clothing with me.

Lindy: 5:40

I didn't really anticipate that I was going to be staying there and I remember we were hanging around for a few days and it seemed kind of quiet and it smelled a hint of smoke in the background, but it really wasn't all that Smoky. Skies were kind of blue and we were sitting around that night having hot dogs or something and I said, gee, I don't know why they're keeping our plane here for so long. I mean, it really doesn't look like there's a thread, it's not smoky at all. Well, I no sooner said that. And then the wind changed, and you know, when the wind changes direction it really can have an impact on how things are going with a fire. And as soon as that wind changed direction it was like holy cow, it was separate time and the skies went dark. I'll never forget that. It was like, all of a sudden there was like this darkness over the runway, darkness over the skies, and then we had ashes coming down on our heads a little bit, and that was kind of a weird, weird feeling.

Lindy: 6:32

I remember asking well, how long are they going to keep us here? You know Everybody else is out. And they said well, we're just going to keep you there Until you know, if there's a point where the fire comes too close and the fire fighters themselves are threatened, then you'll be taking the firefighters out. You guys will be the last ones to go. Hmm, okay, I was getting my eyes open really quick on that trip as to what really happens when you've got a forced fire going on, um, but you know, we were really lucky. We really were because, as much as the winds changed direction that night, they changed again for the better, and I think we might even got some rain, if I remember right. Whatever it was, things turned around pretty quick, and it was probably both I don't know maybe three to five days later when we were able to turn around and bring everybody back home again.

Lindy: 7:17

I do remember, though, how scary it was for some of the elders from that community, and I'll never forget this. This is something that I will never forget. Okay, so when we were on that plane, first of all, it had a ninth, I think it was nine feet, nine and a half feet was the sill off the ground to get into that airplane, and the community we were at, um, wasn't geared up yet to be able to have a plane of that size. Their runway could accommodate it, but they, um hadn't had that plane in there yet for passenger accommodations, so they didn't have stairs that you could roll along, put up for everybody to get up. So I'm trying to remember what we did. I think there was a forklift or something. I can't remember how we were doing it, but they were managing to get people boosted up one way or another, and it was really scary for some of the elders, because some of them, um, had never left their communities ever. Uh, you just have to imagine. This was a very small, fly-in only community, and a lot of the Indigenous elders had grown up on the land and they had never left, and to be suddenly getting into an airplane for their very first time, going away to a different community was very frightening and I remember feeling really sorry for them, because there was a couple elderly ladies who were in tears and they were scared because they just didn't know what was going on.

Lindy: 8:28

Now, when you fly in those airplanes, they are non-pressurized aircraft, so you're flying at an altitude of approximately 10,000 feet yeah, they're not a pressurized plane. And so when you're flying at around 10,000 feet and there's forest fires nearby, at some point you get this orange glow in the clouds. I mean, that's what happened to us anyway, this orange glow in the cloud. So as the plane was flying through, there, on the windows were orange, uh, on the plane and you could almost have a little bit of a smell of that forest fire smoke coming in through the cabin. It could smell that little smell of the forest fire smoke. And I remember having a couple passengers that were in tears and they were crying and sobbing and scared. They thought that the flames were under the plane. They thought we were going to burn up and I had to gently console them and let them know that no, this is just the glow in the clouds and we're not on top of the flames. We're okay, everything is going to be okay. Uh yeah, that was quite the trip and I don't think I'll ever forget that memory and I will never forget the fear and the voices of those elders who had never traveled outside of their communities.

Lindy: 9:32

So it made me think about this week. You know, here we are. We've had the evacuation of Yellowknife and Hay River and a lot of places in the Northwest Territories. Um, we've had evacuations throughout British Columbia. We've got a lot of fires going on and not everybody's traveled outside their communities and it's not easy for everybody going into a new place.

Lindy: 9:52

So you know, when we go traveling, I take it for granted. I've been traveling since I was seven years old. I'm used to going to new places and I know what to do, um, and I'm not under stress most of the time when I'm traveling. But to be under that kind of stress where you don't know if you're losing your home, if you're losing everything that you've worked for your entire life and you're being displaced, you don't know where you're going to eat, where you're going to sleep, where you're going to be tomorrow, what a horrible, horrible feeling and I can't even imagine what everybody who's been evacuated is going through right now. I just I thought so much about it this past 24 hours as to even how are the people dealing with it, like people that are already struggling financially. And if you've got little kids with you and you're trying to feed those kids and now suddenly you're not at home, you know when you're at home, you can make your meal budget last. When you're at home, you can make do with leftovers. When you're at home, sometimes you can split what you're cooking and make things go a little bit further. But if you're on somebody else's budget and you're not in your own community, that's got to be really, really tough. So my heart really goes out to everybody who's out there who's been evacuated right now.

Lindy: 11:03

It's interesting how these things can bring up a lot of thoughts and emotions and it can also dredge up a lot of interesting conversation with friends and acquaintances. And I'd say you know, going back number one to the emotions, I mean I don't think I'm also ever going to forget the tone of my family member's voice when she called me last week on Wednesday to tell me that they are leaving their community and she didn't know if they were going to have a house or car when they got back home. And this is coming from somebody who's worked incredibly hard her entire life. And, yeah, there's insurance and, yes, things can get replaced. But still, when you've looked so hard to build something up, the thought that you might not have it anymore would be absolutely devastating. You know, if you know where things are at and you know that you have to plan for something okay, or you're faced with something, then you guess you can deal with it. But when you don't know what's going on, you're sitting in limbo, you're sitting in the unknown and you're just basically going place to place looking for a place to sleep or a place to eat. That's got to be so hard.

Lindy: 12:02

Made me think about all the people that are undergoing homelessness here right now, and I'm talking about the people that are hardworking, who've tried so hard to have a place to live and they simply can't afford the rents anymore and they've ended up out on the street. Or people that, for whatever reason, maybe the rental unit they are in has sold and they're working full time and they can't make ends meet. So now they're coach surfing, going couch to couch, trying to just have a roof over their heads until they can secure something. You know it's really tough and there's a lot of people out there that are worse off than we are, and sometimes we get going and we get a little bit pissy. But what's going on in our day? Are we complaining because we don't have the best of this or best of that? And then if we look around us, we realize there's a lot of people who are struggling, a lot of people who could use our help, and sometimes we just kind of have to humble ourselves a little bit and remind ourselves that there's a lot of people out there who are struggling and any bit that any of us can do to help is a good thing. Yeah, sorry, I'm not trying to be negative at all about this podcast, but these are things that have just really sparked a lot of thinking with me about it.

Lindy: 13:12

This afternoon I was working on a planner that I'm working on. I think I probably talked about it a few times. I got my little side business where I create journals and planners, and my latest one I'm doing is a vision board planner. Yeah, woo-hoo. Look ahead, plan ahead, see what the future is going to bring, dictate that future what it's going to bring. You put that mind over matter and you tell that future what that future is going to bring.

Lindy: 13:34

So you get out your vision board and you put down all these things, these motivational signs, these little motivational things I am worthy, I am positive, I am good, I can do it. You got this, all those motivational sayings that we always see. Yeah, it's kind of a trendy thing right now. I mean everywhere you go, you've got these positivity notes and positivity slogans that they're putting out there. Well, positivity has been around for a lot of years. We just worded it differently back in the day and I was thinking about this vision board thing. I mean, everywhere you go, it's the vision board, the vision board.

Lindy: 14:07

So, yeah, now I'm creating a vision board, but we had vision boards back when I was younger. I mean, you worked in an office. You'd go into an office, there's a great big board up on the wall and you put down your sales targets. So where do I want to be this year? Where do I want to be next year?

Lindy: 14:20

I remember working for a gentleman up in the Yukon. This was also back in the 1990s. I worked for him for over five years and one day he brought out the concept of a vision board planner and we just did a bit of a written exercise together, talking about where we want to be with sales, where we want to be with work, even where we want to be in our personal lives. And he made a really good point to me at that time and he said you know, something that he had learned at a seminar that he'd gone to was that if you're not settled in your home life, it's very hard for you to perform well in your work life. But likewise, if you're not settled in your work life, it's very hard for you to perform well in your home life. So it's really important that you are able to try to find a way to have that work life balance. It really is, because if you don't have balance at home or you don't have balance at work, you're not going to function well on the other side. And I was thinking about that when I was working on that vision board. Today, that little vision board planner, I was thinking, oh, my goodness, it reminded me of when Pat and I had talked about that back in the 1990s. Yeah, work-life balance, it's pretty important.

Lindy: 15:23

So you know, as you head out this week and you're out and about, I mean, do pay attention to the news, try not to let it consume you to the point where your anxiety is going through the roof, but at the same time, be sure to keep turning that dial and paying attention to it. We've got a lot of really good news sources out there and a lot of them have websites that we can go to directly. You don't have to listen to it through social although I miss having it on social, just a reminder. You can go direct to their websites to be able to catch the updated news, and it is important, I think, that we stay up to date on it. You know some people say, oh, the news is too depressing, I turn it off, I don't want to listen to it. Well, I agree that if you are suffering anxiety or if you're having a rough time, sometimes you do have to know when to turn that dial and step away, just for your own mental health and your own well-being. But we can't turn a blind eye to what's going on around us. It could be us tomorrow and you know, even on that note, I had a conversation with somebody last week and I was talking about emergency preparedness and I was saying you know the thing with the fires and that it really did kind of remind me that it's important that you have enough water.

Lindy: 16:30

I think they always say you should have at least enough water for three days minimum with you, and not just for forest fires or earthquakes, anything like that. You should always make sure that you have enough water, make sure that you have enough non-perishable food items, that you've got warm clothing, all those kinds of things that they talk about that you should have. And I was also talking about having enough fuel in your vehicle, because if you needed to escape and you needed to escape now you want to make sure you've got a full gas tank because it's not like the fire is going to stop at your doorstep because you need to refill. It's a good idea to make sure that you have that stuff always filled up perhaps some extra jerry cans or something, especially if you're during a time when perhaps there are fires that are nearby. And I was mentioning to this one person a couple of days ago that, yeah, I'm going to make sure that I keep my car full of gas, because it's a kind of a tinderbox out there right now, and if something sparks up behind us right now, I just want to know that I'm prepared and I can go if I have to. The person I was chatting with was Basically calling me down for being that. "And you're not gonna be one of those people. Are you Like? You're not gonna just start freaking out now because there's fires around you and you're just gonna think that you have to have everything all prepared and you're gonna be living on edge? I'm not gonna be living on edge. Well, yeah Doesn't mean you have to be living on edge, but being prepared is kind of a responsible thing to do, because if everybody leaves everything to the last minute when the shit does hit the fan, there's not gonna be enough room on the roadway for everybody to pull into that gas station. So, yeah, I will stand by that and say I think it's a good idea that you should try to be prepared and have these things.

Lindy: 18:06

And it doesn't mean hoarding. I mean good gosh, we can't go into what we did during COVID. I mean, remember during COVID people were so stupid about that. It was like "I need toilet paper. We got this nasty virus that's going around, so I need all the toilet paper in the world and I'm gonna get four cases because the world's coming to an end. Well, holy cow, if the world's coming to an end or we need that much toilet paper. I'd be shitting a lot more than that. I think people were kind of getting a little bit overreacting there. He didn't need all that toilet paper. He didn't need to have five bags of yeast. We weren't all going into bunkers because of COVID. If everybody just kind of mellowed out and allowed everybody to share a little bit, everybody would be okay.

Lindy: 18:46

And I think right now I was thinking about the whole COVID thing and how we react to stuff. Even with what's going on with all the evacuations and it's gonna be tough for people. There's going to be limited resources out there and looking after each other, helping each other out and being there is about the most important thing that we can do, and it's been really nice for me to look online. I've noticed there's been some really great sites and people who are out there helping each other out. I can't believe how many posts I saw from people saying, "hey, I got an acreage. If you've got horses, here's my number, just come on over, you can bring your horses. Or I've got extra property. If you're in travel trailers, I've got room. You can come and hook your trailer up. I've got room for dogs. I've got room for cats. Somebody put out there I need a ride to here or I need to ride to there. People are giving ideas as to how they can get transportation, just basically helping each other out.

Lindy: 19:36

There's some really kind people in this world and sometimes when we're going through a crisis, it's really easy to focus on the negative, and we have to remind ourselves that it's not always negative. Sometimes, as they say, where there's a I'm not gonna get the saying right, I never get them right and sometimes they say there's a silver lining in the clouds. Did I get that right? I always screw them up, but where there's a silver lining in the clouds is often when everything is kind of going to shit and somebody comes up beside you and they do something really kind for you. It's amazing how a really kind gesture, no matter how big or how small, can make a difference, especially when you're going through difficult times. So right now, if you happen to know that your neighbors are struggling, or any of your family or your friends or even strangers, especially with what's going on around us, never hurts just to extend a bit of a helping hand, offer a little bit more help where you're able to, because you never know could be us tomorrow. So, anyway, I'm gonna call it a day day here.

Lindy: 20:36

That's my podcast for today, I guess. Sorry, I wasn't really planned out. I'm just speaking from the heart here and I think everything was kind of just, you know, just me thinking about what's been going on here with all the evacuations and the fires, and realizing how grateful I am for the people that I have in my life. And I also think and this is hard for me to stomach, this and say this but I think I was getting a little bit of a kick in the arse, whether it's from our creator or, you know, we all have different beliefs on that but I feel I was getting a bit of a kick in the butt because I got pretty focused on this little business that I was starting over this summer and I sometimes didn't pay enough attention to the people that really matter to me, and I should have been. And it hit me this past week that, yes, I'm listening. Hello, I think you're talking to me and reminding me that people are more important than things and there's got to be a thing called work-life balance, and it's not balance if you're putting your family second. So, yeah, that was my real reminder this past week too, and I'm so grateful when I hear that phone and my sister is on the phone, pretty glad to hear her voice. Yeah, I would sure miss her if she wasn't around.

Lindy: 21:46

Anyway, time to go. I'm going to just shoot the camera to look down here. That you know. Here in the yard he's a little tired. We just did a 6k walk together, so we're going to call it a day. Go inside, try to see what I can drum up for supper and I hope you have a great week everybody. Stay safe out there and remember what I always say at the end of my podcast my house come in all languages and in all colors. Have a great week everybody. Bye.