The specific dates elude me now, where I'm left with old images and senses drifting across the ether of my memories from back in my fish culture days. Whatever the month, the babies needed to be taken from their incubators and sent out to saltwater net-pens for several months of intensive feeding, rearing, and imprinting before being released to the open water. Fish don't work an easy 9-5, don't take weekends off, and sure as hell leave no room for your post St. Patty's Day hangover.
When you work in marine ranching, your life is the fish's and we were finally getting close to finishing-up after several weeks of 10-14 hour days, often 7 days a week. The sun was going down, it was warm enough to have the incubation room doors open and we had the radio cranked above the sounds of hydraulics and the gradually diminishing rushing water as stack after stack of incubator was slowly turned off when the babies went out. We (my crew and I) were strung-out, beaten-up, and tired after so many weeks of cold, wet, hard labor. We were also proud and getting more excited that the end was that much closer.
This song came on that evening; the first time I'd ever heard it and it grabbed me as hard as the winch I was operating would grab and lift an incubator for dumping into the ponding box.
Awake on my airplane
Awake on my airplane
My skin is bare
My skin is theirs
I feel like a newbornAnd, I felt so real...
And I feel like a newborn
Awake on my airplane
Awake on my airplane
I feel so real
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