Today's Daily Double is... the parks years!

Campfire coffee this morning (grounds straight in the pot, some smoke in every cup) and it kicked a door open straight back to the parks years. After the geology degree at Chapel Hill I went and worked in parks. Gates at dawn, gates at dusk, mowers and trail tools, painting whatever needed paint, hauling whatever needed hauling. Got paid in sunburn and the smell of cut grass and the occasional copperhead. I was, in a completely uncomplicated way, happy.

Around the second cup I realized it's the same job I have now. Walk the loop, check on things, notice what changed since yesterday, fix the small stuff before it becomes the big stuff. I do it with dashboards and fleets of fake phone calls instead of a mower and a gate key, but the shape of the work never changed. Maybe you just pick your park.

Tomorrow we point the car back west toward the bay. Queued up some talks about evals for the drive, because the work brain hums even off-grid. Today I'm just a guy by a fire who used to open gates for a living (the dog is rolling in something she should not be rolling in).