A Far Flung Friendship

"Distance cannot matter - ours is a friendship of the heart."

- Mary Anne Radmacher

I was cleaning up my desk the other day, which is always a task fraught with peril.  On one hand, I could easily get pinned under a falling stack of papers, either crushed outright or left to starve as I lie there, immobile (I have little confidence in my coworkers coming to the rescue).  On the other hand, which is far more likely, I could happen to come across something, some long forgotten note or memo or photograph, which distracts me and brings cleaning efforts to a grinding halt.

In this case, that is what happened.

There were five of us in the photo.  It was taken at the southern zoo where one of us worked, and sure enough she was in the center of the photo, clad in her guano-streaked uniform.  The rest of us were there as part of a conference and had made a point of seeking her out.  The big silverbacks of the zoo world were all there, but so were we - the small fry, climbing our ways up with enough seniority that we finagled invitations to the conference, but still in the trenches enough that we had fresh zebra dung on our boots.  We met for dinner and talked for hours, the endless catching up of personal lives and chaotic madness from our respective zoos.  It was easily one of the best evenings that I had last year.  When I left, I hated to think that I'd have to wait another year.

As much as I love my job, sometimes my favorite parts of it are the times when I'm not there.  Instead, I'll be on the road, doing an animal transport or participating in a conference or workshop.  Part of it is the joy of visiting a new city, seeing a new zoo, and maybe meeting a species of animal that I'd never encountered before.  A big part of it lately has been the chance to see my friends.

I have a network of people scattered across the country that I rarely see, but paradoxically consider to be some of the best friends I ever had.  Some of us worked together for a while, before changing jobs pulled us in different directions.  Some of us were in school together, undergrad or graduate.  Some of us just met happenstance through the course of our jobs and formed bonds.  Every time a bunch of us meet, new faces are drawn in - someone's coworker, or ex-boss, or whatever - and another strand of the web is formed.

We don't interact much, but in some ways we have so much more in common with each other than we do with our immediate coworkers at our respective aquariums and zoos.  We've seen a lot together, risen through the ranks on parallel roads, and compared battle scars many times.  I'd feel silly saying it to their faces, but I really miss a lot of these guys outside of our brief get togethers.   I like to think they miss me, too.

When I'm at the airport, ready to head home, I find myself wandering around the terminal before my flight, hoping to bump into one or two of them so we can have one last chat before we go our separate ways.  After that, there's not too much except a few facebook messages, maybe a text or two, and getting caught back up in the daily grind that I left behind... but man, sometimes that next conference seems so far away...