My first week of work was a crucible in a couple different senses of the word:
1. It was very, very, very hot this week.
2. I think there are actually some crucibles on site.
3. Crucible (n.): an ordeal, trial, gauntlet, or other difficult and ultimately life-threatening task or process, esp. in terms of inquisition, torture, and tests of faith.

Like most of my readers, I’ve had about an average number of jobs in an average variety of fields depending on my proclivities and bank account – barista, field technician, data entry, research assistant. I’ve plied my trade in stuffy offices and jungly greenhouses, in meadows and labs, in the storm and the night. Yet this is the first time I feel like I’m working on a different world.

OK, so it’s a metal refinery. I was expecting the occasional tank, maybe a couple of tubes here and there. But this place, it’s way over the top, it’s just barely a class-M planet. Coveralled men in respirator masks zip around on bicycles with little cans of chemicals in their baskets. You walk along the oddly-named streets and something huffs on you from a pipe. “What was that?” “Oh, I think that’s a steam pipe.” “Mm. Then why, pray, have both my ears suddenly fallen off?” “Sorry. I guess that’s chlorine or ammonia or something then.” “Eh?” The ground, it smokes like old-tymey engravings of Hell. “What is that?” “Steam.” “But the dandelions are nineteen feet tall and have glowing red eyes!” “Well, OK. There’s radioactive material in that warehouse. You got me.”

Thursday I did a site recon at the tailings ponds. I’ve seen photos of the ones in the oilsands. They don’t prepare you for the reality of the ones here at the refinery, which look like Mars. Or how Mars would look after a night of heavy drinking. The gouged erosion crevasses, the manycoloured strata – some barely an inch thick – the viridian water, the turquoise and golden banks, the endless red vistas of warm crumbled stone where metals have gone to die and nothing else can live. My response was about equal amounts “My God, it’s beautiful” and “RUN AWAY!” Because in industry, as in life, the more beautiful something is, the more likely it is to kill you dead.

I admit the danger is kind of exciting. I can see why people love working here. A preliminary list of things that could spurt from a valve and kill me include: acetone, propane, ammonia, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, carbon monoxide, chlorine, cyanide, and sulphuric acid. There’s another, much longer list of things that won’t instantly turn me to a puddle but will instead riddle my body with tumours and cause my descendants for seven generations to be cursed with frogs, flies, and Oozing Crevice Disorder, yea, O Israel. If you breathe in too deeply near some of the storage sheds, your heart begins to lug like a racecar in the wrong gear. It also has the distinction of being the only place I’ve ever worked where I’ve seen the phrase ‘mass casualty incident management’ in the new employee orientation handbook.

(Postscript: I have a whole new respect for engineers after doing the plant tour Friday. I have never seen bigger, scarier, louder, or smellier machines in my entire life. And these guys work within inches of these molten belching things all day. Good God.)