Vacation photos the first

A few weeks ago my folks came waaay up North and West for a visit and we ventured south to meet them. Along the way back, we decided that since we were so close we might as well pop over to Alaska and visit the small town of Chicken (named chicken apparently, as the residents couldn't spell ptarmigan). That there is Alaska (and the wee border crossing over at the green buildings on the right):

Just as we approached the border the engine light of our rental vehicle came on and as ManNorth and I had already been stranded just a few days earlier by our first rental vehicle we decided that we would cross the border but leave Chicken for another visit. The quizzical look on the border guard's face was rather amusing when we answered the question "How long will you be in the United States?" with "About 3 minutes." (To answer your obvious question: We had a problem with our first rental while making the long drive south to meet my folks. That vehicle was replaced 24 hrs later after we'd slept in it 100 kilometers from the nearest service station and about 300 kilometers from the nearest town. The ever so understanding operator of the rental company considered that to be a cheap hotel room. At least the scenery was nice.)

Looking back on the return to Canada from Alaska on this highway, one will see this:

Do be safe though, if you navigate this particular road. There are some steep parts and some sharp curves. No one was in this vehicle when we stopped to check but it was a sobering reminder to have a ready foot on the brake and a sharp eye on the road.

Along the way we also encountered this wonderful sign which I very nearly sent to The Grammar Vandal or to the Grammarphile but then selfishly kept it here for my blog.

Amusingly, someone else had noticed the apostrophe error and decided to write a bit about it. Unfortunately, they made much less sense than the sign did:

Some one must have taken note however, as by the time we actually reached the ferry the next sign looked like this.

Below is the ferry we were using to cross the mighty Yukon river. I think this particular passenger is comfortable with a higher level of risk than me.

More photos to come...

Northern Groceries Part II

Subtitled: Other foods that may gross you out but really are rather good (mostly).

A few weekends ago, ManNorth and I (or is it ManNorth and me? -Grammarphile, you're making me nervous!) checked out a spring carnival that was happening in Northern Town and was entirely located on the frozen river. Spring, of course, being essentially the same as winter here, only with carnivals and a wee bit more sunshine.

Check out the wooly fringe on the hood of the woman in mauve!
(I was hesitant to snap a photo of her from the front without her permission and was too shy to ask.)

I love the winter clothes for kids here in Northen Town.

A competitor in the log sawing competition. The man with the microphone broadcast the event to the onlookers (when he wasn't singing songs by Johnny Cash).

Sadly, we missed the sled dog races, which for some reason were held farther down the river. Bystanders who witnessed the races had to drive down the ice road to the race start and then follow along behind the dogs. I've no idea why they couldn't start and finish at the main event site as for all of the rest of us on foot, we couldn't see a thing that was going on and of course, found ourselves spending time until other events started by eating unusual foods.

We checked out some of the tents that were set up on the ice, replete with warm wood stoves, and found that some of them were selling more than just hot dogs and candy floss. How about eating some of these loveable (and edible) animals:
I've tried caribou soup before as it is served for free at a band office near my workplace every Wednesday. (It's wonderful!) I note that the advertisement is for reindeer soup, which may be legally sold as it is probably from farmed reindeer. Currently caribou hunting is tightly regulated and the meat cannot be sold. I've eaten moose and elk before; they were prepared in a fantastic marinade and then roasted medium rare. MMMMmmmm. (This, from me and I was once an ardent vegetarian!!) Until this carnival weekend however, I'd never had muktuk, nor expected that I'd ever willingly eat part of a beluga whale, especially the skin and some of the fat under it.

I drew the line at Eskimo ice cream, which is much different than Indian ice cream in the south.
Indian ice cream is made with sugared whipped buffalo berries (also known as soap berries or soupallilie) which whip up into an egg white like frothy mixture. With the addition of sugar, this is a nice treat, but without the sugar, is rather like eating whipped soap, replete with a soapy aftertase. Eskimo ice cream is whipped whale fat with berries added for colour and flavour. Somehow the idea of simply eating spoonfuls of lard, no matter how prettily coloured, just wasn't appealing to me. I did try the muktuk, which was boiled and not served raw as is traditional.
This was not so Mmmmmm as the caribou soup, but not disagreeable either. It was sort of fishy tasting, which I hadn't expected and it was okay salted. I had a few cubes from a container purchased by a friend. I think that fulfilled my calorie allotment for the entire week! I admit having some reservations about eating all these animal products and not because I'm squeamish. I'll try most kinds of food, but where I draw the line is eating animals whose populations or species are endangered. This isn't the direction I really wanted this blog post to go, so I'll leave off a discussion of the ethics of consuming wildlife or animals in general for another time.

For now, I'll just say to most of you, "Ew, you eat chickens?"

;)

Northern Groceries Part I

I've been intending to write about northern groceries for a while now and this post will be the first of (hopefully) many. ManNorth and I aren't vegetarians (although I was once for a few years) and occasionally include meat in our diet usually in the form of chicken or turkey, although we get most of our protein from eggs, legumes and TVP (textured vegetable protein). Northern Town occasionally offers unique opportunities to include other sources of protein in our diet.

Like these loveable animals:

(image blatantly taken from http://mercury.bio.uaf.edu/courses/wlf201/)

In February I was invited to lend a hand with a harvest from a Muskox herd that lives on Banks Island. I'm not sure just how I would have helped but I was certainly willing to volunteer in any capacity that I could in order to see the event. Harvest, in this case of course and as is commonly used in the north, refers generally to the managed killing and use (for meat and/or hides) of local wildlife. Aboriginal peoples have constitutionally guaranteed harvesting rights for certain species in areas to which they have land claim agreements, and this harvest of muskox is part of the management of this particular herd and provides and employment to the local community. I wasn't able to participate after all though, much to my disappointment, because of certain guidelines that dictated that only local people were to be employed for the harvest and I would have had to have been flown in (along with a few other approved participants from Northern Town).

The harvest has long since finished and the meat has been finding its way to other communities, including ours. We were fortunate to recently get about 6lbs of frozen ground meat for free from a friend and will be purchasing more while it is still available in local stores. Efforts are being made by DIAND (Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development) to market the meat and qiviut (muskox wool) in stores to the south. (Here's a suggestion for your local grocer!)

A local grocery store is selling it for $$3.25 per 2 lb bag, which is about one half to one third the price that (frozen) ground beef sells for here, and I believe, is even less than the cost of beef much farther south. The meat is extremely lean and when we fry it up, not a drop of fat needs to be drained from the pan and if anything, we need to watch it closely to ensure it doesn't dry out and over cook. The taste is just slightly gamey but isn't at all disagreeable. We've been told that if we let it thaw and drain in a collander before cooking, that the gamey taste goes away.

Interestingly, various aboriginal people in the area of Northern Town may view muskox meat quite differently than ManNorth and me. Some people (like those that have harvesting rights for the Banks Island herd) may consume muskox and regard the animals as a good source of meat, although caribou is much preferred. Others may regard muskox that they encounter on the mainland as invasive (they aren't) and distain muskox meat, except in emergencies. There is also often a shared concern about effects of competition by muskox on caribou in areas of overlapping range.

Muskox are endemic to this area but because of overhunting in the 1800s, numbers declined dramatically across Canada, causing local extinctions of particular herds by 1900. Declines were so serious that in 1917 the Canadian federal government restricted hunting of muskox, prohibited trading of their hides and put them under complete protection. Slowly, the herds have recovered in number and have again begun to occupy historic parts of their range. With the recovery of the various herds, hunting restrictions have been relaxed and quotas increased.

The population on Banks Island has recovered so well that the population size is approximately 60-70,000 animals. Although an annual quota of 10,000 animals exists, current harvest and subsistence use rates (ranging from only 200-2,000 animals annually) are not nearly high enough to slow the current rate of growth. There are concerns that the population may begin to suffer from effects of overcrowding. In spite of this and the large size of the herd, resource managers have elected not to cull the herd due not only to substantial financial costs and logistical difficulties of such an endeavor but primarily because of an unwillingness to waste the culled animals since processing the meat and hides from the number of animals necessary in this type of cull would be all but impossible.

Although the various populations are described as herds, muskoxen don't form large groups like caribou do and tend to associate in small groups of about 15 animals, led by a dominant bull or cow. Herd size and composition vary with season, range conditions and the number of bulls in the population. When harassed by wolves, the small herd usually runs to higher ground or an area of shallow snow, led by the dominant animal where they will stop and group together behind the dominant bull into a defensive circle formation with the calves protected in the centre and the adults facing out towards the threat. This defensive tactic works well against wolves, but makes herds vulnerable to human hunters with guns and easily herded for harvest elsewhere.

(Image also taken from the internet. I've lost the link to provide appropriate credit)

In the case of the Banks Island harvest, small herds are rounded up by people on snow mobiles and herded into a series of circular corrals, shaped rather like a snowman. New animals are herded into the base of the largest corral and as animals are selected for harvest, based on age and sex, are moved successively through increasingly smaller corrals until individual animals are examined. Wildlife biologists collect needed biological information about each animal as well as ensuring, along with other observers, that only healthy bulls in the age category targeted (2-3 years of age) are killed. Selected animals are dispatched with a single gunshot to the head. The carcasses are immediately processed in a facility on site and the ground meat is frozen and ready for shipping within hours of processing.

This may be distasteful to some of you, but for many local people, a muskox harvest is important to their economic well being, and may be of some benefit to a herd that may suffer from overcrowding... Your thoughts?

Happy Vernal Equinox!

Today in Northern Town marks a day, like everywhere else in the world, in which day length is equal to the length of night. (This is actually not quite true: day is longer by about 14 minutes. The wikipedia entry I linked to has a good explanation for this.)

Today the sun is up and doing its best to shine through an ice fog that settled over our town during the night. The fog creates a lovely bright hazy effect, causing the sunlight to scatter and refract more than usual on an otherwise cloudless day. Combined with the normal reflection of light from our ever-present snow, sun glasses are needed even if one is facing away from the sun.

Although our calendars mark today as the first day of spring, all you bright readers out there surely realize that the timing of spring will vary according to latitude, as well as altitude. This means that although the fruit trees are in full bloom down on Vancouver Island, up here in Northern Town, it is winter as usual; our spring won’t come for a few more months. Break-up probably won’t happen on the rivers until the end of May and the beginning of June will see the first flowers begin to bloom, pushing through occasional clumps of snow left melting in the shadows.

This morning it was -39C without a bit of wind to blow away the ice fog. Our forecast predicts a warmer weekend, with highs of about -20C. Community members are glad as there is a carnival happening in one of the nearby hamlets (in celebration of the spring equinox, as best I can determine) and participants won’t be nearly as cold as they might have been as they enjoy the weekend’s events.

ManNorth and I won’t be heading to Western Hamlet to watch the sled dog races, snow mobile races nor to join in a potluck or dance a jig at the community dance. We’ll wait for Northern Town’s own celebration to come in a few weeks’ time when we’ll likely watch some of the sled dog races down on the river.

Yesterday I had a meeting in this nearby hamlet and after the meeting was done, joined a co-worker who wanted to visit a relative who lived there. We were treated to freshly cooked whitefish (luk zheii) and I ate baked fish eggs, or ik’in, for the first time. Unlike caviar, they weren’t “fishy” tasting at all and were so rich that only a few fork-fulls filled me up for the rest of the evening. (Of course, the homemade donut I was also served helped too!)

I had a rather embarrassing experience just before the meeting when I used the women’s washroom facility after our long drive along an ice road to Western Hamlet. I didn’t think to look before it was too late and when I needed it, I couldn’t find the toilet paper, and so made use of a box of tissues that was sitting on the tank of the toilet. Unfortunately, a handful of tissues emerged with the pull of a single tissue and having inadvertently handled them all, I wasn’t about to try to put any back. All of them were added to the toilet whereupon I discovered that the toilet wouldn’t flush. I took the back off the tank, thinking that perhaps the handle had disconnected from something and discovered that the tank was almost completely empty.
I moved to the sink to wash up and realized that not only was there no water for the toilet, there was also none running from the faucet. As there were no warning signs up on the door to the washroom, I thought that the facility manager should be advised of the problem and so although embarrassed about leaving behind obvious evidence of use and not being able to wash my hands, I sought out the manager (who is also a council member) I had just met for the first time minutes before. I explained the problem and then was mortified to discover that the building “has no water”, and that this was known to the general public and it was expected that I knew this too. I also learned later that even if the water had been on, no one in Western Hamlet flushes toilet paper or tissues and that the wastebasket next to the toilet should be an obvious clue to this. (There was no wastebasket in the washroom I used.)

Sigh.

The reason I attended this meeting was simply to introduce myself to the council members. Although not for the reasons I’d intended, at least now I know that they’ll remember me.

Living Green in the Great White North –Recycling

Last spring as we prepared for our move north, we talked about what life was probably going to be like here. For ManNorth, this wasn’t going to be new, having lived in northern areas of Canada for much of his life. For me, having grown up in a suburb of a big city and moving away from another one, I knew that there would be quite a few novelties.

Among other things unique to living in a remote area and in a small town, I knew to expect our grocery bill to rise significantly (and one of these days, I really will finally blog about that) but I hadn’t anticipated encountering a challenge to my daily routine involving living greenly, as it seems to be put by the media these days. I wrote earlier about using cloth shopping bags in place of disposable plastic bags to reduce my use of petroleum products and the number of bags I send to the local landfill and I mentioned how ManNorth and I seem to be the only non-plastic bag shoppers in Northern Town. The idea of course, is that a simple way of reducing the amount of trash being sent to our landfills and incinerators and also ideally reducing the amount of energy needed to create new products, is by removing what can be reused or recycled from our waste, and this of course, involves much more than simply using cloth shopping bags. Recycling programs exist in most Canadian communities, but what type of recycling they offer will vary from place to place.

In Prairie Town, I was an avid recycler, keeping all products that could be recycled out of our trash and even going so far as to rip the little plastic windows out of mailing envelopes so that I could put the envelopes in with my paper recycling. Prairie Town had a decent system for recycling cardboard, paper and aluminum and glass food containers, usually by placing a few huge storage bins for each type of recycling in the corner of a mall or grocery story parking lot and leaving it to the city residents to collect and drop off their recyclables. We could even be paid back the deposit fees incurred when we first purchased specific products if we returned the correct items to a recycling station. Deposit returns were offered for most beverage containers, such as aluminum pop and beer cans, juice and alcohol bottles as well as some plastic containers at provincially run stations that also provide employment for persons with disabilities. In addition, these stations also take some other plastics such as milk jugs as well as old paints and computer and electrical equipment for recycling although without any rebate to the person dropping them off.

For those wishing to be paid back for their empties or who simply believe in the benefits of recycling (or who just don’t want to see those items being buried in a landfill), this system isn’t perfect, but it allows them to recycle most items that can be recycled. For a fee, some independent companies in Prairie Town offer to pick up these types of recycling items at the roadside once a week, saving their customers the hassle of dropping it off themselves at the various stations and bins. Some of these companies also recycle more types of plastic than the provincially run stations, which can be an added benefit, given that customers must pay for the pick-up service. The convenience factor of roadside pickup was certainly was attractive but so was the monetary rebate from doing it myself and I so I usually waited until our recycling bins and boxes were full to overflowing before I hauled them all out for one big and slightly sticky and smelly errand run.

In Hometown back east, recycling was more commonplace and also expected of citizens as curb-side home pickup of recyclables by the town was the norm although no one but the town received payment for recycling anything, unless bringing in aluminum pop cans directly to a recycling depot. (Some enterprising souls have occasionally decided to steal cans from these curb-side bins, thus ensuring that the cans were still recycled but preventing the town from benefiting financially from the recycling rebate. I believe that a few of these people have since faced charges of theft for these actions.)

"To the point, to the point", you say. (I'm getting there!)

I was curious about what kind of recycling (if any) occurs in Northern Town. I did notice that some of the metal waste bins placed along sidewalks in a few parts of town do have special slots for aluminum cans and glass bottles so that passers-by can choose to recycle their beverage containers instead of throwing them out, but there aren't many of these and they are designed solely as a convenience for people walking by. There is neither recycling pickup or bins available at our apartment and although the town newsletter routinely reminds citizens to break down their cardboard, no mention is ever made of where to recycle it or even where to bring recycleables in town.

Who empties the bins, where do the bottles and cans end up and what the average home owner does with their recyclables wasn't initially clear when we first arrived. I searched online for recycling in Northern Town and could only come up with links to a dysfunct Recycling Society that folded when overworked volunteers gave up trying to create a recycling station in town after a grant application was denied. I had driven past a building marked Northern Town Bottle Depot however, and after a visit I learned that they collect the bottles and cans from the waste bins around town and are open to receive them from people willing to drop them off. Hurrah, I thought. Now I would have a place to bring my recycling.

Of, course, the words BOTTLE Depot, hadn't really sunk in.

Here in Northern Town, not as many items can be recycled as is common in the south. Most "recycling" (I'll explain the scare quotes at the end) consists of liquor, wine & beer bottles and aluminum pop or beer cans. I was pleased to see a flyer from the Bottle Depot that reminded customers that there are a few other beverage containers that can be recycled and for which a deposit return is offered of a few cents per container:

However, ManNorth and I don’t buy pop, get our juice as frozen concentrate in cardboard cans and although not as a rule, have a dry home as ManNorth doesn’t like alcoholic drinks and although I do, I’ve yet to actually buy or consume any here in Northern Town. This means that none of the products we typically recycle, including cardboard, paper, glass jars and food tins have a place to go, other than to the local landfill.

This is why the office closet on the other side of the room is mostly full of folded cardboard boxes and one box full of paper recycling and why a huge plastic bin and a box are full of used food tins and glass jars in our storage room. I just can’t bear to send them to the landfill and so we’ve decided to store them until we drive them south to be dropped off in a community that will actually recycle them. We won’t make a trip just to drop them off, which would defeat the purpose of saving energy by recycling them, but will bring them if making a trip for another reason. In the meantime, as they continue to pile up, I’ll admit that I’ve thrown out a few cardboard boxes and recently an entire garbage bag full of crumpled newsprint that I used to cover our floor while staining our newly built bookshelf, but I didn’t like it and it didn’t feel right.

The obvious reason that more goods don’t get recycled in Northern Town is that more energy and money would be spent trucking them south than could be recouped from recycling them there, so they are all added to the waste in the landfill. Other communities without road access don’t even have that option and I doubt that anyone would use the space allotted on flights out of their communities for hauling recycling, so no doubt all of their recyclables inevitably end up as trash buried in a landfill.

I don’t know what other people in the community do, nor if they are bothered at throwing out products that could be recycled. I suspect that most people shrug their shoulders and are glad that they don’t have to think about it, since these kinds of recycling aren’t possible here anyhow.

The idea that most people here don’t bother with any sort of recycling has some support as evidenced by a recent discussion by town council in the fall. The issue under debate was whether to continue to allow people to pick through the garbage at the town dump in order to find aluminum cans and liquor bottles which they could then cash in at the bottle depot. A woman who runs the bottle depot in town felt that it was worth it to allow the garbage to be accessed as a significant number of recycling getting to her center was coming from the dump and not from the few small recycling/garbage bins scattered around town.

I spoke with her last week and she said that the town decided to prevent anyone from retrieving recycling from the dump for fear someone would get hurt and the town would be liable.
She shared with me that most people can’t be bothered to even pick out aluminum pop cans from their waste and mentioned the reliance on door to door recycling drives by local community groups to raise cash. (I’ll say that again. The only way to get most of this community to recycle is to pester them at home!)

She also told me that the glass beverage containers collected in the towns recycling bins and by her depot all get dumped into a huge compactor, crushed....and then added to the landfill.

So what do you think? Do you recycle? Do you have any ideas for ManNorth and I regarding our recycling? How important do you feel recycling is and is it worth it for small northern communities to do so? Have at ‘er and let me know!

This is neat

Something fun for your Sunday: The recent warm temperatures in Northern Town have also warmed the snow, reducing its density and letting it streeeettttttch. I'd intended to post a photo (yet to be taken) showing the accumulated layers in the snow pack that I've left undisturbed on one half of the balcony (to the left of the centre post) all winter. I won't get to show you that photo however, because overnight the warming pile slowly bent over and has slid almost entirely off the balcony rail. It reminds me somehow of a snail or slug, twisting and drooping but yet still stickily hanging on.

Living Green in the Great White North - Cloth Shopping Bags

I've decided to write an occasional post about living "greenly" in the north and unique challenges to this that we encounter. Today's topic: shopping bags!

In a time of increased awareness of the detrimental effects of pollutants and waste created by humans and a growing sense of individual responsibility, small changes to our lifestyles may help to make a difference (although see this article for an introduction to one of many related caveats which I won't be discussing today). Growing in popularity by conservation-minded folks are alternatives to plastic bags to carry one’s purchases. Touted as being “ecofriendly”, reusing shopping bags or other containers makes sense at a time when reducing unnecessary consumption can reduce the amount of waste in our landfills among other benefits. In particular, reducing use of petroleum products, such as plastic bags, can be an environmentally friendly thing to do.

I’ll admit straight off that nothing is cost free. We are consumers by nature and by consuming anything there is always going to be a negative cost somewhere to someone or something. By opting to use cloth bags, one is a part of the financial and environmental costs of using land and growing the plants used to make the fabric, actual manufacturing of the fabric and in creating the bag and shipping it to the seller. The idea of course, is that by reusing the bag (or other container) the relevant environmental costs are incurred less frequently and thus overall to a lesser degree, than those incurred by getting a new bag every time one goes shopping and for each product type purchased. By choosing a cloth container (or other readily biodegradable material) over a petroleum product, one is also reducing (not eliminating, mind you) dependency on fossil fuels and the environmental costs incurred through their use. I’m a fan of this strategy and cringe whenever I see products touted by advertisers as being attractive particularly because of their easy disposal.

The “use it once and throw it away” sort of products make me cringe and make me angry. I’m not talking facial tissues and toilet paper here either, which for sanitary reasons and the high environmental costs of laundering, I’m all for using and then throwing out, although I certainly don't require them to be bleached white in order for me to purchase them.) I am talking about such things as using aluminum foil instead of a pot, or a disposable plastic bag for steaming your food in a microwave or a disposable tissue to wipe your floor when a broom will do the trick. Occasional use of these products I understand, but reliance on these sorts of products is wasteful and in my mind, irresponsible. Plastic grocery bags are one of these kinds of products. They are too thin to ever be used more than once and usually only serve to move the food from the store to the consumer’s vehicle and from the vehicle inside their home. One use and then they are trash.

Ah, but they can be recycled, I can hear you saying.

Yes, that’s true. In my experience in both Prairie Town and Home Town, some grocery stores offer to recycle plastic grocery bags and in Prairie Town, one grocery store even charges their customers who opt to use the store’s branded plastic grocery bags. (I’m not sure that this is at all related to attempts to be environmentally friendly so much as it is simply an attempt to recoup the costs of producing the grocery bags. Nevertheless, it can be an incentive to the consumer to bring their own bags or boxes or to buy the newly marketed tiny green cloth “ecobags” for sale in the store.)

They can also be reused to contain household garbage or, a favourite of mine while dog-sitting, for scooping up doggy doo while out exercising the dog. Admittedly, those aren't altogether terrible uses for them, but far far more don't get reused or recycled and far too many end up simply as waste.

In Prairie Town ManNorth and I did our best to carry our groceries in cloth bags and only resorted to plastics bags after forgetting our cloth ones. Usually no one batted an eye at the cloth bags and we never had to worry about plastic handles tearing and spilling our groceries in the parking lot. (The ones with long handles are great as they can be carried over the shoulder, making it much easier to carry a full load. But I digress.)

When I go shopping, I carry the cloth bags rolled up and stuffed into my satchel (those who know me would never call it a purse!) and I happily pull them out at hardware stores, grocery stores, or wherever I buy anything that could remotely be carried in a cloth bag. In Prairie Town, usually no one was surprised if I declined their plastic bags and pulled out my own to bag my own groceries but I have gotten the occasional odd glances at places like Canadian Tire or in bookstores for instance, where presumably the trend to bring your own bags hasn’t quite caught on. I DID get astonished looks in Prairie Town when needing more groceries than I could carry in my cloth bags and thus using my camping backpack and loading it up full to ride home on my bike.

So how well do the cloth bags go over here in Northern Town? I’ll give you one guess!

Yep, I ALWAYS get funny looks when I decline plastic bags in any store in town, no matter if it is a grocery store or not. Strangely enough, the clerks at one of the three grocery stores in town always look put out when I smile and say “No bags please. I have my own.” I even save them the trouble of packing them, which gets me through the till faster as they can ring up my purchases while I bag but they don’t seem to appreciate it much and generally just stare sourly at me. At the second store, I get a smile and cheery conversation while I bag and they scan and at the third store, they barely notice I’m even there, bags or no bags, until I hand them my payment.

At the two hardware stores in town, I’m actually becoming recognized because of the bags even though I'm an infrequent customer there! “Oh yes, you’re the one that doesn’t want bags” a clerk recently declared, smiling at me after I declined the proffered plastic bag for the paint brushes and stain we’d purchased.

Doesn’t anybody else here do this?

This past summer I would occasionally see people walking home with bags and bags of groceries, stopping to repack them as handles broke or looking genuinely pained as the thin plastic handles bit into their palms. I’d confidently march by with my bag (or two or three) comfortably slung over my shoulder and holding about as much as they were carrying, thinking of them sympathetically, but also thinking that they should pay attention to a good idea! (Or use a backpack!)

I want to hear from all of you. Do you use plastic grocery bags? (If so, what do you do with them all? Do you crochet clothing, mats or bags out of them? Do you feel badly about using them or are you fine with it?) Do you use boxes or plastic bins? Do you already use cloth bags? How do clerks or other customers respond if you bring your own container? Would you consider using cloth bags or another alternative to carry your groceries and other purchases? If not, why not? Do tell!

-----------------------

5:30 PM Update:

Okay, now this is odd. The very day that I get around to blogging about cloth shopping bags and how no one in Northern Town seems to use them, what do I find in my postal box this afternoon but two of these:

They were each part of two 81/2 x 11 inch flyers describing a few ecofriendly products for sale at NorthMart. With every $50 purchase and a coupon, customers can get a free reusable shopping bag. I don't know if these are cloth or plastic but am mildly impressed although I think the flyer was unnecessary waste. A few large signs in the store could do the trick along with coupons ready at the till.

Guess which of the three grocery stores described above is giving away the bags:

Heh. The one with the clerks that would get put out when I used my own cloth bags, which, admittedly aren't nearly as spiffy as the one their store is now giving away. I find this funny.

I'll let you know if their reaction changes the next time I shop there and I'll also keep a watch for other customers using them there and at the other two grocery stores. I wonder if those stores will follow suit?

Northern News flash

This just in:

Over 3,000 reindeer are missing from an island about 150 km from Northern Town.

Herders who are responsible for maintaining the herd arrived at the island to check in on them and to ensure that the herd hadn't crossed the ice to the mainland.

They arrived too late, the herd having left the island to go gossip with the mainland caribou. If tongue wagging is all they're up to, the herders and wildlife biologists will get over it because caribou never believe what reindeer have to say but if they get up to any carousing or passing of disease from the domestic reindeer herd to the caribou they'll be suspended from school and made to attend lectures on abstinence and safe se...

Er. It will be bad.

Herders searching by snow mobile have so far found only a few hundred animals. If I see any strolling down the river to warmer climes or in cahoots with the local caribou, I'll be sure to let you all know and to have them ask where Santa hid the rest of the holiday gifts I'd wished for.

In the meantime, perhaps their wagging tongues might be a hint as to where to find them...

Or was that wagging tails?

When (and Where) solar energy is not an option

People in southern climes wishing to wean themselves from a dependancy on fossil fuel powered vehicles may dream of solar power to fuel their cars year round, but this far north, short winter daylength and long periods of darkness mean that this could only be possible in the summer when the sun stays up for almost two months straight. This can certainly be capitalized on in the summer (and is by at least one company in town) but for much of the winter, we're rather out of luck. Although the sun has finally returned from its month long hiatus from the north and the days are slowly growing longer, solar power won't help our town much in its new dilemma at the moment . Why ever not, you ask?

For the simple reason that our town is running out of gas. Literally.

Apparently the company charged with shipping up enough gas to the town only sent about half of what was needed before the rivers began freezing up and the barges that carry the shipments couldn't run. Owners of gas stations are accusing the company of keeping things secret until now, although they would have known by ice-up (back in the fall) that not enough diesel and regular gasoline were sent.

This means that gas is being rationed and will also likely be jumping dramatically in price. ManNorth biked to work yesterday and had always intended to keep cycling/walking/snow shoeing to work but this will be added incentive to minimize use of Big Red. We're also glad that we filled two large jerry cans as an emergency supply while enroute from the south where the price was cheaper and those have now been used to top up Red's supply.

Gas station owners have the option of paying to have fuel trucked north but this will obviously increase the cost as the expense is passed along to the consumers. I'll be interested to see if this changes any of the town residents' fuel consumption and driving habits. ManNorth and I are continually boggled at the fact that so many residents drive what is only a 5-10 minute walk to their workplaces or for shopping on our main street. (Many of them also drive back home for their lunch, creating a wee rush hour at the town's sole traffic light beginning and ending at noon and one pm. Perhaps as fuel prices increase (or should fuel become unavailable) a few people may consider packing a lunch or (horrors!) walking to and from work occasionally.

The town also has a suburb of sorts out in the delta where some local residents maintain cabins and access them by snow mobile in the winter and by boat in the summer. Thinking of them, I wonder how the fuel will be rationed: will such residents get priority over mainland residents? Will there be a fixed limit per address or per employer vehicle? I don't know yet, but will post again when I find out.

A farewell of sorts

The rising sun

Blesses my mind

With joy.

The setting sun

Blesses my heart

With peace.

The Rising Sun

-Sri Chinmoy

I've been thinking about the sun this week and am confident that I'll still have joy and peace tomorrow when the sun will neither rise nor set here in Northern Town. There are still a few weeks of twilight remaining as we ease into a month of darkness and I've been enjoying watching the sky change from black to deep blue and varied shades of purple, pink and gold during the few hours when the sun nears the horizon to peek out and then descends to fade away again.

For those who appreciate this sort of information, here's a clip from the NRCC's website and their sunrise sunset calculator for Northern Town. Note that the sun reaches its zenith today at 2:46pm local time (we're on daylight savings time) and sets less than half an hour later.

ManNorth has the camera today so I won't be able to share a photo. Instead, I'll share are a few I took this past weekend as the sun rose (and set) while we were out exploring on our skis. The temperature was a frosty -30C but I still managed to overheat and had to shed one of my wool sweaters.

Looking north at midday.

The sun reaches its zenith over Big Lake

Leaning trees along the shore at local noon

Cold? Bah! Never with head to toe wool!

A favourite view from south of Northern Town at midday.

You know you are in the far north when...

It’s still summer (technically before the fall equinox) and you wake up to SNOW on the ground outside (and in the air currently blowing by your window).

The local temperature is 27 degrees Celsius colder today than the temperature in the Canadian town you grew up in.

You are counting down the days till the sun won't rise (note the new ticker in the sidebar) and until you can drive your vehicle onto the arctic ocean (!!).

Choices at your local grocery store inclue ground muskox, frozen arctic char or caribou jerky.

All the local buildings are up on pilings to keep the ground under them from melting.

Skidoos are parked in your apartment’s parking lot along with (or instead of) the cars and trucks .

It’s perfectly normal to go shopping for a skidoo at your local grocery store (where else?!).

Polar bears and caribou may wander through or near your town. (A polar bear did so more than a month ago; I'm looking forward to seeing the caribou although they are already in the area according to local hunters who have been stocking their freezers with them.)

Wool clothing has been de rigueur since JULY.

And did I mention that it's still summer and it's SNOWING?