A belated spring post

As I've missed writing about the arrival (and departure) of spring here in Northern Town, I've some catching up to do. The next few posts will try to remedy that as well as throw in some current news now and again.

So, without further adieu, waaaaaay back in April, when the landscape looked like this photo below (taken by ManNorth on one of his regular super-hero flights to check out the changing landscape) and community members were still building quinzees

and spruce bough shelters during ice fishing excursions, we were busy preparing...

...for our garden in the community greenhouse. We purchased a few small plastic flats to start our seedlings. The beans got off to a roaring start while the lettuce, tomatoes, swiss chard and various herbs took their time. Meanwhile, the peppers that we started last summer and which had begun producing fruit finally began to ripen. We realized that we had mistaken hot pepper seeds for bell peppers eeds (we saved both from fresh peppers we'd purchased at the grocery store) but were, and are, happy to have such festive looking and tasty hot fruit.

Daylength at the end of April was noticeably longer and already longer than most days much further south. (Of course, relative to a month of no direct sunlight in the winter, this may not mean much to any of you.) The photo of the peppers and tray of seedlings was taken at 11pm and illuminated by outdoor light. This is what the sky looked like outside at the same time as the sun slowly set.

Next post(s), stories from May.

Sunday Stroll

On Sunday, ManNorth & I went snowshoeing for a few hours. I don't have time to tell the entire story so here are some pictures to do some of the job for me. We began by travelling along the length of a lake used in the summer as an airstrip for float planes. At the end of the lake we turned off onto a snow mobile trail that took us through forests of Dr. Seuss-like knobby spruce trees along a high ridge, down into a protected valley (where the trees were bigger and less misshapen) where we hopscotched between smallish pond sized lakes and the trail until we got out to an enormous lake framed by forested rocky outcrops on one side and almost barren rocky slopes on the other. We ventured out across the snow covered ice until we could see most of the lake and then turned around to rejoin our track for a short while until we found another track to take us part of the way back to our starting point at the float plane lake.

Travel was easiest along snow mobile trails, although we did slog across country, breaking trail through 2 feet of snow for part of our route, as my sore legs today can attest to. The balaclava I wore was designed to be used by someone riding a snow mobile, not by someone engaged in aerobic exercise, as I was on my snowshoes. Although it protected my nose from the biting wind nicely, I found myself needing to adjust it to get more air than I could intake through its screen over my mouth during the more strenuous parts of the trail.

A curious fox walking a circuitous route left a zig-zagging track as it explored unusual lumps of snow that could hide carcasses that could be scavenged.

ManNorth kept up quite a pace and was glad for his breathable wool clothing which showed off the frost he generated in the cold air.

We stopped for a break and had hot coffee, cheese & crackers at the edge of a narrow creek.

My snowshoes cast pretty shadows on the snow during our snack break.

With a better camera and lens, I might have been able to capture the many tiny cabins that line this lake. Most are shut up for the winter, although tell-tale snow mobile tracks suggest that some are visited occasionally, perhaps as winter camps during hunting or ice fishing excursions.

Flocks of redpolls flitted through the trees as we snow-shoed (sp?) along the trails. A group alighted in some alders and willows near us, giving us a chance to see them up close. The birds are unusually skittish, compared to birds in the south, and refuse to be called in, although I’ve tried “spishing” for them repeatedly. Of ten photos we took as the flock moved through the scrub, only one frame successfully captured on of the birds peering briefly at us before flying off with the rest of the flock.

Scattered occasionally under alder bushes was evidence that windblown alder seeds also provide food for redpolls. Look for the marks a wing made as a bird alighted (or flew away).

Foxes, birds and snow machines weren’t the only passers-by to leave trails in the snow. Our tracks cut across tiny sastrugi formed by the wind into pretty ridges and wave-like patterns in the snow covering the lakes.

A pair of meese

With intentions of stirring up thoughts of visiting us here in Northern Town, or perhaps just a wee bit of jealousy, here are a few photos ManNorth took yesterday from his office window.

What's outside your window?

Hey! It's a lookout!

On Saturday ManNorth and I went on a small adventure that gave me a chance to check a few “firsts” off my list. Here’s a smattering of them, along with some photographic evidence.

1. I travelled the farthest north I’ve ever been.

2. I both melted and added to the ice of a winter ice road. (Hey, when one’s had too much coffee and there isn’t an appropriate facility for hundreds of miles around, what else is one going to do?) No, there’s no photographic evidence of that. Here’s another section of the road instead.
3. I crossed a section of Canada’s northern tree line and was surprised at how abruptly it ended. See the trees on the closest two hills on the right? There’s only one on the next hill and then nothing but tundra. 4. I drove on, walked on, ate and drank the Beaufort Sea (also known as the Arctic Ocean). (Drinking occurred after I hacked off a piece of ice from a pressure ridge, had it freeze to my tongue and then melt. It wasn’t as salty as I thought it would be. Eating was accomplished by chewing some of the ice.) 5. I climbed on a pressure ridge made of sea ice and marvelled at how much it looked like a frozen wave. (The formation of the ridge necessitated relocating a portion of the winter road onto the southern side of the ridge. You can see the old section of the road on the left side of the photo below.)
6. I saw my first pingo 7. ..and then I saw a whole bunch of them. 8. I discovered that although groceries are expensive in Northern Town, prices aren’t bad compared to those of Northern Hamlet. 9. I was asked, quite loudly and enthusiastically, if I was “Spikin?!?” by a happy woman wearing beautifully beaded sealskin boots on our way into the Northern Store in Northern Hamlet. “No,” I answered rather confusedly, although I wondered if perhaps we were or should be.

Big Red even experienced a few firsts, one of which she was quite familiar with, although never this far north:
1. She was the farthest north she’d ever been.
2. She got to drive on the Arctic Ocean. 3. She got stuck the farthest north she’s ever been and for a truck that has been stuck pretty much any where she goes, this wasn’t a particular surprise, although we’d hoped she’d forgo the thrill of it in Northern Hamlet.
(She capitalized on the opportunity to get stuck while making a sharp turn from Northern Hamlet back down a steep and narrow slope onto the ice road. In spite of her winter tires, they wouldn’t grip enough to back out of the snow bank she was close to sliding into, which she’d ended up in because her turning radius was too big, she has only rear wheel drive and the steeply angled road was made of ice. Before we could pull out the tire chains, two friendly and bemused locals helped her & us out, with a friendly tip to ManNorth that the trick of winter driving here is to avoid the snow banks. I completely forgot to take a picture to the very great appreciation of ManNorth who had been the one behind the wheel.)

One of the men helping us out informed us that a local hunter had just taken a polar bear quite close to town a few days ago, making it a total of three bears successfully hunted by the community this winter. He chuckled and said that it was lucky to take a bear so easily without having to go far and that it was good that someone was having fun in the cold. (Not the bear, of course.)

Last but not least, here’s my favourite story from our weekend adventure:
While driving around doing the secretive-touristy thing through Northern Hamlet (which involves looking like lost tourists while wandering around and hiding one’s camera while taking photos on the sly), we found a road that seemed to be taking us to one of the nearby pingos. I was keen to get a closer look and was pleased when the road abruptly ended at the edge of a small pond with a pingo perfectly framed between two low hills. Tourists who come this far north are sure to visit at least one of the nearby pingos and so I wasn’t the least bit surprised to see that the local residents had decided to capitalize on the tourism and create the road and lookout to the nearest pingo for their occasional tourists.

I did wonder though, at the material used to create the barrier, believing for a moment that they’d used whatever scrap metal they had on hand.

Of course, ManNorth was shaking with laughter at my shout of “Hey! It’s a lookout!” and my musing about the barriers for we’d just arrived at Northern Hamlet’s sewage lagoon. “Can’t you smell what you’re standing in?” ManNorth inquired with a huge smile as I took a look under my feet at the brownish ice and a second look at the “lookout barriers”.

Hmm. That explained what the big truck leaving the lookout had been doing just before we drove up and why part of the lagoon was still steaming.

I won't leave you with that lovely image of the lagoon. Here's a favourite photo of the sea ice and another taken on our way back home.

New Year's Trip. Day 1. Part I

Before I begin the description of our trip, forgive me for this brief aside as I'm not sure when I'll have occasion to mention this particular topic again: If any of you are ever passing through Prairie Town, be sure to drive through some of the oldest areas of town and in particular through the residential area on the western side, near the government buildings by the lake. The homes are beautiful and many have their original leaded windows which have a curious and tell-tale glint from their uneven panes that adds to the homes' charm. Tall elm trees lining the streets are lovely to drive under, shading the thoroughfares and giving the neighbourhoods a wonderful green lushness in the summer. Of course, if you are a home owner of one of those lovely homes, as are an aunt and uncle of mine, you have a bone or two to pick with those trees who also drop branches frequently, rain a fine mist of sap down on your home and vehicles in the spring and are frequent targets of insects whose worm-like larvae descend on fine silk-like strands in the hundreds and thousands onto everything, to be walked into, stepped on and squished and to munch munch munch away on the greenery. That said, and as a non-home owner, I still love those trees!

My aunt and uncle were good enough to put us up during our brief stay in Prairie Town when we came to get our truck and we bid them a warm farewell after coffee and breakfast, sad to say goodbye but eager to get on the road and to home. We’ll be back again one day, and hopefully they’ll also be able to pay us a visit here.

About a block or two away, I remembered that I wanted to record the trip’s mileage and so took a snapshot of the odometer at the first red light we stopped at. Note the truck already has a few miles on her but we were sure she was up to the task. I'll post our final odometer reading in the last blog post about the trip for comparison. This also reminds me to tell you that with only a few exceptions, the trip photos were all taken from inside the truck while we were driving so the quality is a bit grainy, there is occasional blurring from the motion of the vehicle and odd splotches in strange places due to dirt or snow on the windshield and windows. Of course, you all wanted to imagine what the trip was like from our perspective, so perhaps this isn't too bad a way to show it to you. If the photos are exceptionally blurry, like the one below, you can just imagine that you're tired and in need of more coffee, as we likely found ourselves at the time.



A few hours later, the sun was just about to rise and light up the prairies. Prairie Town was one of the sunniest places I’ve ever lived in and I always did enjoy the bright winter days. Here is a picture of a prairie field along our route at daybreak just before the sun rose above the horizon.


Hours later we were crossing our first provincial border, which curiously, runs through the middle of the city so that each half is governed by two different provinces, one of which has no sales tax. I can't imagine that stores in the other province/half of town are able to compete very well with the stores on the western side. We took a photo of the small sign indicating the provincial border as we passed over it and through an intersection. (The wee green sign in the top right of the photo.)



We also discovered that if you want a clean Canadian loo, this town (or at least one half of it) is the place to, erm, go.


The landscape changed again as we travelled north into aspen parkland. Now the agricultural fields were regularly (and increasingly) interspersed with woodlots and aspen forests, full of usually small, knobby aspen trees, unlike the tall stately aspens that are logged in the transition zones of the boreal forest and which we would see cut and loaded on logging trucks for a few of the following days.


As we chugged our way into one of Canada’s major cities (photo below)


we were dismayed to discover that there were no gas stations lining the highway, which we had expected. A tiny sign indicated a gas station nearby and so joined by a few other vehicles, we ventured off the highway and down a narrow country road to fill up at a small gas station a few kilometres away. An old man in a tiny grey car who had joined the caravan played frogger with the transport trucks and zipped across the highway, his life preserved only by his car obeying exactly his command to accelerate. Knowing Red to be slow but steady, we bided our time and crossed when it was safe, hoping not to encounter a crumpled grey car farther down the road.

As we passed through the city, I was sure that I had spotted an old acquaintance of mine from home in the east. It’s a funny thing that when I travel, I am always prepared to run into people I know, even though I’ve no reason to expect to see them and never do. Perhaps it is just that while travelling (and particularly through airports), one passes so many people, that one is bound to see familiar faces that look similar to people we actually know. Perhaps that was it but knowing that this person had actually moved to this city recently, gave this encounter at least a chance of more than zero on the probability scale!

If you happen upon this blog, Rex, were you driving a white or silver car with the first three digits of your license plate RJB at 4:30 pm on January 3, 2008 in Edmonton? We were in a big old reddish maroon truck. You and I locked eyes for a second and then I watched you merge from the north, briefly join us on #16 and then zip across a few lanes of traffic to exit at a left turn to head south, somewhere just east of 170 St. If it wasn’t you, you have a twin more used to city driving than ManNorth or me!!

Celebrations

It was a festive and happy long weekend. Not only was it Thanksgiving, but it was also our first anniversary and TheManNorth’s birthday. On Sunday we went on a celebratory hike in the cold and wind (-16C with windchill) to explore the local cross country ski trails and discovered that we’ll have to work on mastering our control of downhill descent if we are to use the trails and get down some of the high steep slopes safely later this winter. We paused to watch redpolls flit through the trees and to examine lily pads frozen into the ice of a small lake.

After ariving home, we sipped hot tea and busied ourselves with food preparation. TheManNorth cooked up a delicious turkey dinner for our anniversary/Thanksgiving meal, which we ate with great gusto later that night and I assembled a three-layer black forest cake (which I suspect was equivalent in calories to the entire anniversary dinner) for his birthday the following day. We'll be munching on leftover stuffing and turkey for days to come and also enjoying the spicy cranberry sauce TheMan whipped up from scratch (although from dried cranberries and not the deliciously refreshing frozen wild ones I munched on during yesterday's hike).

As “was his want” on his birthday, we had cake and coffee for yesterday's breakfast and then went out exploring again, burning off the calories by following a 10km round trip route along the river bank and across country through the woods that TheManNorth will follow to work by ski or snowshoe as soon as there is enough snow cover.

We were lucky enough to spot a weasel as it ran among the alders and willows, stopping to peer at us from atop an old beaver dam, its white coat standing out against the exposed mud and shrubbery but providing good camouflage in the snow. The snow also provided a great record of some other local fauna. We were surprised to find that a grizzly bear had crossed our path in the forest not long before us, imprinting one paw's print over another. It's been well below freezing for some time now, and we speculated from its route, that it might be heading east, to den in the hills some 20km or so from town. Perhaps it was the same bear that had wandered the riverbank while the mud was still soft and before a recent snowfall.


Fox, raven, and ptarmigan prints were in abundance as were multiple tiny mouse crossings and occasional prints of solitary mice scampering through the snow.

We stopped to watch a rare length of open water at a creek draining from a local lake, the water trickling under ice overhanging tiny waterfalls to disappear under thicker ice covered in snow. We picked our way across the creek, along beaver dams and from tussock to tussock, using walking sticks we'd scavenged from driftwood along the river.

We're keen to try that route again and although snow mobiles and dog teams also frequent the riverbank (and river) in the winter, we hope that most of the route will remain as quiet and solitary as it was yesterday.