Summer Ruminations -A word from ManNorth

I have often said that the North is a fine place to live but I wouldn’t want to work there, for when one works the mind is focused on work and little else. Seldom do we ever take time to step back from our personal grindstone and, according to Keats, “look into the fair and open face of Heaven”. In the cities far to the south I have met people who have never left their place of birth, who find no need to step outside their safety zones, who have built for themselves a wall so high that even if they had the inclination to do so, could not climb over; who look but do not see. Many people look, but few ever see; there is a subtle difference here. For seeing is akin to experiencing, and when you experience something, you understand it more fully and completely. If one spends all of life in a city, then the full extent of one’s experience is limited to that city. In a city, any city, one sees houses with televisions and central heating, grocery stores and hospitals, cars and trains. There is nothing at all wrong with that, of course, other than the fact that one’s experiences will be extremely limited. One’s worldview, one’s belief system will be skewed. But then believing is seeing.
People in Winnipeg believe that they live in the coldest city in Canada; this claim has been supported by the news networks too, hence the nickname “Winterpeg”. Yet all it would take is for one to do a little research before they see that this isn’t true. (For those who don’t have the time for this, Yellowknife is the city with the coldest winters, with an average nighttime temperature during December, January and February of -29.9 degrees Celsius. It is also the coldest city with a mean annual temperature of -5.4 degrees Celsius. Winnipeg, in fact has the sunniest winters and a mean annual temperature of +2.6.) But, even if this myth were true, the full extent of most people’s outdoor experience is standing at the bus stop for 20 minutes while rushing from one heated building to another.
It saddens me to see how urbanized we have become, and Canada is one of the most urbanized nations in the world. In our pursuit of happiness, our quest for the good life, we have left something behind, some essential part of us, our ability to see. And to fill this gap we have surrounded ourselves with icons of our own creation.
But, lest the reader think that I am being overly critical of the urban dweller, allow me to really stick my neck out and say that no more is this lack of seeing apparent than in the north. Case in point, years ago while I was preparing to leave on a six month winter expedition along the west coast of Hudson Bay, a young teacher stopped me in Churchill, Manitoba, offering me her insight and expertise. I listened kindly for a moment to her words of wisdom, but when I had asked about her experience outdoors, she said rather emphatically, “Well I live here!” Yes, I thought, you live here, in this house with a television, central heating, a grocery store and a hospital next door. You have a train to bring in supplies and daily jet service should you need it. You have all the amenities of the south. You also have a mortgage, 3 children to raise, car payments and utilities and in order to pay for all this you work. I have witnessed this same scenario unfold numerous times during my travels in the north, the most recent of which was just the other day. A colleague of mine was talking about the weather and summed up by saying to me, “You haven’t lived here long enough to know the weather like I do. I live here. I know.” While it is true that he has lived here longer than I have, what he failed to see is that weather is a global phenomenon, that the weather in Northern Town is not unique, that I am older than him and therefore I have seen more “weather” than he has. He could not see this. He lives in a house with a television, central heating, a grocery store and a hospital next door. He has two monster trucks and a dog, a hefty mortgage and bills to pay. In order to afford this he has to work. His house may be located in the north but he is really living in the south, with all the accoutrements of modern life.
The north of course is changing, has changed. It is no longer the Old North of my youth where a man could truly disappear for a year or more. The advent of modern transportation and telecommunications has shrunk the north. These days one wouldn’t think of traveling on the land without a GPS and Satellite phone. The north of today is filled with big screen televisions and satellite dishes, cell phones and the World Wide Web, cultural centres with weight rooms, swimming pools and saunas, hockey rinks and racket ball courts. In the stores you can find cans of pop and bags of chips as well as the latest fashions, and teens can walk the streets with their hats on backwards and iPods in their ears oblivious to the sounds of Nature. Just like in the cities.
We humans are cultural animals and we bring our culture with us where ever we go. This give and take of cultural diffusion is the common thread that binds us all together. But, I wonder how few will ever step back; leave their modern influences, their cultural idolatry, cut the umbilical cord of society’s infrastructure, and if only for a moment, wander free and unfettered. How can we ever see the true immensity of the natural world, or be humbled by that sweet solitude when we know in the back of our minds that society is just a phone call away?This weekend my wife and I are going canoeing, not far but far enough, to some distant hills across the lake. We will find ourselves “some pleasant lair of wavy grass” and just sit for a while and look out over the delta. I wonder what we will see.

© ManNorth, Summer, 2000

Yes, yes, we're alright!

Whew!

I can't believe that I've not posted since April.

No, I take that back. I know full well that I've not.

I've felt guilty.

I've missed you all.

I've missed sharing stories with you.

I've been busy.

I've finally been all of the first three and a little bit of the last all at once and so here we are,

kicking off year two off this blog.

I've many stories to share from the past TWO months (good grief, and apologies all around) so my thanks to those of you who have ventured back here to check up on me.

I've also discovered that I had a whack (A whack, I tell you!) of "sent" emails that never got sent and darned if I can't figure out why they won't send and how to send more. This isn't with gmail of course, but an apparent problem with my computer/email account that I paid/pay for.

Keep sending email as I can read 'em -I just can't reply as of yet.

ManNorth has been itching to post on the blog for a while and he's gone and written a post, complete with a photo illustration so momentarily, I'll put up his article.

(Hurray, two posts in one day!)

I'll leave you with this tidbit that might keep you guessing. Kudos to those of you who guess correctly.

Last month ManNorth and I saw FOUR of these fly past our apartment balcony. We heard their loud calls (hint, hint) long before they flew past and so we dashed out onto the balcony in our robes as they went by. (ManNorth of course, pointed out that this is the first time since we moved here that I've thrown caution to the wind and ventured out without being, ahem, properly attired. And it was worth it:

photo copyright TPWD

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/species/

I just wish we'd had time to grab our camera!

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.

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.

Halllooo out there!

Hopefully a few of you are still venturing back to check in here now and then in spite of my infrequent posting of late. I’m not sure why, but I seem to have hit a blogging wall where I really don’t feel that I have much to say or anything to write about. If there are things that any of you are curious about related to my life up here in Northern Town (or ManNorth’s), please feel free to ask. You could give me some ideas for future blog posts!

Some of you have been wondering about my new job. I’ve been enjoying it but am not sure just how much I’m ready to blog about it. For now, here’s an introduction to one aspect of it: what do I call it?

My position is an interesting one, in that it is a casual interim position with full time hours filling in for someone who is away and will be so for many months to come...and may or may not come back. No one seems to really know. My predecessor may come back this summer, but if she does, they also know that she has plans to go away again in September, which doesn’t really facilitate her filling a full time job here particularly well. There’s a long story which explains why she can be away and then leave again and still keep her position, but I won’t be telling it now.

I’d love to have this position officially and permanently but until I do, my name is not the one on the door, my files not the ones in the full to bursting enormous office file cabinets and my notes and books not the ones on the office shelves. All of this has meant that I’m not quite sure at times how I really fit in and when it’s appropriate to claim the job as mine. For instance, should I put my position title in my email signature or not? Will people (who know) wonder at my presumption when they know that I’m not the official –ologist on staff? I’ve even felt that I was doing something underhanded when on Monday and with my supervisor’s full approval, I replaced absent -ologist's (AO's) phone message and voice mail with my own message and name.

We been doing an end of the year inventory this week and I’ve needed to determine what equipment is stored in my office. The funny thing is that I don’t even know how to refer to my office. Do I call it mine? Do I call it AO’s? Do I call it by the name of the position we both fill? It’s strange. I’ve been calling it by all three names and feeling either like an imposter or simply awkward and silly as a result. While I debate such inanities with myself however, all the tasks that AO would be doing if AO were here have been given to me and we share the same job title in our job descriptions.

You might advise to just use the title and not worry about it but I've actually found it necessary when I introduce myself and my position, to qualify my stated position by saying that I’m “standing in for” or “here until” or “filling in for” AO until she returns. And yes, this is actually sometimes necessary, given the unusual politics in my workplace. (I’ll explain that later. Maybe.)

In the interest of brevity, which I seem to sorely lack, I’m going to finish with this: I enjoy my job and am thrilled to have it. I just don’t know what to call myself when I’m in it!