'Tis the season

For giving of gifts and attending after work Christmas parties!

I recently joined ManNorth for his work holiday party. His department, along with at least 2 or 3 others, all got together for a big potluck at one of the departmental offices. After the meal, which included some roast moose that I mistakenly thought was a delicious roast beef dish, and much chatting, the gift exchange began and I immediately regretted the gift I’d added to the pile. It still makes me feel a bit sad, even four days later.

Allow me to explain: The gift exchange was one of those kinds where all the gifts are wrapped and assembled together. All the gift givers get a number, one for each gift given. The person with the number one picks a gift and opens it and the second person has the choice of taking the opened gift or choosing a new one. If an opened gift gets taken, the person who lost it gets to take a gift (not from the person who took from them) or opens a new one and so on until there is one gift remaining and everyone has been stealing gifts back and forth trying to end up with the one that they want without anyone taking it from them. The exchange ends when someone opens the last gift. There was a preset value to the gifts and no one was to spend more than $20, although I think a few gifts had to have cost more than that. As local prices are two or three times higher than in more southern locales, $20 doesn’t go very far here and as we’d rather keep our $40, we both opted for homemade gifts that we valued as at least $20 each.

I reused some of our blank newsprint packing paper from the move to wrap up a large tin of homemade fudge that ManNorth had made and prettied it up with a holiday ribbon. The paper was bland and crinkled, but in a homey, pleasing way. My gift was similarly wrapped but with a plain blue ribbon as that was all the decoration I had left to embellish it.
I realized though, that in this style of gift giving, gaudy advertising with sparkles, bright ribbons and holiday colours are necessary for getting one’s gift picked to be opened. My poor little gift sat there like the unpopular child being passed over as teams are being picked for a school yard game. What no one knew, though, was that under that plain wrap, my gift was the best of the bunch.

I had chosen to give four hand drawn and coloured cards that I had made, using themes from around Northern Town and in the nearby mountains. Each had taken a few hours to complete and had been done when I needed to relax and unwind. In spite of only using a permanent marker and a set of 24 coloured pencils, I was particularly pleased with how these had turned out and selfishly and perhaps a bit vainly, imagined them being opened to a chorus of oohs and ahhs and my person being raised just a wee bit in their estimation. (Which could be a good thing, particularly as I’d like to find future employment with one of the departments that was participating in the party.)

Stay with me here, as I wrap this up, no pun intended: Imagine the chaos of all the most valued gifts (which were mostly tools –saws, electric screwdrivers, compasses and jackknives etc..) being passed around like hot potatoes with the occasional mug or coffee blend changing hands and then someone, finally, takes a chance on opening my lowly looking gift.

“What is it?” someone exclaimed, anticipating a new gift to steal.

“A box of cards” was the somewhat sullen reply, to everyone’s immediate disappointment and dismissal, and the next gift was being opened before the cards were even looked through by the receiver, who was obviously disappointed to be getting them, although I’d been careful to label the package with a decorative script describing them as “original art cards” to make the point that these weren’t just standard printed cards from the local store.

That’s the chance one takes at these sorts of exchanges. If one happens to open a box of pink and purple frilled orange hand towels embroidered in violent blue lettering advertising Jenny’s kitchen in sunny California (!), they’re stuck with them and won’t be able to steal a better gift unless someone else decides Jenny’s kitchen is where it’s at and takes them.

All my hard work had been for nought, my ego remained unstroked and the recipient didn’t want the cards, and was disappointed at not being able to compete for the electric screwdriver or ratchet set he’d been watching change hands. I briefly considered stealing them back if I got a chance, partly out of sympathy for him and partly in response to my offended inner artist, but as I’d put my name on them (all other gifts were anonymous) and had already been introduced to the group, it’d be sort of a tacky thing to do. I ended up as the proud owner of a much sought after set of hand saws that ManNorth and I actually needed and ManNorth’s fudge was being passed around the room for everyone to try after two children, in their attempt to help the recipient open the package, spilled the fudge all over the floor. (Most of it was still edible and everyone declared it yummy.)

My hope is that the cards were later taken out of the protective clear plastic covers I’d put them in and examined in detail, the recipient finally realizing that he had indeed, received the best gift, and decided to keep them for himself, perhaps even framing them. Or perhaps, his wife saw some value in them and did the same, or used them for their holiday cards and the final recipients think they’re just wonderful.

I’m kind of glad that I’ll never know.

I should have given them to one of you, my faithful readers (Hmm. I seem to be channeling one of the Bronte sisters here. The gift/team picking theme had me thinking of plain Jane Eyre for some reason) Or I could have given them to other friends or family members who might value them , at least, for coming from me rather than from a random stranger.

Sigh.

ManNorth and I walked home chatting about the intricacies of gift giving and how much pleasure can be had from the giving of a gift, relative to receiving one. I took pleasure in creating those cards and knew I’d given a good gift. I just should have given it to someone else.

I’m glad though, that I scanned each card before I wrapped it up and I’ll show you the front of each card here. The images aren’t quite true to the originals as some hues weren’t picked up in the scan and they’re much more washed out than the real things (especially the lighter hues), but hopefully you’ll get the idea. Consider these my holiday gifts to you, my readers. Enjoy!

Viburnum edule

(lowbush cranberry)

Northern Highway

Campanula lasiocarpa

(Mountain harebell)

Winter at Big Lake

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.

I think my brain is cross eyed

Or, at least that's how it feels trying to do this:

Look at the image. Is the dancer spinning clockwise or counter clockwise?

Now, concentrate and make her spin the OTHER way. Then try changing back again once you do it.

I can do it if I focus on her planted foot, but it's really hard to change between directions!

Go to this link http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22556281-661,00.html for the original article, complete with brief descriptions of right brained (clockwise viewers) vs left brained (counterclockwise) dominant thinkers. (Although I'm still not quite convinced of one "side" of the brain being dominant over another and wonder if this specific effect -in this moving image) isn't due more to handedness, although we'll leave discussion of that for another day.

My favourite almost 7 year old

One of the disadvantages of living so far away from family is that I don't get to see family members doing this very often:



Thankfully, my niece is the only one who clambers around her grandparents' walls like this.
I'll let you know if her grammy tries it when I'm home at Christmas this year!

Acknowledging my inner stickler

I needed some scrap paper last night and found myself rummaging through an overflowing recyling bin during my hunt. I came across a newsletter published by town council a few months ago. The town has since switched to an electronic format (although they have yet to enable the internet link) so I can't enjoy the free monthly newsletters in quite the same way. ManNorth shook his head in astonishment when he found the newsletter shortly after it had arrived in our postal box and after I'd read it. And edited it. Profusely.

I couldn't help myself! I felt ready to march over to town hall and volunteer my editing services, if only to keep some sanity. Doesn't the mayor know what a run-on sentence is it looks like this and doesn't he know when to add proper punctuation and proper use of capitals or breaks between sentences or paragraphs and why oh why didn't anyone think to proof the newspaper before it was printed? I didn't volunteer my editing services of course, but bad grammar, spelling and run-on sentences drive me a bit nutty sometimes and usually when the writer should know better. This isn't to say that my writing is without error, as I know it certainly isn't and I've found both grammar and spelling mistakes in this very blog, but in a newsletter representing the people governing my town, I expect a wee bit better, and I don't think that this is asking too much.

I used ManNorth's handy scanner-printer-photocopier-in one (!) to scan the front page of the newsletter with my edits intact for this post but found them hard to read so I redid most of them on my computer. (Yes, there were more than I'll be showing and I had to just circle mistakes instead of actually correcting them in order to save space.) I admit that seeing the page dripping in figurative red ink on my screen brought tears to my eyes (figurative, not literal) and no small sense of accomplishment. Now, I'm not a mean person, and I think it more important that there is communication between the town council and the town's residents, but proper grammar, makes it better communication, with less potential for misunderstanding. (Hence, IMHO, my abhorrence of the current fad of texting and reducing everything to abbreviations and shortform. LOL! Sometimes NAOLPKT we've no idea what they are saying. NRN!)

It's been some time since I was employed as a teaching assistant and marked essays and exams and in a small way, I miss the tiny boost to the ego that correcting papers can give. (Aren't I horrible?) I once completely emptied two red pens while marking a batch of undergraduate essays and although I felt a bit badly as the essays became rather aesthetically unappealing in appearance -owing in small part to my horrid penmanship and use of rollerball pens, I felt that I'd done my students a service and one that was my duty. And it was fun.

Today I add to my blogroll a few links to blogs written by others with an inner stickler, as Lynne Truss so aptly explained it in her book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves. (I must thank my mother who knows me well enough to have bought me two of Lynne's books which I've gratefully added to my library as both comic relief and handy reference.) I'm not about to start an entire blog to fulfil the needs of my inner stickler but I'll happily visit such blogs now and again when I feel the need. I've sent a copy of the newsletter to Red Pen, Inc but don't know if the grammarphile will use it for her blog fodder, hence this post. I don't know if The Grammar Vandal actually advocates carrying around a permanent marker for impromptu corrections, but one might wish they would. Apostrophe Abuse is a fun, if distressing, read. Those apostrophe's just show up anywhere people 'think' they might want to 'hang! (Yes, those were all intentional apostrophe mistakes just now!) Finally, one might pay a virtual visit to Literally, A Web Log if they, like me, are bothered when others literally use the term literally when they mean figuratively. I mean, I just literally have a cow when others do that. Don't you?

A final word: although obvious grammar mistakes do bother me in published work, such as in books, articles and advertising, I really don't mind when encountering grammar mistakes in casual writing, such as in friendly email or in blog comments. I'm certainly more interested in what the author of such writing has to say than whether it is grammatically correct or not. (So please, keep commenting and writing me email without fear of offending my inner stickler!)

Without further ado, with the intention of comic relief, I present the front page of the newsletter, redacted (click to enlarge):

Another first!

The ManNorth is currently fending off blows at a defensive tactics training course and I'm watching in the growing darkness (the sun's down and it's just 5PM) as a woman slowly maneouvres around a nearby parking lot on her snow mobile, presumably for the entertainment of the toddler seated in front of her. Other snow mobiles have been zipping up and down on the snow covered gravel shoulders of mainstreet and I can hear the buzz from other machines that are racing along the nearby river. I have yet to see anyone wearing a helmet, although their use is required by law in town for anyone riding an ATV or snow mobile. Outside of town, helmet use isn't legislated and users typically move at much greater speed than the 40km/hr limit in town. Ah well, 'tis their noggins at risk and not mine!

Yesterday, I was pleased to see a novel (to me) use of a snow mobile: for training sled dogs! We were on a cross country skiing excursion along the river when a couple with a team of dogs raced up to us and we could see that the dogs were pulling a snow mobile instead of a sled. As we watched, the team slowed down and made a U-turn through a set of posts driven into the river ice and dashed back the way they came, passing between another pair of posts as they went. The ManNorth managed a few photos before they disappeared downriver.

I was rather pleased as this was the first dog team I've seen in action since we moved here and I've been anticipating them all summer and fall, particularly when hearing or seeing the local dogs yipping and barking from their kennels. We turned down an offer of free puppies a few weeks ago and will wait until we have a house and space to accomodate a few dogs. -Or perhaps a sled dog team of our own.

Cue oldies song: "DreeeeEEEEEeeeam, dream, dream, dream ...."

In the photo above, the team has just passed between the posts and are beginning their turn. The female passenger has jumped off and out of view on the right to replace a post that was knocked over.

Above, both people are back on the snow mobile and the team is racing back to the next set of markers.

They're a wee bit faster than me on my skis!

I'm at least moving on the ice, unlike this beached hulk, abandoned long ago on the shore.

A few hours later, we'd changed out of our drenched clothing (we'd worn a few too many layers for the mild -10C that it was) and were rehydrating with hot chocolate as we enjoyed a day old newspaper, flown in on the afternoon jet. (Hurray for the Globe and Mail!)

Friday news brief

Our final buttermilk tally is 101 litres, most of it now frozen in boxes and cartons on our balcony. That's over $400 of free milk! Hurrah!

The sun isn't rising until almost 10:30 in the morning as we count down to the time when it doesn't rise at all (see ticker in sidebar). I think this is pretty darn cool, and am really glad TheMan North has as many lights on his bike as he does and am glad for the chains he's put on both tires as they really help grip on the ice and snow. Yep, he's still riding it to work and back, although one of these days he'll start snowshoing or skiing instead. (Thanks muchly to Steph and The Boy, as we used your wedding gift to buy the supplies to make the chains.)

There's been a meme circulating around some of the blogs I read now and then and it asks blog owners to post 5 phrases (with or without quotation marks) that return their own blog as the first listed in a google search. Phrases that put Sojourn North at the top were: loud sinus clearing event, TheManNorth, curious corvids under a tarp, "que maniacal laughter" and "shopping for a skidoo at your local grocery store". Only the last two phrases needed quotation marks.

We've had a few mornings with heavy ice fog here in NorthernTown and the hoar frost has just been INCREDIBLE! I took some photos midday after the first frost and thought you just might enjoy a few of them.

Afternoon diversion

Needing a diversion and have about 7 or 8 minutes?

Grrl Scientist over at Living the Scientific Life (Scientist Interrupted) has an amusing video of capricious twins giving people a rather surreal experience.

When you are done that, and in the mood for, um, something entirely different and involving snails, Grrl Scientist has another video up with an excerpt from Microcosmos (although the music has been switched from Puccini to "Sexy Boy", by Air). If you aren't in the mood for a tragedy/yummy meal, stop watching when the grasshoppers come on...

Enjoy!

Should this bother me?

Our new government issue health cards finally arrived and we were both struck by something printed on the paper the cards were attached to. Read this exerpt and see if it doesn't raise an eyebrow or two:

So my question is this: Why is my government recording ethnicity in order to provide health care?

-And they aren't really doing so for me, as I'm only designated by the letter N, which encompasses thousands of possible ethnicities from around the globe excluding the other four listed.

So that rules out health issues related to specific ethnicities as an explanation and suggests that it is simply related in some other way to the most common aboriginal groups likely to be in our area. (But what about other aboriginal groups recognized by our government that don't fit one of these categories? What label do they get and why?)

Perhaps it simply relates to different treaty agreements that each of these four groups have with the government, for which I have one last question: We're all Canadians. Why would this result in differences in health care for any of these 5 groups. We SHOULD all get the same care..

Hmm. I'm not terribly bothered by this and there is likely a simple explanation but I find it vaguely unsettling somehow.

Addendum

My apologies everyone: I got the numbers wrong in my last post and my town isn't swimming in nearly as much buttermilk as I'd thought. Phooey.
Like the childhood game of telephone, the size of the accidental order grew as the story was passed along to me such that I was off by a factor of ten. There were only 1,200 litres accidentally ordered, which was still a big enough amount that the story made the national news (which is sort of amusing in its own right).
To spin the story another more personal way, we're now the proud owners of 6.8% of that order! Including a few litres that TheManNorth consumed and a bit that was added to our pancakes this morning, we have 81 litres (about 21 gallons) of milk stored out on our balcony.
I think that's still deserving of this blog, no?

And, no, it's not just sitting out in the snow, as the ravens would be sure to shred the containers open and we'd end up with buttermilk icicles. It's secured in a very large plastic container and a cooler. If we get more, it will be in the snow, but hidden from curious corvids under a tarp currently covering my bicycle.

Got Milk?

We do!

Que maniacal laughter....

We've recently acquired 14 litres of buttermilk and plan to get at least as much, if not double that amount more, all for free! Hurrah! (Normally we'd have to pay over $4 a litre.)

Have you plundered a dairy you ask? NooOOOooo silly reader, we're one of a few thousand beneficiaries of someone's big mistake: A local grocery store accidentally added a few additional zeros when ordering more supplies recently. They were alerted to this when a transport truck arrived in town with their order in the form of Twelve thousand litres of buttermilk (instead of the 12 litres or so they'd intended on purchasing) and the store is giving it away for free instead of throwing it out. Today I asked a clerk how much of the order has been given out since it arrived last week and she said that approximately half of the order remains and that it is moving slowly. However, considering that the store typically only sells 4 or 5 litres a week, getting rid of 6, 000 litres, albeit for free, in the same time seems rather quick to me.

Along with most of the town, we're now hunting up buttermilk recipes, other than for use in pancakes, for which TheManNorth has a killer recipe of his own. (Feel free to share favourite buttermilk recipes of your own or send me a link, if you like.)

Why couldn't they return the order? Aside from the lengthy time it would take to do so is that there wasn't time to make arrangements for it before highway transport became impossible. The ferries that carry highway traffic across two local rivers have just stopped running as the rivers are icing up and the only way in and out until the ice is thick enough for the ice roads to be ready (about a month from now) is by air.

Triple point, double word score

I’ve not said it enough: We like our apartment and we are happy to be in this building. In spite of occasional dirt in the hallways and stairwells, we really have few complaints. We love the high ceilings and the hardwood flooring (even if it is laminate). We like our many windows and our view of the river and distant mountains from the balcony and from one of the windows (if you look from just the right angle). We like the easy access to the town center and to walks by the river and around the lake. Other residents are usually quite friendly in passing, greeting us cheerfully and even occasionally surprising us with tidbits about their lives, such as the couple down the hallway, who we learned while holding open the door while he and a friend carried their new couch in, that it was purchased in order for “her to have something cushy to laze on while watching Gray’s Anatomy”. Thanks. That was nice to get to know a bit more about you. I’m sure she appreciates you sharing with us her fondness for lounging and medical dramas.

We don’t see or hear much from our neighbours or others in the building and although we’ve never met them, today I’d like to direct the remainder of this post to the neighbours with whom we directly share interior walls or ceilings and floors:

Neighbours to our east:
We wanted you to know that we don’t mind, terribly, the occasional repetitive booming noises from the other side of our home office wall as you fire away at electronic villains since your video games aren’t played at times likely to disturb us and are only an hour or two in length. It sounds like you have fun. We hope you don’t mind our taste in music (if indeed, you hear us playing it on our computer) and we want you to know that we intentionally keep it turned down, so as not to bother you.

Neighbour to our west:
When you blow your nose in your kitchen, it makes the most peculiar sound. Although amused, we are also concerned for you, given the daily frequency of such loud sinus clearing events over the past few months, and think it might be time to see a doctor. We’d also like to compliment you on your musical tastes. Although we rarely hear anything but nose blowing from your apartment, the few times your music has been heard, we thought it a fine thing that you shared Womannorth’s fondness for Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen.
We play Scrabble occasionally and have some skill thinking of adjectives with high point scores. We play with a dictionary handy for challenges and are pleased to learn new words with each game. Although we hope our apartment is quiet from your side of the kitchen wall, we hope that if you hear anything, it is our laughter as we enjoy the game.

Neighbours Below us:
You seem to be neighbours of extreme differences. The usual silence of your apartment is only ever broken by sounds of your arguing, slamming of doors, stomping and shouting of overly colourful words, particularly at late hours. Today we’d very much like to offer a few reminders and pointed words of advice:

1. No matter whether you believe you are in the right, you automatically LOSE an argument (i.e. become a loser) the second that you shout “F*** you” at your partner (or anyone, for that matter). If she happens to shout it back at you (instead of spending the next hour sobbing, as she sometimes does), shouting it again, repeatedly and with emphasis, does not and will never win you the argument, nor does it ever make it right for you to say it to her. What saying this to each other does say is that you are a hateful person who doesn’t care a whit about the person you are arguing with and suggests that you are intentionally trying to hurt them. This is no way to resolve anything. That you do this to someone you live with, and presumably should care about, makes your behaviour all the worse, and is horrible and repugnant.

2. We don’t know why she puts up with you and we think the best thing for you both (and certainly for her) would be to immediately go your separate ways, or at the very least, to seek counseling and learn how to respectfully disagree with each other.

3. Should you never learn the true meaning of respect, you might consider giving each other the silent treatment (although it is as equally unproductive at resolving conflict as your current swearing/shouting strategy) but at minimum, your neighbours would benefit.

To him: We’d become hopeful when your apartment was quiet the last few days and we’d hoped, for her sake, that she had moved out. (That we briefly overheard her shouting back at you this afternoon suggests otherwise, unfortunately.) We were infuriated that you woke us up in the middle of last night, while you shouted obscenities at her for over an hour by phone and we were horrified that she didn’t hang up on you. We could understand less of your hurtful invective when you switched to shouting en francais by about 3AM, but we could still hear you and you were still keeping us awake.

4. As explained above, in these specific ways (as this is all we know of you), you are a hateful and horrible loser. Please add banal to the list of descriptives we’ve judiciously applied to you. If you insist on waking up your neighbours and disrupting their sleep at all hours of the night to show your partner what a sorry excuse of a person you are, you might consider picking up a dictionary or thesaurus. If we had to choose, we’d rather overhear complaints of you not treating her as quixotically as she might like and you responding with complaints of her repetitive cloying remonstrations than hearing you include “F***” as a prefix to every other word you say.

So, to Uncaring Rude Neighbours below us: learn what love and respect truly mean or separate, be silent or add some new adjectives to your vocabulary. If asked, we’d be happy to share some with you.

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.

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?

Rorschach test anyone?

Nothing to say...so here are some pictures TM took last week:

The seasonal change is so fast here! Since these photos were taken only a week ago, most of the deciduous trees have completely shed their leaves and as of two days ago, the mountains in the west are covered in snow. TM is just itching to get out his snowshoes!

Some people have all the luck

I'll have to tell The Man to look more closely at debris sticking out from the river banks as he boats upriver today and in the future, as he might just be staring at bones of an ice age animal and not simply old branches or tree roots.

As reported by CBC news, a man had an astounding find at a location about 100 km from our home as he was walking along a riverbank and found bones (including a skull), skin and even guts protruding from the permafrost. A paleontologist is going to have a look at the remains and the location the animal was found and suspects that the find is likely a steppe bison–the same animals represented in Paleolithic paintings on the cave walls at Lascaux and more commonly unearthed west of our region in what was once Eastern Beringia. (Follow the link above to Lascaux for wonderful photos of the paintings. Eg. Look in the Main Gallery for paintings such as the Back to Back Bison or in the area of The Shaft of the Deadman for a depiction of a speared bison fatally wounding a man.)

To the right is an image from a museum exhibit of a specimen recovered in Alaska.

Living here just gets better and better!

Um.. Er... Do I HAVE to?

A note to my readers: This post has nothing to do with living in the north.
After creating my last post and its annoying title (to me, at least), I simply needed to get out a wee rant about blogging and advertising the results of one's supposed creativity.

Is it just me, or does anyone else HATE having to think up titles for blog posts, or even subject headings for email? I always feel as though I should be able to think up something witty that sums up the message in one brilliant label. Most of the time I have difficulty and can't think up anything that is remotely witty or properly descriptive but yet the title or subject box likewise can't (or shouldn't) remain empty.

I find this ANNOYING.

And in a similar vein, I always hated trying to come up with titles for artwork that I'd created in high school art classes. I understand why there are so many "untitled" pieces of artwork in galleries if those artists are annoyed at having to summarize their piece in one word or in a short phrase and so leave out a title altogether but as much as a similar frustration may keep artists from titling their pieces, I admittedly do get annoyed when viewing a piece that is untitled.
A title (or subject heading for an email) IS useful to the viewer or reader of the piece. It allows the reader to understand what the artist was getting at and particularly for blogs or emails, to prioritize whether they want to invest their time in viewing or reading the piece, put it off for later or to ignore and delete it altogether.

As much as I can acknowledge this and also appreciate informative, witty titles to email and blog posts, it is a part of blogging that I despise when creating my own posts.

So, in summation, be forewarned ye readers: I make no promises about the originality, wittiness or even existence of properly titled posts, now or forever in the future.

Oh, and the same thing goes for labels that blogger so kindly invites bloggers to add to their posts. Uh, blogging? annoying things about blogging? uncreative titles? Nah. I'm leavin out the labels for this one!

Er, okay. Rant over.

The times, they are a changin'

The sun is now setting and rising at times more typical of southern climes (as of today, the sun is rising at 7:25AM and setting at 10:18PM ) and daylength will continue shortening until we reach the perpetual darkness of December. (Although I love sunlight, this seems an exciting part of this adventure too.)
Autumn is also now in full swing and night temperatures have been dropping to just below freezing. Today’s high may reach 11C but for now (middayish), we’re just at 6C and TM is celebrating the return to wooly sweater weather and relishing the thought of coming winter snows.
Although I miss the fall colours and smells of Ontario’s hardwoods, the north has its own fall magic. The blueberry and bearberry bushes are shades of red, burghundy and purple and the birch, poplar and willow provide wonderful contrasts of yellow against the red shrubs and the green spruce. The familiar spicy smell of decaying leaves is just beginning as the first of the poplar leaves begin to fall and settle among the shrub layer and over the mosses and lichens. The local fireweed plants remind me of the flame-licked colours of Ontario’s sumac: brilliant reds giving way to bright orange and yellows all on the same plant or even on the same leaves.

TM took this photo on his way home from work on Friday.
Scenes like these make me smile!

And this does too:
I love watching the ravens. I suppose most residents here regard them as pests as they’ll soon rip open any garbage bags left out and unattended but I love them for their curiosity, intelligence and wonderfully varied calls. Sometimes as in this picture, a raven will perch on our balcony and peer at our bikes or look in the windows. I’m sure I’ve watched one chattering to its own reflection sounding as though it was gargling water. This was the first time I had a camera handy when one paid a visit but I only managed the single photo before my movement alerted it to my presence and it flew off.

Yesterday from our balcony, we watched an interesting interaction between a red squirrel and a raven in a nearby birch tree. The raven watched the squirrel as it dashed up and down the trunk opposite the raven, once almost landing on the bird as it raced around and leaped among the branches, occasionally stopping to nibble at bunches of leaves or dried catkins. The raven appeared to try pecking at the squirrel once or twice and vocalized occasionally with warbling croaks but though the squirrel could have made a getaway to other trees or across the ground, it always returned to the trunk in the vicinity of the raven. Eventually the bird left and the squirrel immediately explored the area of the branch the raven had been perched on.

comedy and tragedy

The point of this blog is to share a small bit of our lives living here in a northern town and sharing our adventures and thoughts as we discover more about what living here entails. This weekend was a bittersweet mix of such a life.
On Saturday The Man and I decided to go for a casual stroll on the trail around the lake just behind our apartment. It's a lovely walk that includes a boardwalk winding through wooded thickets, a bridge across a creek that feeds into a nearby river, lovely views of the lake and waterfowl feeding in the shallows, climbs up wooden staircases to an overlook of the lake and view of the town, chances to munch on wild cranberries, blueberries, currants and rosehips and simply, an enjoyment of all that a walk in the woods should offer. Although it is close to town, portions of the trail feel as though they might be miles away and provide a nice solitary respite from living in a population centre.
Sometimes we've brought our cameras and binoculars and have snapped many photos (yet to be developed, sorry) of plants and animals we've enjoyed seeing but for this walk we left it all behind, ensuring of course, that we would see something we'd wished we had the binoculars or camera for.
Not 5 minutes down the trail, after pausing to watch a small flock of LBJs (little brown jobs, or small, unidentifiable brown birds -especially so sans binoculars) flit through the alders and from the upper branches of one spruce tree to another, we were distracted by the sounds of something falling through the foliage. The Man looked up, and expecting to see a red squirrel throwing down spruce cones for later storage and munching, said as plainly as if he was pointing out mail in a mailbox, "It's a bald eagle." Following his gaze I looked up to see the adult eagle calmly peering down at us from a spruce bough not 30ft away. And of course, we didn't have a camera! Amusingly, what we had heard was the bird defacating and the glop falling and splatting on the foliage below. (Thankfully, not on us.) It was a good thing though, for we likely wouldn't have noticed the eagle otherwise.
The bird watched us for a moment or two until I slowly removed my sunglasses for a better look. That must have been enough attention for the bird, who then turned slowly and swooped down over and across the lake, suprising a small group of ducks who quacked and skittered for cover as the eagle passed over.
After this lovely sighting the walk was going to be memorable enough but it was truncated unexpectedly around the next bend in the trail when we discovered a portion of the boardwalk had been set on fire and was still smoldering. While The Man began digging up the burning boards and peat, assisted momentarily by 500ml of water from a passing cyclist's water bottle, I returned to our apartment for a bucket and a hammer. While I was gone, the cyclist helpfully refilled his bottle from the lake but as 500ml at a time wasn't going to do much for the effort, he continued on his way after a few friendly words.
I hauled 4 or 5 buckets of water up from the lake and The Man dug up the fire pit and ripped out a few more boards to expose the bits of fire slowly snaking under the boardwalk and into the burning peat. Within about 30 minutes the fire was completely out and the area was sufficiently soaked and muddy, as were we unfortunately. We walked back up the hill to our apartment and rewarded ourselves with bowls of chocolate ice cream.
The Man made a phone call to the town office to let them know about the fire, but as it was the weekend, there was no answer and as the fire was out, he decided to wait until this morning to let them know there would be some repairs needed for that section of the trail.

Yesterday afternoon we learned that the fire we put out may have been one of a few drunken stops by a group of youth that ended tragically in a drowning down by the town dock shortly before we'd left for our walk. We had heard sirens shortly before we left but didn't know what they were in response to. On previous walks on the trail around the lake we've seen evidence of past fires, all within a short stretch that is easily accessed from a cutline leading down to the trail from a single street on one side of the lake (the street that runs past our apartment). We've seen trees hacked at for their bark or branches, ashes and half burned branches and scattered beer cans and bottles nearby on the trail. On one occasion midday, I passed a couple too drunk to stand or speak clearly but determined to finish their bottle and mumble to each other as they lay in a thicket along the trail.
We've not heard more about the drowning other than that the group of youth that had been drinking decided to go for a swim and a young woman began having trouble. Two of her friends tried to pull her up and out onto a barge moored at the dock but she sank under and they somehow lost hold. As of yesterday her body still hadn't been found.

Tragedies like these are of course, not unique to small northern towns, but it is in small centres that such events are likely to somehow connect, however directly or indirectly, to more of the residents, whether through direct involvement, relationship or as in our case, perhaps simply through other indirect consequences influencing perfect strangers.
Likewise, seeing people drunk on the street, or passed out in the bushes, is simply more likely when the living centre is small and activity concentrated to one main street or a few park trails, for instance, as compared to large cities where similar events occur, but the average citizen won't encounter them directly.

This morning I have seen a fire engine and a few police vehicles pass by as they drive down our town's main street. I hope that they have recovered the body. I don't know the woman that drowned, nor her friends and family that are undoubtably suffering the pain and loss of such a horrible event and I am saddened to think of their hurt.
This morning the LBJs are also flitting among the sunlight and shadows of the birch trees just outside my window and the rising sun is gaining strength and breaking up the fog that covered the hills and lake this morning. Behind the birds and past the trees on the other side of the main street I also I have a small view of a hill leading away from town and the scattered birch and poplar trees are bright yellow among the spruce. The wind breezing past my window is fresh and cold in contrast to the warm sun on the trees. Life is bittersweet sometimes.

It's official. We have darkness.

After almost 2 months of 24hr daylight, we finally have darkness. A whole hour of it and some civil twilight on either side. (The Man informed me that civil twilight occurs when the sun dips below the horizon but doesn't descend more than 6 degrees.)

Do check out this site. It provides not only astronomical information for your locale but for any others you might be interested in. The best part of it is at the bottom of the page (after choosing stargazing and your city of interest) where the earth's shadow is shown. If you check in occasionally throughout the day you can watch it slowly progressing around the globe.

I copied this image taken at 8AM my time this morning.

It's a bit astonishing how heavily populated (and artificially lit) areas show up while they are in complete darkness. Look how large cities in southeast Asia show up! Until just recently the top of that shadow was just passing below where The Man and I live. Now it's brushing by ever so slightly and more so each day. I've also noticed that Antarctica is finally getting some sun and is progressing to longer and longer days as ours shorten.

A few months from now and I'll be posting photos of the aurora borealis taken during the (dark) daytime hours.

It's lovely honey. I'm just so thankful I don't have to wear it.

Subtitle: What hues are you?

A quick story before coming to the point of this post:
At an early age it was apparent to me that girls who were overly concerned with their new dresses and other clothing, staying clean and being pretty had far less fun than those who were willing, as I was, to climb that tree, get in that creek, risk the mud and catch those frogs (turtles, crayfish, etc…). Likewise, while pursuing those activities I found that running shoes, jeans and t-shirts were far more practical and comfortable than tights (shudder!) and dresses. Perhaps I romanticized my own image of a tom-boy but I likewise began to refuse all apparel associated with my vision of weak, scared girly girls. Out were any shades of pink or other pastel colours. Shoes could only be boys’ (as the girls’ shoes were always white or pink) and legs were only to be covered with pants, never skirts. I even refused to join the girl guides in grade 5 when I discovered that blue dresses with hemlines near the knee were the rule and pants were not allowed. (Thankfully, for girls like I was, now the rule seems generally to be simply blue clothing selected from an assortment of approved casual apparel.)

Since those early years, I’ve found that dresses aren’t the torment they once were and I happily own and wear them on occasion although my favourite pants and jeans get worn far more often. My closet contains a few shirts that one might otherwise label a pastel colour but by and large, my wardrobe is still dominated by the cool side of the spectrum and by deep dark rich colours (e.g. navy, burghundy, deep purple, black, deep green etc..). With the exception of a fleece sweater that I’d describe as a dark cranberry and was once called pink by a dear friend (who became momentarily less dear as I protested the pink label with great enthusiasm and shock at her mistake), I own NOTHING pink.

I think I look better in strong colours and that light ones wash me out. (Even my wedding dress wasn’t white for that reason! Why bend to a fad set by Queen Victoria and wear white when so many other colours suit better!?)

And I admit it, I simply don’t care for pink. In my mind, it will forever be associated with Barbie, Mary Kay Cosmetics and an unwillingness to step off the pavement out of one’s high heels into hiking boots and a back country trail.

So last week, when out of the blue (so to speak) The Man asked me if I liked pink, I snorted my tea out through my nose and aghast, denied such a ridiculous notion. His face fell and I immediately realized that he’d bought me something pink for my birthday. I think I did a pretty poor job of trying to make him feel better without outright embracing the notion of a pink addition to my wardrobe. He didn’t say much and I felt sort of badly. (But PINK! ? Gah! It’s sort of like me asking him to wear pleated slacks. With a Hawaiian print shirt.)

However, because I love him, I decided that I would TRY (ever so hard) to wear whatever it was that he had bought. (At least once.)

So it was with some relief that I opened my birthday gift to discover that the fuschia/bubble gum pink gift was a Thermarest camping mattress and not a new blouse! It coordinates with my red down sleeping bag in a cheesy, Valentine’s day sort of way, which makes me think of chocolate (a good thing if chocolate can be had) and most important (obviously) it’s entirely functional: It will keep my backside insulated from the cold ground and is designed for winter camping, it doesn’t have a big blister in it as my other (deep green & black) mattress that I bought myself years ago does and it packs down smaller and lighter than my other mattress. It’s a GOOD thing! (as Martha Steward might say in her pastel coloured blouse).

Perhaps I may start associating this particular shade of pink, with the pleasures of camping and hiking. Just maybe!

Only a day's drive away...

Yesterday was one of those days where family members phone you up to wish you well and ask you how it feels to be aging. It always feels rather like the day before they phone when I was officially a year younger.

To celebrate this particular milestone and, in my view more importantly, a much needed holiday for The Man, we took advantage of a long weekend and went on a short road trip (by our standards at least). During this “short” trip, we managed to pass over the arctic circle twice and travel over 2000km by the time we arrived back home. The woman who checked our rental vehicle in thought she’d made an error while calculating our mileage. We reassured her that she hadn’t lost her math skills and yes, we’d enjoyed our drive.

The scenery was beautiful and it was wonderful to see such diversity of gorgeous country within a day’s drive of home. We ferried over three rivers, drove through tundra, taiga and forest (and did some berry picking –yum!) along a looooong gravel highway taking us through multiple mountain ranges until we finally stopped driving south and hit pavement and our turnabout point at Dawson City, YT. We toured through town and wandered through shops looking at the touristy gold rush kitsch and lovely log cabin homes back up the hill from the main streets. I particularly enjoyed watching the swirling blue eddies of the Klondike spinning by as they converged with and became the muddy waters of the fast flowing Yukon.

The Alaskan border beckoned and as we were so close, we decided to drive a further 120km or so to the border via the Top of the World Highway. There are a few white-knuckle, guard rail-absent turns beside precipitous drops along the way but as I wasn’t the one driving, I quite enjoyed it! We drove halfway before stopping to camp and got up early to complete the drive before other vehicles were likely to be on the road after the border opened. The sun was just peeking through the mountain tops and as it climbed higher, it illuminated the heavy grey clouds in changing shades of pink, orange and yellow. The light was soft, the air fresh and to our great pleasure, some of the local fauna put in an appearance.

Before descending back down to Dawson we had seen a family group of 3 grizzlies, between 15 and 20 caribou (including bulls, cows and a calf) and even a porcupine which waddled away and refused to turn around for a proper photo. The bears behaved and did us the favour of reappearing on our return route when we had cameras at the ready and our photos didn’t record blurry bear bums bouncing away in the distance as at our first encounter.

By the end of our trip a cow moose, a fox, mink, shrew, multiple rabbits, as well as ground and red squirrels had also been checked off our list. Many of the birds we saw flitted away before we could get a look at them but among the many Canada jays, herring gulls, ravens and grouse we also saw a red crossbill, and saw and heard ptarmigan (what fantastically weird calls they have!). To top off our bird sightings was a group of sandhill cranes foraging along the banks of the Peel River. Although unlikely, it was a bit thrilling to think that we might have seen these very birds flying over our home in Saskatchewan before all of us migrated north.

And no, we didn’t actually cross the border to Alaska as we didn’t want to wait the hour before it opened. The Man hopped across the barricade for a photo while I wondered when the guards would come out to shoo him back over.