Foraging the tundra

It's a different way of living here.

Half a continent away stock markets are crashing and here I am picking wild cranberries until sundown. Jenafor makes all her own jam, jelly and syrup from the blueberries, tundra berries, crow berries and cranberries they pick in the fall. Gerald shoots a moose every fall as well and the meat lasts through the winter, a good value considering the sky high food prices in this town. The neighbors borrowed the quad the other day and brought us some fresh caribou backstraps which will be dinner tomorrow.

There's something to be said for hunting and gathering food. Out picking cranberries by myself today I found myself focused intensely on the act of foraging as I became more skilled at picking the dark red berries, scraping them off their branches in handfuls, depositing them in my bag. In the two hours I was out on the tundra I only stopped periodically to do a give a look around for a polar bear - there have been a few sited around town the last couple days. Although I didn't have a rifle with me I had a cracker gun - a pistol which shoots a noisy shell - and I didn't wander too far from my quad.

I spent some time down on the beach today, watching the tide go out, and collecting rocks for the fireplace that's going to go in the dog yard tent. It was good to get out on my own for a while, away from the house and away from town.

I'm looking forward to start spending more time with the dogs, getting more comfortable with them, and letting them get more comfortable with me. Gerald says I'll be driving dog sleds by the time he's done with me, a prospect that seemed a little ridiculous at first, but after reading more of Bern Will Brown's dogsled adventures in his Arctic Journal it's become more and more of an exciting opportunity, and therefore a possibility. Dogsledding, I believe, is an activity that takes a breakdown of mental barriers, especially for someone who grew up in a city bent on car culture and away from working animals. Last night I broke down some of that barrier when I began to see dogsledding, with Brown's literary help, in an adventurous light. It's a reliable way of getting places in the north, not to mention environmentally friendly. So mush, woah, gee, and haw, bring on the dogs.

Isobel and Thunder.

Returning to Churchill, and, The things that happen

Churchill, Manitoba, Canada.

"I've met many people whose lives were more noteworthy than mine. They had great stories to tell, and did tell them, but failed to put them in print. And now they're gone."
-Bern Will Brown, Arctic Journal

Returning to Churchill.

Four days ago.

After a 600 kilometer late night fuel delivery run from Flin Flon to Split Lake - seven barrels of jet-A rocking back and forth in an enclosed van, twenty more on a trailer behind, cigarette in mouth, coffee in hand, rugged gravel road, but thankfully no flat tire - my flight to Churchill left Thompson in the morning. The hour-long flight was felt luxurious - quiet, safe, snacks were served, and I got to read that same day's newspaper, the first time I'd been able to do so after a summer spent in the bush.

The flight was a thank-you gift and was considerably shorter than the 24 hours it would've taken by train - there are no roads to Churchill. Although the thought of a full day to sit, think, and not have to answer to anybody sounded appealing, the free air travel was welcome.

I was greeted at Churchill airport by my new employer and we drove into town to the tune of smalltalk and CBC Radio. That hour in the air was only thing that seperated my summer seasonal job and my fall seasonal job but the change in scenery gave me a breath of fresh air. The last three weeks I had been working in near solitude at a remote fishing lodge, my summer home that is packed with people during the season but becomes lonely come September, and it was good to see a face that wasn't my own in the mirror.

I had travelled to Churchill in July where I had met my new employers and had been offered a job for the fall. I would only accept the offer several weeks later. At the time of my first visit my mind was a jumble having narrowly escaped a forest fire, with over 20 people I was responsible for, just a week before. But the town, and my hosts, had sent me back to work with a fresh outlook. Returning now felt like I was coming back to something I knew well although I had only visited for three days the first time.

This time I'll be here for at least eight weeks and in that time the temperature will drop significantly, the snow will fly, and I may very well be spending more time with animals than humans - particularily a motley crew of sled dogs who I'll be caring for, but also running after moose and running from polar bears, the arctic beast that people from all over the planet come here to see.

The Things That Happen.

There's a pathology to writing down the things that happen to you. It takes you away from the everyday and puts you in a place that allows you to transcend the present. I find a struggle to believe the things that happen to me are of enough worth to spend the time putting them into words. Perhaps that is just the excuse I use not to write, despite being familiar with the overarching power of the written word and the clearmindedness that comes along with it. I tell people to write everything down that happens to them, whether in a private journal or for an audience, but it's a rule I rarely practice myself. I rarely write down anything that is not meant for an audience and maybe the need to have my words bounce off somebody else is one of my faults as a writer. Brown, who spent over fifty years in Canada's Arctic, writes of the people more noteworthy than him who told great stories but failed to write them down and now those stories are lost. If Brown, whose northern exploits are nothing short of exciting, had the same nagging feeling of his life story not being exciting enough to warrant being written down, then clearly I am not alone. But he wrote anyway, in volumes, and has managed to pass down half a century of history and experience to whoever cares to open his Arctic Journal.

Perhaps we shall write.