The House & other Arctic musings

Upperclass Twit of the Year

Those of you who are familiar with the Monty Python sketch, will recall that during the competition of Upperclass Twit of the Year, one of the tasks was run over a dummy but one of the twits manages to run over himself. And although it seems an impossible task, except in the fertile minds of Monty Python, I was to discover that if one gets drunk enough, and attempts to flee on a snowmobile anything is possible.

It was early evening on a spring day in La Ronge when we were called to a domestic, in a corner of one of the communities that was tucked out of the way. Not just any domestic but one that involved a knife being waved about, and threats that were made. Alcohol was definitely a factor.

There seems to an unwritten rule that weapons calls are never to be easy, and this one was complicated by the fact that the house was set well back in the bush, accessible only on foot. As we exited the truck we heard a snowmobile putting away through a back trail, the unmistakable sound of a Yamaha Bravo.

We hurried down the path and without pause entered the house, as always fearing the worst, but hoping for the best. And although the house was in disarray there was no blood, the woman screamed at us when we entered that her husband had just fled on his Bravo, into the bush behind their house.

I could still hear the snowmobile running, not too far back in the bush and ran down the trail, hoping to catch up before it hurried farther.  There, about fifty metres in was the snowmobile in the middle of the trail, still running but with no one in sight. I quickly scanned the forest, expecting to see the culprit making his way on foot but saw no one. As I began to look for tracks I heard a noise from the front of the machine and went around it.

There, lying on his back, pinned under the snowmobile, was the culprit, extremely drunk, and unable to move. In his alcohol induced fog he had managed to hang the snowmobile up on a tree root that was on the trail. A sober person would have been able to easily drive the machine off the offending root, but our man went to the front of the machine, grabbed the bumper/hand grips and give a mighty pull to free his Bravo. He fell as he pulled the machine towards him, and its momentum and a little bit of a fast idle kept the machine going, up over his body, pinning his legs under the track and his chest under the engine.

He had, indeed, run over himself.

Inuksuit

Inuksuit, in my opinion, are vastly overexposed as a cultural symbol. From a huge one in Hay River (not the tundra) to the Olympics, to every cheesy souvenir that has Nunavut written somewhere on it, they are impossible to avoid. Which is too bad really, because they should be iconic, they are a perfect symbol. If only they weren't everywhere.

There are probably, in the accessible areas around here, very few inuksuit that one might call "genuine". Take the inuksuq in the foreground of the photo. LIchen covered, classic inunnguaq shape, looks like it has been part of the land forever. In reality, it and the other two in the picture were made by workers at the new Airport near town. I would venture, that most you can see easily from town are made by non-Inuit or by Inuit in the Nunavut version of "Kilroy was here."  I'm just as guilty, Leah and I have made at least one, high on top of a hill.  Not a very good one as it turned out, it was felled in huge windstorm that same year (I noticed that a replacement has been built in its place).

One of the few "real" Inuksuq that I knew of near town, was also felled in that same wind storm. Inuksuit serve many different roles,one of which was to point to good fishing spots. These are in pairs, line them up and they point in the right direction, the spot is off shore the same distance as the two inuksuq are apart. Brilliant, brilliantly simple.

I've also heard recently about the inuksuit that are used to funnel caribou towards hunters. Apparently very old ones exist nearby, down at the end of Adam's Sound, half buried in the tundra. I'd love to get out to see them one of these days. They are a tangible connection with the history of this land. And I'll take that connection over iconolatry any day. No matter how photogenic they are.

Obligatory Sunday Raven photo

From the drive today, shot from a moving truck. The iceberg in the background was planned was pure luck. 

B'rer Hare and B'rer Fox

Although the House Hare has been about since the tail end of the dark season I've not seen it. Only its tracks. However today Travis came running from the Great Room saying it was there, and then ran to the back door, just in time to see it go by. 

I grabbed my camera and just behind the truck at the edge of the property stood the Hare. 

Travis had run to another window inside and while I was taking the picture he came running out.

"Dad!"

"I just saw a fox."

As I had a quick look for the Hare, he came outside and pointed out the fox he had just seen.  It was a long way off and I managed a couple of quick shots that weren't very good.  Without binoculars I couldn't tell if the dark fox was dark phased Arctic Fox or one of the Red Fox phases.  Blowing up the image though one can see it is a Red Fox, and I'm guessing the Cross Fox colour phase.

See what I mean.

I'm serious. Somebody stop me. This is but a fraction of them.

Font Mad

The other day I was over at Amy's blog ...on the present moment, and commented on her new theme. Its nice and clean and a couple of the fonts caught my eye.  So I asked her what the fonts were and she told me, and pointed me to Dafont.com...

That was a mistake.  Thousands of fonts, for free, equals Clare spending even more time on the computer, eating up my bandwidth downloading font after font after font.  Somebody stop me.

Perhaps its time to move to the private sector.

This just saddens me.

Coffee, clones, and cartography

I heard of a writer, whose name I don't recall, responding to a question about writer's block something along the line of "You know, my father was a trucker but he never had 'trucker's block'". And I suppose its true to a point, but just like there are days when his father probably rued climbing into the cab of his truck for want of being inspired, this writer is feeling uninspired.

After coming up with better than a post a day for the last little while, I'm stuck. Its a beautiful time of the year, even at 11pm there is a glow in sky, the inky blackness of our winter skies suddenly gone. I should have things (and do) to write about, but can't bring any cohesive thoughts down onto the "page". So I'm going to rely on others this morning.  Here are three distinct and diverse things that caught my eye this morning online.

It bears repeating, but if you are not drinking a sustainable coffee you're not only drinking an inferior beverage but you're contributing to the deforestation of the tropics, Developing World poverty, and the loss of critical migratory and tropical bird habitat, including critical habitat for some of our most endangered neo-tropical migrants. It is a simple, and relatively inexpensive way to do some good by switching to a sustainable coffee. Really a win-win-win situation.

Julie, one of my all time favourite writers/bloggers/friend was recently down in Guatemala on a sustainable coffee finca banding birds. It behooves you to visit two of her blogs, Coffee and Conservation and Net Results all of the time.  But if nothing else go to them now and read her reports on her visit down there. Great photos, fantastic birds.

Wanderin' Weeta is another blog I regularly visit. Like many of the authors I enjoy, Susannah has an eye for detail and a curiousity about the tiny lives around us. Check out her latest post on the moth that is most unmothlike, and a fascinating study. She discovered a bagworm, Dahlica triquetrella, an introduced species of moth that, as an adult, has no wings, no mouth, no eyes, and in Canada at least is a population that only consists of females. It reproduces by parthogenisis, so essentially all of its (all female) offspring are clones of itself. What is more, depending on how many individuals were introduced from Europe, it may very well be a clone of a single individual. Nature is so utterly fascinating.

Finally be sure to visit The Arctic Bay Atlas, a joint mapping project of Nunavut Youth Consultants (a local youth group/business) and the Inuit Heritage Trust. The project is mapping the area around Arctic Bay and is fascinating. Hover your curser over a spot on the map and you'll hear (faintly) the Inuktitut name of the place. Click on the spot and you'll get information on the Inuktitut name, English name, features and on some, photos of the location. For instance you can see photos of Qurlurniq, the place I had coffee on my last adventure.

For those Nunavumiut who are interested, the official launch of the website is at the Nunatta Campus of Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit (Iqaluit? Why not Arctic Bay?) on March 30th, 2009 from 10:15 am to 12:00pm. Light refreshments will be served.

New lens

My new camera lens arrived today.  Here are the first images through it.

Where the Gyrfalcon isn't (Conclusion)

Link to Part one

After leaving the Gyrfalcon Aerie I headed west towards Admiralty inlet, paralleling the cliffs. I kept one eye on the cliffs, looking for that telltale flash of white against the red rock. As I neared the end of the cliffs I noticed the black stain where the water falls down the face of the cliff come summer. I remembered recently Leah telling me that she used to camp near this waterfall with her grandparents when she was a young girl.

Sure enough a broad raised beach appeared just beyond the waterfall, it would be a good place to have my coffee. I turned the machine around and walked towards the shore. A lemming, enjoying the warmth of the returning sun to emerge from his tunnels beneath the snow, somehow found itself on the wrong side of the tidal cracks. It wandered along, what to it would be a yawning crevasse, searching for its way back.

It would be a spectacular place to camp, with two waterfalls at one end to provide fresh water and the background music to sleep to, a spectacular view, and a broad flat area for tents. Tent rings abounded there, and something else. It was the final resting place of Just Jusi Qavavauq. A reminder that life has gone on here for a long time. Qavavauq passed away before I was born, some three years younger than I am now. I do not know the circumstances behind his death, but life was tough up here, forty-seven wasn't that young back then. I could, probably with a little digging, find out more. He has children living here.

I don't know about his name, but in my mind the following conversation played out "His name?" "Qavavauq" "What's his first name?" "Its just Qavavauq." "J-U-S-T- Qavavauq, got it.".  Of course it may very well have been his first name, I really don't know.  His grave does look out over some pretty spectacular country though.

Edit: Last night I chatted with one of Qavavauq's granddaughters, and she remarked that the inuktitut on the headstone translated to "Jusi". I don't know why I didn't bother to read the sylabbics, but what is more is that the name says "Jusi" in English as well, not "Just". I can't believe that I mis-read that so much, and over and over again.

I sat in the warmth of the sun, looking over that spectacular scene. Dressed for riding on the snowmobile I was far too warm for sitting in the equinoctial sun. I took off my fur hat and found that my balaclava underneath was soaked in sweat, I took it off and laid it beside me to dry or freeze dry. And so I sat, warm and content, trying to erase some of the paleness of my face, listening to that profound silence, inhaling deeply the aroma of my coffee. Coffee that probably in the last year was berries ripening under an Ethiopian sun. What an amazing land we live in. I turned to Qavavauq's grave and raised my cup silently, thanking him for sharing his piece of the Earth with me. And then it was time to press on, for there were other birds to search for.

I was headed to the mouth of Adam's Sound, a point called Nuvuaq. It's actually one of two points called that near here. They have longer names to distinguish them, but I can never remember then. The land is lower here and I planned on looking for ptarmigan, before heading back home. At the first opportunity I turned off the sea ice and head up the hill.

And then came my short sharp reminder about how quickly things can turn south on you up here. As I climbed the bank I turned a bit to avoid a large rock coming my way. That was all it took and the snowmobile tipped. There was nothing I could do to stop it from going over, and down I went.

I wasn't quite perpendicular to the hill, and as the result fell slightly down hill beside the machine. It wanted to keep rolling and it took all the strength I could muster in my left arm to keep it from rolling over me. Pushing against it until it came to rest I strained (slightly) something in my left hand. But that wasn't the worst of my troubles. My left foot was pinned under the machine, the edge of the running board across the wide part of foot. The weight of the machine growing. It hurt but I was pretty sure that nothing was broken. I strained to pull out my foot but couldn't. Constant pressure against the machine with my left hand kept it from pressing harder against my foot. Pushing hard I could relieve some of the pressure, but not enough that I could free myself. I settled down to think about my options.

I was probably fifteen kilometres from town, with not much prospect of anyone coming by soon. I did have my satellite phone tucked inside my jacket, keeping the battery warm, and I decided that I could retrieve it with little trouble. It was in the warm sun, and dressed warmly, albeit a little sweaty so I wasn't going to freeze in the short term anyway. My hand and foot hurt, but I was pretty sure there were no serious injuries. People knew where I was going, and roughly when I intended on coming back, the snowmobile was bright yellow and I wasn't hidden from view. All in all, it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

So after a bit of a rest I again pushed the snowmobile away from me, but after a couple of tries I knew I couldn't free my foot like that. However, I could feel my foot coming out of my boot, and decided with a good effort I could free myself if I left my boot behind. So I rested, and tried again. Success, I relieved the pressure on my foot enough I could wiggle it free from the boot and the snowmobile.

When I tried to right the machine while trying to keep my bootless foot from getting wet or plunging it into the snow however I couldn't get enough purchase to push the machine past the tipping point. I took out the phone and set it on a rock, contemplating that phone call back to town. Instead I got down and was able to dig snow out from under my boot enough to pull it free. I then shifted the machine around so gravity wasn't working as hard against me and managed to right it.

Trying to continue up the slope just got me stuck so I pulled and ran the machine out of the deeper snow and down the hill behind me. From there it was a matter of turning around and heading back down to the ice. I decided to give up finding any birds other than Ravens for the day, they would be my Birds of the Equinox, magnificent birds that they are. I looked around, had one last cup of coffee and slunk back to town, perhaps more aware, but doubtfully wiser.