The House & other Arctic musings

Long-tailed Ducks (Clangula hyemalis)

Late last week I was out at the outflow of Marcil Lake (our water lake), birding at midnight. It was magical, as suddenly most of the species of birds I've been waiting for seem to have arrived up here. In a little less than an hour I saw some ten species of birds, six of which were first records of the year. These birds I saw for the first time the day before. Long-tailed Ducks (although I'm a dinosaur and prefer the old name). Poor light meant I had to push the ASA to 1600 so there is a lot of noise in the photo.

These three birds were sleeping amongst a group of five males and three females.

Out

I don't get out on the land near often enough, and it seems like I forget just how incredibly beautiful, how incredibly sweeping, how incredibly majestic this land is. Last Sunday I got a reminder.

Its funny, but essentially I can be in the wild almost the moment I step out of my door.  If I walked out on my deck right now, and set a course due south I'd come within fifty kilometres of Repulse Bay, but I wouldn't get really close to another community until I reached Pagwa Lake in Northern Ontario. But for some reason, turning the corner onto Admiralty Inlet makes me feel like I'm truly in wilderness.

As we travel south on Admiralty, I find it difficult to keep my eyes on the trail, and keep looking at the grandeur that surrounds me. This is potentially a bad thing, as much of the trail is rough ice this year and travelling on it requires constant vigilence. But it is difficult to ignore the beauty out here. One direction is vast expanse of white and blues, bordered by the cliffs on the far side, beautiful fluted cliffs. On the near shore mountains, craggy in some, smooth in other places. They are punctuated by canyons, deep jagged canyons, and gentler valleys. Raised beaches dot the shore line between glacial smoothed rocks. For the land is rising here, still rebounding from the weight of the last ice age. Along the way, massive icebergs wait for break up, to continue their journey on the tides, until they break smaller, and smaller and lose their majesty, but not their beauty. A couple of these beamoths that we pass are the size of apartment buildings, and we only see a fraction of their ancient bulk, made up of snow that fell on Groenland thousands of years ago.

We pass by the spot I really want to visit, and continue on to Iqalulik, where Leah's parents, and our son spent the night. The closest good fishing spot to Arctic Bay, it is nestled in a cliff lined valley, inland from the ocean. But the going is slow and I haven't been there in a while, and thus make several false starts to shore in all of the wrong places. And then, just as I'm finally pointed in the right place, a snowmobile and ATV appear, and we meet Leah's family and Travis heading for home. So, Leah jumps into the komatiq and we dutifully turn and head home.

Retracing our track Leah's mother points out features to Leah, who in turns points them out to me. Features such as a dark rock face they call "white man" because it looks like someone wearing a cap. It is easy to recognize, and can be seen even when most of the land is covered in snow. I see a seal lounging on the ice in the distance, but no one is interested, we are heading for home.

But this time, we stop at the spot I want to see, almost. Qikiqtaukat where Leah's parents, and her three oldest siblings lived before moving in to town. I say almost because I still didn't see the location of their qarmat, somewhere over the hill. And I didn't really do what I wanted, which was to spend some real time there, with her parents, finding out what their life was like then.

Only Leah's youngest brother and I walked up the raised beach, and I realized just how beautiful this spot truly is.  A small gentle valley, with a lake (containing land locked Char) and a small stream. The view out over Admiralty Inlet is inspiring. Then a grave catches my eye, a seven month old buried on top of the hill above the beach. And then a second grave, and then a half a dozen lined up, looking over the lake.

I wander around, wanting to stay longer and explore, but I know that the others are finishing their tea and will be anxious to return home. Home is just around the corner in a manner of speaking. So as I linger two spots of white across the lake from me catch my eye. Brighter than the snow I can see they are two Rock Ptarmigan, so I back track and make my way across the stream and try and get closer.

Then, as I pause to take some photos from too far away, something I've never seen before. Something amazing. The male ptarmigan takes off, circles and then locks his wings and parachutes to the ground, churring on the way down. An aerial display that I had no idea these birds made. I watch as he repeats the display, flying up to gain a bit of altitude and then parachuting back down, almost to the surface of the ice. I try and take some photos, but it is far, and late and overcast. One time he circles closer, not displaying but coming in to the slopes above her, and one of the shots is passable. He stands on a bank of snow, his eye combs impossibly bright red and I get another passable shot.

And then, one more aerial display and she joins him, and the two fly off across the lake. I walk back down to the ocean to join the others, finish the thermos of coffee and we make our way back home. But I keep looking back, drawn back to this little valley, and already I want to return.

Avinga

Avinga is Inuktitut for lemming, and it is also one of my son's names (after an elder not the rodent). Both happened to be out a Uluksan Point last night.

We have two species of lemmings here, the Brown Lemming (Lemmus trimucronatus) and Greenland Collared Lemming (Dicrostonyx groenlandicus), and I'm not sure which species the ones we were seeing belonged to. I can imagine I see elements from the description of both in this. If it were winter it would be easy to tell, Collared Lemmings turn white, Brown Lemmings do not.

I discovered though that when you are trying to photograph a nervous little rodent that sits down at the bottom of several food chains, and there are two small, excited, boys around it is almost impossible to get a decent photo, especially with the poor light of late evening under an overcast sky. This was the best of a bunch, which mostly showed a blurry, vaguely furry brown thing.

Fog

I love the way the fog often pours over the mountains and hills here. It begs to be photographed. Combine that with an opportunity to take yet another iceberg photo and well...

A pair of lines in my hands

Daisy was up from the battle school today but I missed him, I have not seen him for three weeks now, that is the longest spell since we joined up, or even before that for a couple of years. He left a snap of my team of greys that had been sent in one of his letters. I was glad to get it, I would give a lot to be able to get a pair of lines in my hands again, but I guess that can wait until the business in hand is completed.

This past Saturday saw the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. Today, however, is a much more significant date for me, the 65th anniversary of the death of my namesake, a little inland from those terrible beaches.

I've written before on his death, how he and 39 other Prisoners of War, were sat down in a field, just off the Highway to Caen near Fontenay Le Pesnal, and gunned down. The last words they would have heard were "And now you die" by one of their executioners. By the accounts of those that escaped there was a realization of what was about to happen in the moments leading up to their deaths, and I imagine that some of their thoughts turned to home.

A little about what I know about Clare come from letters that he wrote to my grandfather, and it is clear to me that his thoughts turned both to the past that had been left in Canada, and the future that awaited him there. He spoke (as the passage above showed) about his horses. Both he and his father were keen horsemen, and he longed to once again to have reins in his hands. But even more telling from that passage is the importance of friends to him, the mention of not seeing his friend for three weeks, the longest time in years.

He looked to the future, hoping to buy one of the family farms if it was still available after the war...

Perhaps it is a little early in the game to call the score, but I do a lot of thinking about the matter of Grandma's farm, naturally I don't expect it to be held over, but if it is still in the same status when I do get there, I shall be doing my best to work out some arrangements satasfactory (sp) to the majority of the people concerned.

He thought, of course, of the future Mrs Kines before he was "too old"...

Mil may have told you that my Little Lady in London is now a married woman, so all chances of the girl in England not liking a farm have vanished, after all there can hardly be two girls as nice as she is in a small country like England, anyway there is always the one back home, if I could only make up my mind which one. If I don't make it up soon I'll be too old to care, I don't feel so old most of the time, and now that I have shaved my moustache off I don't think I look a day over thirty. (he was 29 when he was killed)

But one of the most telling aspects of him that his letters left was his concern and comforting of my Grandfather who, like the old soldier he was, was angry and upset about not being able to take part in the fight in Europe himself...

and I honestly think that you are filling a vital position where you are, and hope that you will continue to serve in the manner you have since this whole affair started, not that I am wishing that you could not do the things that you most desire to do, but that in my opinion it is just as important  to have competent men in the business back there as in this side of the works, I hope I have made myself clear, but knowing how badly you wanted to get into it again I am treading  on shallow ice, another case of fools walking in where angels fear to tread.

In short, we often don't think about the life of the soldier who was killed, just their lives. They were (and are) no different than us. And while we often speak of the loss of potential that happens when so many young lives are ended, it is loss of the mundane, and the magnificence that is wrapped up in that mundane, that is the most profoundly felt. These men, who gave their all, lived ordinary lives, and I have them to thank for the opportunity to live my ordinary, and magnificent, life.

Light

There's been some discussion lately about the 24 hour, or mostly 24 hour sun that we are getting now. Most of it centres around how to sleep during it, or how it is messing up the internal clocks of those who can't sleep during it. I understand, and I've gotten enough first time visitors to the arctic who start their day looking anything but refreshed after tossing and turning all night. I understand.

But I love the light. I have no circadian rhythm. It was beat out of me by my working shifts pretty much all of my adult life. I've slept during the day since I was 18 or 19. And I tell you, I love the way the landscape changes as the sun circles and dips and rises in the sky. But more than anything I love the fact that, if I want, I can go for a drive at 10:00 at night and do things. Or a walk at 2:00 am.

Friday after a late supper we did just that, went for a drive. I checked out some areas for arriving birds (and discovered I misidentified one the other day. We went out to the water lake, and Leah and Travis did a little fishing where the incoming river clears an opening in the ice.

And what could be cooler than ice fishing, stepping back on shore and doing a little biking?

Here the late evening light paints the newly blooming Purple Saxifrage with that gorgeous light of a sun low in the sky.

And here is a Canada Goose (probably the Lesser Canada Goose subspecies Branta canadensis parvipes) that I thought was a Cackling Goose. This photo was actually taken Saturday morning.

Its the end of the school as we know it

There has been a restlessness about town the last few days. Today is the last day of school here and people are rushing around, getting ready to go out on the land. Everywhere you look people are fiddling with snowmobiles, repairing komatiq, hauling equipment down to the ice. There are improbably long lines at the gas station, as people fill their jerry cans and 45 gallon drums, fuel to last them for the next two or three weeks.

Soon people will be filing out of town, most heading south to good fishing and egg gathering, but some have small boats strapped to their komatiq, ready to head north to the floe edge, to the riches of that magical place where ice meets open ocean. It is a restless time of the year, people here yearn to reconnect to the land, to escape the confines of town. Most everyone has a smile on their face.

There is also the restlessness of the children, anxiously watching the clock tick down on the last day of class. There is 24 hour sun to take advantage of, sculpins to fish for, exploring to be done. Schools out. Not forever, but until the middle of August. Its time for them to seek out the rhythm of their own internal clocks. To seek the joy of dragging a homemade wooden skidoo or boat around by a string, street hockey and baseball. Or the perfect joy of escaping gravity briefly off a ramp on a bicycle.

Everyone knows that this, this brief moment, is the perfect time of the year. The time when the anticipation of the brief summer eclipses all else.

Snow Bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis)

The more things change...

Amongst the books I was recently given was an old bird field guide, Bird Guide - Land Birds East of the Rockies From Parrots to Bluebirds, by Chester A. Reed. It looks like it is a reprint from 1944, originally copyrighted in 1906.

One of the first thing that struck me, while I was reading the Introduction was how many of the same threats to birdlife that we recognize now, were known then. Those threats outlined in the book are poignantly outlined by the fact that at least four of the birds featured in this small volume are extinct (well okay maybe not the Ivory-billed Woodpecker but if it still exists there are so staggeringly few of them, well..) including the very first bird shown.

Here is an excerpt from the Introduction:

It is an undisputed fact that a great many of our birds are becoming more scarce each year, while a few are, even now, on the verge of extinction... If I were to name the forces that work against the increase of bird life, in order of their importance, I should give them as: Man; the elements; accidents; cats; other animals; birds of prey; and snakes.

He goes on to detail some of the threats and again here an excerpt of a couple after Man and the Elements:

Birds are subject to a great many accidents, chiefly by flying into objects at night. Telephone and telegraph wires main or kill thousands, while lighthouses and steeples oft cause the ground to be strewn with bodies during migrations.

and

In the vicinity of cities, towns, villages or farms, one of the most fertile sources of danger to bird life is from cats. Even the most gentle household pet, if allowed its liberty out of doors, will get its full quota of birds during the year, while homeless cats, and many that are not, will average several hundred birds apiece during the season. After years of careful observation, Mr. E.H. Forbush, Mass., state ornithologist, has estimated that the average number of birds killed, per cat population, is about fifty. If a dog kills sheep or deer, he is shot and the owner pays damages; if a man is caught killing a bird, he pays a fine; but cats are allowed to roam about without restriction, leaving death and destruction in their wake. All homeless cats should be summarily dealth with, and all pets should be housed, at least from May until August, when the young birds are able to fly.

And here are the four aforementioned birds.

Glaucous Gulls (Larus hyperboreus)