things that make you want to call the police

This is a partial list...

1> I've downloaded a program off the internet and I can't find the icon for it.
2> My neighbour slammed his door and a picture fell off the wall in my house.
3> Some kids were throwing rocks at my house at 3AM. (this at 10:30AM)
4> "Everybody's fighting". I envisioned a brawl. When the guys got there, "everybody" turned out to be two very intoxicated females who were the only occupants of the house.

However. The Iqaluit CBC radio station called to ask my boss about 'shots fired' in town. Ok. So for all the above shit you call me, and for the shots fired you call the radio??? (for the record, it wasn't shots... fireworks)

Eclipse

Waking sweaty, ears ringing, in my blanket nest
Jumbled half light in the cabin
It’s 2am.

At the door, you ask our plans
Ultimately, death
I say, I think
Tell myself I’m still asleep

Smoky haze on the horizon
Behind the lake
Candy-pink edges the only proof
Of the sun, spinning before the eclipse

Despite my flippancy
The plan involves treading the spine of Ovayok
(His falling down and dying made a ribbed mountain)
Approaching, half the town
Perches already, or scales the steep sides

I leave you all sprawled
At the top of the first rise
Keep going

Wind, warm animal breath from the head
Damp and alive
Tugs my clothes, whistles in my coat

Passing those I know
(Hey, Kate)
And those I don’t
Smile anyway
It’s their mountain

As I approach, one woman turns from contemplation
Kate. What time does it start?
I look at my watch but I already know the answer. Now.
The answer confuses. The sun hides.

Past scattered inukshuks and teenagers
Eyes slide away
Don’t know where I’m going or why
I need to walk but the
wind keeps blowing against
me and some watchers are
higher still and
then the sun stops.

I turn around.
Suddenly everything is downhill fast
and the light is grey
and then I’m in Ovayok’s belly button
in the middle of the night
with a whole bunch of people
and it’s dark.

summer

The avocado pit that I've been trying to sprout has grown a root! And my second pineapple has green shoots in the middle! I love the 24 hour daylight for growing - all my plants go wild. I have been trying to order a small seed starter, like a tiny plastic greenhouse, but the company called today and told Rachel they can't ship it to me. Not sure why. I was looking forward to getting it. Oh well. I guess I'll have to keep using margarine containers and plastic wrap.

We didn't end up going to Starvation Cove. Miguel went fishing from work (they all went on Friday - company fishing day) and caught a 12 pound char, so he didn't really want to head out again on Saturday. So we invited a bunch of people for dinner on Sunday, made caribou stew and char and had a good meal.

Next weekend is the eclipse. I've been told that we're staying up Thursday night to see it, at 3am Friday morning, despite the fact that I have to work on Friday. Miguel doesn't have to, he's off to San Diego...

Chris and Clark are within 100km of their finish point.

Saturday

I'm getting things done. I went to work just after noon, and found there was no-one there, so I spent a couple of hours madly washing the floors and vacuuming before anyone came to muddy it up again. I also took all the blankets from the cellblock over to one of the unoccupied houses to wash (really unoccupied, not just house-where-owners-are-on-vacation). The new guy is moving in there on Tuesday and I wanted to make sure it was ready for him, too. I went to do this in one of the other houses before a new couple arrived, and the place had a dead fly problem. The floor was black and crunchy. After getting to know her, I think if that guy's wife had walked in and found it like that, she would probably have gotten in a cab and headed back to the airport...

I'm also working on a church service for tomorrow. It's my turn. Made banana bread, cleaned the kitchen, invited a bunch of people for supper tomorrow, tidied up the living room, took a stab at the bathroom, paid my taxes... (well, the huge ass penalty I got for filing late because we were waiting for a piece of paper from my RRSP.)

Also at the moment I'm caught up at work, I thought I was getting a bunch more stuff to do, transcribing-wise but the disk I was sent turned out to be blank. So until a new one with actual recordings comes, there's nothing pressing for me to do. It's a nice feeling.

all my links have disappeared... I think it's the cat's fault that is (Delia's right!) messin w my blogz

hopefully they'll reappear from wherever they went

the preceding post is what happens when

computer is left unattended while bagels toast.

The wind is blowing, today. Taking all the bugs away. On Saturday if it's nice we're planning a trip to Starvation Cove, where the fish are rumoured to be bitey. I just like the ride.

Rachel is back from camp. (as you may have noticed) Kirsten will be back next weekend. Ian called on the weekend and said he's going on maneuvers this week, in the bush. It sounds like a good camp, and he's talking about going again next year. Despite Rachel's misgivings, she enjoyed herself too, even the cadet-ish portions of the festivities, and is also thinking she will go again next year. The cadet program is awesome, for the opportunities, the friends made, and the general sense that they can withstand a lot more than they ever imagined. Rachel has a picture of herself mugging madly in front of a canvas shelter that she and her partner made in the bush, and she's come home knowing that even though she's still afraid of bears and bugs she can survive in the wilderness and come out laughing.

Work is a bit quieter this week, and I've been napping a lot in the evenings. We discovered that the non-functioning of the internet was due to an intersection of electronics and water, probably courtesy of the dying washing machine. This has been fixed, and Miguel has dug up an old laptop for me to use until Kirsten returns with my computer.

And it was all like woah! ...

Woah! and i like couldnt stop it! Chicken's run freely in the rain with purple umbrella while yellow smiling ducks eats their young. Cats get shoved in boxes and kids pushed them around. What has the world come to?

And i can't stop it! Why?

Cause it was all like Woah!

-Rachel


more cat pictures

otters of the twin variety

This week I had a couple of long days - I went on training to be a spotter for air search and rescues. It started with ground school, which was kind of boring. Somehow, and I'm not sure how this is possible, the material was interesting after a fashion, but it was being presented in a sort of junior high science movie format. At one point in the movie, a man with some gooey blood on his head is standing in a field, waving his arms excitedly, while an 'injured' man (you can tell he's injured because he's covered with a blanket)lies on his back, at goo-head man's feet. The airplane, apparently filled with poorly trained spotters, passes overhead and disappears. The concerned voice-over says, "Imagine the despair of these injured passengers, when the rescue plane they have been waiting for flies right over without seeing them." The man standing up assumes a posture of great despair, with his gooey head in his hands, and the injured man on the ground gives a feeble and heart-rending wave in the direction of the oblivious aircraft. That made me laugh. I mean, it's not really funny. Really.

The second day, which was much more interesting (but colder and more uncomfortable) was the flight training.

Nine of us went on a Twin Otter, and it was a bit chilly and cramped. Very nice little aircraft, though. You can really see a lot out the windows, which is good if you're meant to be looking for small things on the tundra.

Spotting is funny. We were told we had targets - an abandoned snowmobile, a tent frame, a couple of old cabins, and a disintegrating boat. So we performed our procedures, as directed, but it's hard. You are meant to be scanning in the same direction that you would read, I guess because that's a natural movement for your eyes. At first I was concentrating really hard and it was making my eyes hurt a lot. Eventually it began to feel more natural, but then I started getting distracted. As previously mentioned here, there are a lot of muskox around and they run away when planes go over. And, as a human being, my eyes are drawn to moving objects. So the mental soundtrack was: "scanning, scanning, don't look at the muskox, damn, I'm looking at the muskox. what did I miss?"

The man sitting in front of me spotted the cabins, I spotted the boat, but we never did see the snowmobile, despite frequent passes. At the end the pilot said, somewhat sheepishly, that there was a possibility that he had plotted the snowmobile wrong, and it never was where we were looking...

The flight training has to be two 1hr flights, so after an hour of looking for the damn snowmobile, we landed at Jayko Lake, on a short gravel runway, and got out to look around. And I wished I had my camera because it was very pretty. We ate our snacks and laughed at each other, and then we all got back in the plane to do the second half of the training.

So now, if there's an air search called, I might have to go and be a spotter. I'm told that the hard part of that is that they keep going until either they find what is being looked for or the search is called off, and the last one they did was 36 hours of spotting, napping, and peeing in plastic bags. But my bag is now packed, I'm certified, and ready to go.

Aha! the internet has relaxed its vigilance. I can access pages.

All the kids are now away. Kirsten is in Quebec (with my laptop, as previously mentioned), Ian's in Vernon BC doing a rifle coach course until the middle of August, and Rachel's at cadet camp in Whitehorse.

Kirsten has called lots, she's having a good time now that she's stopped being homesick. Rachel called last night and she doesn't sound homesick at all, she has a posse already, and they're all going horseback riding on the weekend. She was really quite apprehensive about going - she's a worrier and she felt that all the wasps in the Yukon would be having a convention to decide how to torment her while she was there, and that all the army guys would yell at her. She told me gleefully that the leaders had taught her and her cohorts how to make their beds, but that it was so complicated and so hot there that they figured they were just going to sleep on top of their covers rather than mess it up and have to remake. (To be fair, she did step in a wasp nest, during a camping trip when she was about four, and got stung very badly. And at home she never makes her bed.)

Ian hasn't called at all, but he's a boy.

Miguel and I went and stayed at the cabin for the whole weekend, and the sun shone (no romantic sunsets in the land of 24hr daylight). We went overland on Saturday to Long Lake, about an hour away from the cabin. The muskoxen have fuzzy little calves and I tried to take pictures but they don't like to be disturbed and I didn't want to get too close. One old shaggy muskox was standing on top of Mount Pelly, like a sentinel.

I know, I don't usually do this, but I want to see it so here are the lyrics to City and Colour's "Sleeping Sickness". Gordon Downie sings in the middle...

I awoke
Only to find my lungs empty
And through the night
So it seems I'm not breathing
And now my dreams are nothing like they were meant to be
And I'm breaking down, I think I'm breaking down

And I'm afraid
To sleep because of what haunts me
Such as living with the uncertainty
That I'll never find the words to say
Which would completely explain
Just how I'm breaking down

[Chorus]
Someone come and, someone come and save my life
Maybe I'll sleep when I am dead
But now it's like the night is taking sides
With all the worries that occupy the back of my mind
Could it be this misery will suffice?

[Gordon Downie]
I've become
A simple souvenir of someone's kill
Like the sea
I'm constantly changing from calm to ill
Madness fills my heart and soul as if the great divide could swallow me whole
oh, how I'm breaking down

[Chorus]

Things that are conspiring to make it hard for me to post here:

Kirsten has gone off to Quebec with my laptop.
Our internet has major issues, and some days I can't get any connection.
On the days I can get a connection it is sporadic and if I compose a post it gets lost when I try to put it up.
The sun is shining and we've been spending lots of time at the cabin.

defense de passer

three for one court week

I know. It's been a while. I can only explain by saying that we ended up with almost three consecutive weeks of court. Partly because of this.

I can't sleep tonight.

Well, that's not completely true. I was asleep, very deeply, between 10pm and midnight, but then I woke up and tossed fretfully in a sweaty half-sleep. Very unpleasant, and the things going through my head were pointless and annoying. So I got up. Since Rachel's sleeping over at Siobhan's and the older two kids have to work tomorrow, the house is now quiet and still. I can't even hear the guinea pig we're looking after while its owner is on holiday. Cuddly little thing, but loud.

It seems we may also be looking after two small girls while their foster family is on holiday, starting the 21st. They are very cute, but they're six and seven and we're not used to that age any more. The last time they came to visit they played happily with my good china. I guess I'll have to put it away again. They go to their mom's house on the weekends if all is good in their world, so if we do have them it'll probably be only during the week.

driving me nuts

Kirsten got her driver's licence. Miguel took her out to practice a couple times, but mostly it was me. We cruised around, she practiced parking, tried not to drive us off cliffs. My main goals before her driver's test, since we had the basics covered, were to get her to understand backing up (look where you're going, don't stamp on the gas) going around corners (Jeeps do roll at high speeds, I believe, but it's not something I want tested) and stopping at stop signs (without whiplash for passengers).

At first it was very nerve-wracking. One thing about this town is the prevalence of small children and even some adults who dart in front of cars. So while we were driving around, I was constantly saying to her, "Do you see that person walking? Give him some room," or "Kids on bikes. They might come this way."

It's funny, too, because I remember my dad taking me out to drive around on the gravel roads in Southern Alberta, and freaking out when I backed the big old Suburban into a ditch. Backing up is hard. Driving by proxy, it seems, is even harder. "Are you looking in your mirror? Take your foot off the gas now, you have to take this corner. Step on the brake. No, now. NOW!"

She took it all really well. And she managed to do her test and pass. The best bit, for me, was when I got home that night and the phone was ringing. It was Rachel, and she said, "Can you come and fetch me from Siobhan's?" As I repeated that back to her to stall for time, because I really didn't want to, Kirsten came up behind me and calmly said, "I'll go get her." And she did...

well. we do have a lot of blizzards...

20%

The top off the barbecue????

The cabin was pretty much as we left it. For some reason, on the way out, I was anticipating that we might find that someone had broken in. And when we arrived, we found that someone had been moving furniture around in the porch, but hadn't broken into the main cabin. They had also taken the top off the barbecue, the metal lid, and thrown it on the tundra. Really I don't mind if people use the porch. It's warm in there when the sun is shining through the big windows, and if you were cold I would want you to stop in and warm up.

We sat on the deck for quite a while. Hundreds of geese flapped overhead, towards Lady Pelly, barking to each other.

There's something about the silence of the tundra that is seductive, that makes me want to sit and listen. Listen to nothing, endlessly. And all the things in my head, all the worries that go in tight circles in the back of my mind, they lose urgency and dissipate, and I don't miss them. Every spring that I have been living here, and this is the third, I have had a moment on our first real trip out across the tundra on a warm day where I've felt that I'm part of all creation in a way that is only possible up here. And I begin to understand in a physical way, why this place is different from any other - because on some level, time is behaving differently here. I want to say ...Vaster than empires, and more slow... but then I'm playing with words, intellectualizing it.

I read Ed's post about Jon Krakauer and co. And I really enjoyed it. A lot of what he's talking about, I used to muse on while I was working at the coffee shop. About how nobody can last long without help from others. (I'm paraphrasing, it is a long and eloquent post). I know that I'm not living the same lifestyle as the Inuit who live(d) here for aeons. I have a snowmobile, a parka made of nylon, a thermos full of coffee, a kamotik made of wood (not bone), and when we get to the cabin there's an oil-drip furnace and some Coleman lanterns. When I was first here I went through a period where I wished I had been here a hundred years ago, so I could see what it was really like, but quite frankly the best part of a spring trip on the land is the nap on the couch in my warm living room when I get home. Although Miguel and Ian have been out and shot caribou and muskox for our consumption, I cook them in my electric oven.

So. In the spirit of everyone being dependent on each other, Ed, or anyone else, if you're ever out near Ovayok and you need a place to warm up and drink your hot chocolate, feel free to use my sunporch. Just don't take the top off the barbecue. And close the screen door behind you. We have enough flies as it is.

The view from the back

Yesterday was a beautiful day, with a sweet little breeze, high painted clouds, temperature just around zero. We packed up a lunch and two of our children and one of Patti's and headed out to the cabin. I was passenger with Ian, and Miguel pulled Rachel and Siobhan on a kamotik. A small one, as our larger one got borrowed in the night by the guy who sold it to us.

Usually I like to drive, but then I fumble with my IPod and annoy whoever is passengering. Ideally I like to drive alone. Ian's a pretty good driver, although he sometimes comes a bit fast over rises with no visibility. I only grabbed him once, and that was when Siobhan fell off the komatik in front of us and I wasn't sure if he'd seen her.

Walking around, walking across, walking away

Patti and I are walking in the evenings again. It's nice, it makes me sleep better at night. Although with deeper sleep comes stranger dreams - don't remember what I was dreaming about last night but I found myself standing panic-stricken in the kitchen at 6AM. Sometimes in the last few years, bad dreams make me leap out of bed and head upstairs, a kind of sleepwalking, I think. I'm not even sure why going upstairs is the thing my body decides to do, without my knowledge. Who's in charge here?

Some other walkers I met recently - Chris and Clark. They are retrying a trip they attempted in 2005 - walking across Victoria Island. I wish them luck. They stopped in at the detachment to register, which we really like in wilderness travellers.

Miguel's mad at me. He went downstairs a while ago, and Rachel just came and told me he's not here... I'm not sure why he's mad at me, but I do know _I_ would be in big trouble if I walked away like that... men.

In the eighties, there was a Wind in the Willows series that I used to watch with a kid I babysat. In one episode, the weasels convince Mr. Toad to buy shares in the Arctic Pineapple Corporation...

I'm growing a pineapple. I started it from a pineapple top, when they sent us a particularly healthy specimen in Food Mail. It doesn't look like much yet, but I'm sure it will yield a crop of tasty Arctic Pineapples.

Happy Mother's Day!

Rachel made me frogs, for Mother's Day. Lots of frogs. She enlisted the help of her class. She gave one to the shop teacher and he used it to demonstrate a nail gun, by nailing it to a table.