Yankee Notebook: Mind goes north, but body south
Toolbox
By WILLEM LANGE - Published: December 7, 2008
Snow filters through the spruces, bending down the boughs, and lies in a thin sheet over the yard, almost covering my summer's sins of omission. The sun, when it shines, warms the barn I'm working on only from 9 in the morning till just past noon. The almost-daily ice-condition reports are coming in by e-mail from the nordic skating club, and the newspapers feature photographs of early skiers on man-made snow.
In only three weeks the sun will begin to return and the days to lengthen — a thought I find immensely encouraging — but the cold will deepen till almost the end of January. So I trudge up and down the cellar stairs to keep the wood furnace going. I've marked a halfway point on my wood pile down there and am determined not to be past that till Candlemas.
I work outdoors whenever it's not too wet for the tools or too cold for me. I read a lot.
And I think often of my friend Larry Whittaker, north of the Arctic Circle on the shore of the Northwest Passage. He's a probation officer in the little village of Kugluktuk, where the sun is just going down for the duration of the middle of winter, and where the local weather station broadcasts current conditions — which as I write are minus-4 Fahrenheit, wind north at 9 mph; pretty pleasant for December. (If you want to know more about Larry, by the way, just Google Larry's Arctic Blog, and there are several others in his village.)
Thinking about the North and reading, as I am this week, James Tabor's book "Forever on the Mountain," about a tragic 1967 Mount McKinley expedition in which leadership problems combined with a terrific storm to kill seven of the team's members, I couldn't help but leap forward in my mind to this summer's Arctic canoe trip.
The Geriatric Adventure Society has finally aged into its name, bestowed facetiously upon it in 1972. Its annual cross-country ski bushwhack through northern New Hampshire has closed shop, but the Arctic division is still in business, venturing north every other year to canoe and fish rivers in the fast-disappearing wild lands of the tundra.
We never know which trip will be our last and whether the society eventually will end by mutual agreement or calamity.For my part, I read with increasing trepidation the reports and journals of those who have gone before us. I've learned over the years that they rarely describe accurately what we'll find when we get there, but when four or five different writers all describe the same rapid in a particular river as horrific or pulse-pounding, I find it a matter of some concern.
So I try to plan for every eventuality, knowing full well I can't, and trust to common sense, conservative decisions, true grit and long experience to get us through what we can't foresee.
There are a hundred details to arrange. When we started years ago, the communication was by telephone and snail-mail. They were relatively expensive and slow, but at least I got to hear the voices of the unknown people we'd be meeting.
Now everything is by e-mail, and I try to read character and reliability on the computer screen.
This is not always accurate. On one recent trip, a (turned-out-to-be) disgruntled charter airline employee quoted me a great price but neglected to tell me that the plane to carry out the job didn't exist. He quit his job in Kuujjuaq a few days before we arrived and fled to Montreal. Lucky for him.
This year our trip begins on Sunday, July 19. Before the end of December, I have to make a 25 percent deposit for the rental of three canoes, six PFDs and nine paddles. All northern airline flights are routinely fully booked (the front half of the cabin often carries cargo), so I have to get the reservations made early.
At the end of the trip — if we get that far — we'll meet Larry at the mouth of the Coppermine River, where, besides a lovely super-insulated house, he has a small camp not far from Bloody Falls, a famous char-fishing hole that was the scene of a massacre in 1771.
I remember that the camp, last time we were there, had a wind charger and a cassette deck with a pile of Elton John tapes. I may carry a few tapes of my own this time.
We'll no longer drive to Montreal and leave vehicles there. Our foreign plates are a magnet for a very active bunch of car thieves, and we lost a beautiful truck there last time. So I have to arrange with a Vermont van company for drop-off and pickup at Trudeau airport. Cheap motel in Yellowknife, if we have to spend the night. Charter company to fly six guys, three canoes, food in waterproof duffels, and personal equipment to the Dismal Lakes.
The plane will be on floats, an ancient DeHavilland Twin Otter, no longer manufactured, but for decades the reliable magic carpet of the North.
The crew has been signed up since last summer: all veterans of past trips. I know already — barring some change of heart on somebody's part — who's paddling with whom but haven't yet figured out who's tenting with whom. To lessen the possibility of homicide, we never tent with the guy we paddle with.
There probably will be several portages when we get to the big river, or a delightful exercise known as lining, in which canoeists scramble, often waist-deep in cold water, along the riverside boulders with a 50-foot line attached to each end of the canoe, letting it down along the shore.
Weight and organization are important on portages, especially in foul weather. And then there are the bugs — mosquitoes and black flies — that swarm into eyes, nose, ears and cuffs when you're carrying a canoe or heavy load and unable to swat.
We operate pretty much by consensus. We all know what the trip entails; we're all aware of our personal and physical attributes; most of us are over 70; and we like each other a lot. I can hardly wait! Thus does anticipation brighten the dark days of a northern winter.
Willem Lange is a writer, storyteller and retired contractor who lives in East Montpelier. His column appears each week in the Sunday Rutland Herald and Times Argus. He can be reached through his Web site, willemlange.com.
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