Moving on: Week Nine

Week Eight

               Week Eight report: briefly– work –work-work. We have been too tired to write of late.

Moving on: Week Nine

There have been three first sightings for me so far this summer. Susan and I have already described the Tundra Swans (week six). The other personal firsts are a Wolverine which I saw crossing the runway at 200 yards distance, and subsequently a Ptarmigan who ran for quite some distance beside my loader on one of the service roads. 

Susan has delightful results from our soil enrichment/Tundra Restoration project.  While we have yet to see enough results to compare the lichens in the test area laid out by Susan with their neighbouring lichens – the Blueberries are an outstanding success.  

Treated

Not treated

Susan made her observations today and declared the experiment a conditional success.  And just in time too. A plane brought a few bags of grass seed for turf building in some of the areas which I am hoping to reclaim. Despite online inventory allegations to the contrary – neither Canadian Tire or Walmart (Yellowknife) had sufficient seed, or any fertilizer. The Canadian Tire website cannot be trusted to provide any valid information.  I noticed it bumping up the price on items which I revisited – just like those discount travel websites do. The sad joke is that it was bumping up prices on fictitious inventory.

Half of the grass seed was planted right away and with the remainder held as backup. The Fire Truck is good for watering everything down although perhaps I should have put garden hose outlets on it as the two inch fire hose is a little too much. I finished off the pressurized runway watering system last week in anticipation of its use prior to the arrival of the Summit Dornier 228 on Saturday night. Good fortune sent us nearly two inches of rain on Friday, obviating the need for the truck – this time. I was looking forward to a cyclic time trial on this. Its watering speed is 30 km/hr – fifth gear in low range. It is ideal, but nothing else can be on the runway while this baby is blasting out water.  The driver cannot slow significantly without blowing great gouges in the runway surface.   This will definitely save us a lot of fuel and cut watering time down by at least two-thirds – whilst improving water penetration into the sand.

The Surprise

The Dornier 228 arrived with another two additions to our complement – and with overnight guests. Beth’s sister, Kristen,

Reunion

arrived with her son Imoosie. Imoosie is our youngest ‘helper’ here thus far and has joined right in on the landscaping project. Kristen has joined in the housekeeping and kitchen duties to give Beth a boost.

Our five overnight guests were pilot Chuck, his wife Karen with their two children , Joey and Elise, as well as co-pilot Brian.

Minnesota Fats

The kids and dogs were all over the place...it was fabulous. And it was wonderful to have some drop-in guests.  We stayed up late talking about all kinds of things. The kids were around the same age and were immediately as thick as thieves, playing pool at one moment and suddenly crawling on their bellies across the floor following a spider the next,  and then on to a game of hide and seek. Imoosie has all of the moves and scripting of Minnesota Fats. He is quite the pool player for a six year old.

Karen and Joe

Sunday morning we were all slow to get moving.  Winds from the weather system remained high enough that the boats could not leave the beach for trout fishing (for Chuck and family). Gilbert and Seemee went to work after breakfast. I arranged 3 quads for Chuck and off they went to fish from the shoreline. By noon Karen, Elise and Brian had returned to the lodge - fishless. It was not much longer before Chuck and Joey returned. 

Joe proudly holding a four pound trout and with tales of another one, even larger, which flipped off of his hook as he reeled it in.

I had been doing a little shop work during the absence of our guests in the morning and received a delegation of two in the shop asking if they could work. I told them that it was Sunday and that they had already worked for eight days in a row – when Ryan, one of the two, interrupted me: “Please?”

That magic word. 

I got them squared away with a Kawasaki Mule – hauling small boulders and large cobbles and they have worked cheerfully at this task for several days – as of the time of writing. Their work is trimming the place up nicely – by placing stone borders on all of the roads and paths.

Imoosee and Ryan

Our guests finally had to depart for home in Yellowknife by late afternoon and everyone waved goodbye as Chuck did a fly-past. We were all at our labours a few minutes later when I noticed several strangers at the back stair of the lodge.
 

More Guests!

But from where?

A father and three sons dropped in from out on the lake when they saw the small airliner departing. They are guests at our nearest neighbour, Kazan Lodge at Kasbah Lake, where they had arrived in their Cessna 180. We were surprised to learn from them that several canoes were also passing by at the same time on a wilderness excursion to Baker Lake, hundreds of kilometers away. Our little corner of the world has become a busy intersection today.

We gave our  latest visitors a brief tour of the facilities and a look at the runway.  We may see them arrive by air sometime in the future since they make this fishing trip annually.

And after only one further day of landscaping, we had even more guests!

We are hosting a GPS –based system called NetR9 which monitors the changes in elevation(said to be rising at 15 mm per annum) of the Canadian Shield in this area.   

Giving a Tow

Three of them arrived by Turbo-Otter float and Susan went with the technicians, Jason and Sean, to learn about the care and feeding of this electronic device. 'Ours' is the first of a series of these monitoring stations.
I spent the time showing the pilot, Mathieu, landing areas, sheltered coves and just talking shop. He is stationed at Mosquito Lake, two hundred kilometers to the north, where his employer, Kississing Airways, are the new owners of Tuktu Lodge – a fishing resort.
Newly made a Canadian citizen this year, Mathieu is totally in love with the north. He says that his parents have trouble understanding the scale of things out here, being from a country (Belgium) where towns are about 2 kms apart throughout – and where there is no wilderness.

Which brings me to my 'little mystery'.  

 I keep hearing transport trucks in the middle of the night.  Occasionally I hear a railway train too.  I know it is impossible. When I emerge from the depths of slumber I can peg the source of sound for the sound of tires at high speed on distant pavement. Mosquitoes!   Air armadas of them.

The sound of a far distant train?  I’m still working on that one. I even heard it yesterday while working at the shop with the big doors open.

One of the winter caretakers went a little nuts here a year or two ago. He went to war with the local fauna and placed barrels on the runway to prevent aircraft landings.  Hopefully Sue will still be sane enough to chill my jets if these ‘voices’ develop any behavioral changes (for the worse) on my part.

I finally sat down for long enough to do an analysis of how far we have come in our assigned tasks and in general maintenance issues around the place. Of the seventy-four separate projects which we have on our plate this summer, we have finished over 40 complete and have 15 running at various stages of completion. Another 10 tasks are under the purview of ‘others’. We have three weeks to sew up the fifteen projects which are running and to initiate and perform the remaining eight projects assigned. Some work, such as digging up septic tanks – is in abeyance while others complete their work in the same general area.

The timing is going to be tight.

As the youngsters have gained confidence with the construction machinery, the output level has gone up markedly. We have a couple of ‘stars’ who can take an assignment and run with it. When one of them becomes the lead hand on a project, I find myself having to be ‘available – but at a distance’, which has freed me up for some of the smaller items – and to prepare for upcoming projects. It is looking like we will leave some of the work for others, especially any work which will take some of us away from the vicinity of the main facilities.

Sue and I have had no time for recreational boating this year. We have considered taking a two-day getaway and perhaps doing some work on one of the islands further up the lake – simply for a working break. The practicality of doing so with work in progress around the lodge isn’t there. We might still get to it.  I am told it is really easy to find. We will have to see how things unfold.  

We have been advised to cut back a little, not to work so late and to take a day off every now and then –and so are trying to go to a more 'southern' schedule. We won’t be trying for  happy hour specials at four o’clock but our day is definitely tightened-up. Forcing ourselves to not work at all in the evenings is going to be a change for those few of us who were doing that.  
 

Everyone seems to approve of the return to fixed mealtimes (ordained from above!!) that coincide with when we are hungry. As I type this Susan is just finishing off the Sunday Dinner. She has returned to the kitchen for Saturday Dinner and all Sunday meals and a week's worth of baking – so the new schedule will still leave her having to grab an hour or two away from work as circumstances permit, through the week.

Week 7: Company Comes - and Now We are Eight

Week 7

Company Comes – and Now We Are Eight

The younger guys went caribou hunting to mark the beginning of this week.  Departure held such promise.  We had plans for caribou roasts, caribou steaks and souvenir antler charms. ”...everywhere you’ll find pieces of Cupid and Komet”.  We were really in the mood for caribou! They returned from the ‘out-cabin’ three hours later, a rising tailwind hurrying them on their way back home.

Gilbert told me that there were such clouds of bugs that trying to search for caribou using the rifle scope was hopeless – everything was one big ever-moving blur. And their dog, poor Timber, was covered in insects “like a blanket”. 

One of the new arrivals is Dick, our new plumber. Seemee and Gilbert will be assigned to him to help reconstruct the heating system, and to address issues with the domestic water system and drainage. 

laundry room shelves

This pretty well guts the productivity for most of the items on the work list, and in truth, the most important items on the list are all plumbing issues – so I am staying in close contact to facilitate that work.  Susan is pretty much taken up with kitchen work since the growth of our group. As a result the several of her woodworking projects which are in progress at the moment are drifting slowly to completion.

After a week - we have another caribou expedition, and this time – again – no caribou. They travelled 35 km each way this time.  And found clever places to hide, I suppose.

Timber loves a drive in the truck

The non-hunters stayed behind at the lodge, and it did feel like a day off.  Susan spent her morning in the kitchen (some day off!) and I in the shop – fixing a small issue on an all-terrain loader and changing to a ‘tundra tire’ on the dump-truck. Dick spent his morning studying the domestic water system. After lunch we sat in the ‘great room’ and chatted. Susan noted the quietness and we agreed that we were experiencing a version of ‘empty nest syndrome’. We could get over that in a hurry with no problem.

Dick invited my opinion on how the domestic water system ‘worked’. I had looked previously and concluded that if M.C.Escher had been a plumber then this would have been his greatest work.  We looked for about an hour, tracing pipes until they disappeared into holes in the floor and noting that several different heat exchangers had been connected to the Domestic Hot Water system in what constituted a continuous loop with no clear source of pressure.  Then Dick found a valve.  It was hidden behind other valves and appeared to be closed off. In fact it was only slightly open, just sufficient to pressurize the domestic hot water system by injecting cold water into the distribution manifold.

         At that stage we gave up. This latest discovery was going to necessitate ‘thoughtful redesign’. We spent a while discussing the options, the simplest of which seemed to be simply removing the whole mess and starting fresh. When ‘the boss’ phoned us, later in the day, that is what he suggested too!

We have a firm departure date in early August and the likelihood of only one supply plane before that time.  With this expansion of his scope of work, Dick is probably going to have too many projects going.  Sue and I decided that we might as well perform all of the 2” steel pipework in parallel with the plumbing work being performed ‘by others’. The original plan had placed our work as an element of Dicks projects (to pipe-in a remote wood-fired boiler). The chance of him finding the time to do another boiler seems to keep getting slimmer. 

As the week progresses, we are spending a lot of time with the others – making sure they can do their jobs.  Our ‘headline’ project was originally deferred until the arrival of the plumber – and it now looks like the rather large landscaping project is eclipsing all previous priorities.

The youngsters are having a wonderful time fishing and boating. Another teenager, Louis, joined this working ‘Y’ camp.

 From time to time, one of the young guys would come and find me and declare me to be his ‘boss’. After my denials, if he stays around, I inevitably find something for him to do.

This is now the ‘job’. 
Since the last blog the bears have moved on. We haven't had a siting for several days. The commotion, the dogs, lack of food could all be contributing to lack of bears. Whatever it is we are grateful that they have gone. Last year was the same, bears at the beginning but no sitings while we were here. They arrived again in the fall.

We are starting to look forward to our summer ‘holiday’ which starts in August. A few e-mails from cruising friends reminds us that we have a cruise to join while other e-mails from some of you remind us that we have a winter cruise to plan as well.

The Bear Necessities

Week Six

The Bear Necessities

large bear prints

Small bear prints

We seem to be down to two bears, namely the big male whom we call Mr. 2:30 and cute little Spot. Mr 2:30 is big and probably should give us cause to worry, since he is oblivious to our harassment at this stage. Dear little Spot, on the other hand, seems to feel loved by at least some of us. He has been caught sleeping under the Lodge several times, usually by the Shepherd dog, but not by Toque. 

Since an incident when Seemee and I with the two dogs were pursuing Spot (so-called because of the brown patches in his black coat) on our quads, I have had some doubts about Toque’s seriousness with this particular bear.

We had driven the little bear, probably a yearling, into a wood on the edge of the Western Lagoon. When Seemee peeled off with his dog - to go back to work, I went to high ground and watched while Toque sniffed the perimeter of the wood. “We are a very professional pair!”, thought I.

Or perhaps that thought was just vanity. Toque sniffed his way right past the bear, who watched unmoving and silent. Bears cannot turn off their stink – and Toque was using his nose for sure.  I called him back and directed him to the bear. Toque and I speak the same language, so in only seconds he walked head-first into the departing bear’s rear end. And then – silence – as they disappeared into the brush.

I switched off my engine and cupped my ear, trying to overcome the effects of a few rock concerts 45 years ago and a subsequent lifetime of loud industrial noise, straining for any auditory clue. When I finally heard Toque’s chesty bark it came from far to the left. “Toque must have chased Spot to the beach” was my thought as I restarted the quad and rode quickly to ‘back him up’.

I was right. They were at the beach all right! Their mutual surprise that I had found them was comical. My first view was of Toque walking chest deep in the water and lapping up a drink. Spot seemed to be waiting while Toque refreshed himself. The time-out ended the second that Toque saw me. He put the attitude back on and went after Spot, who had been waiting patiently for Toque from the top of the beached docks. 

The two of them ran off playing their little charade for all it was worth. My disgust was feigned but I later made sure that we ‘had the conversation’.  I had basically had to hang around just in case they ran into Mr. 2:30, who would definitely be classed as a threat to Toque.

A day later and it happened again, under slightly different circumstances.  And this time Spot even chased Toque!  It didn’t bother Toque a bit, and when I asked him ‘point blank’ if he and Spot were trying to scam everyone, he just turned his head away and hung it low, as if in shame.

The social scientist in me wants to be Toque’s press agent on this.

On the day when we arrived this year, I watched Toque seated beside Madison, one of the Arctic Watch guides. She was feeding cashews to Toque with her left hand and peanuts to a red squirrel with her right. This brought back memories of my Malamute dogs Chinook and Misty 2 (both still missed greatly) back in New Brunswick, who were absolute best friends of the cats of the household. They were only ‘predators’ when outside of the walls of home. They would corner ‘neighbourhood’ cats using a co-ordinated pincer movement in the blink of an eye, and as any opportunity presented itself. Walking them was never boring.

The easy familiarity goes both ways, with the same squirrel recently issuing a typical squirrel-type ‘dressing down’ at Toque’s dish one evening last week. Toque was eating his dog-food on the back deck....dog-food which had sat for a number of hours unclaimed. The squirrel had drawn the conclusion that this food belonged to him and was sitting in front of Toque and advising him that he should leave it. Everyone came to hear it...it was so loud... he was jumping up and down and running around...

Toque simply ignored the squirrel and munched away.

There are so many squirrels that we haven’t tried to distinguish between them or to name them. We are offering them free funeral services, however, since finding that one of the bolder ones has been coming indoors by an avenue as yet unlocated by us. Our first clue was little bite marks on the bowl full of blueberry muffins! 

These Malamutes will scoop up a small rodent like lightening and ... well ... maybe I should spare you the details. The rodent does NOT stand a chance, in my experience. Therefore the Lodge squirrels survive because Toque sees them as part of his pack, AKA his extended family.

I am pretty sure that he sees Spot as a member of the pack too. This really can’t be a good thing, unless we are hoping to start a circus.

The heat has been oppressive, and the insects which come with the heat have driven us into bug suits as our normal workaday attire. The more northern members of our crew have been looking for jobs that can be performed indoors, and as a result we have painted floors, replaced the brake fluid on one of the trucks, done hydraulic work on the wheel-loader and installed an overhead door. Our northern canine has been hiding inside too – to escape the heat and the hordes of insects.

 He was being bitten by blackflies and his eyelids were swollen almost shut.

Toque making himself at home on the caretaker's bed

Ryan has taken a shine to the 277 Caterpillar, an all terrain loader, and can be found most days along the side of the runway, enthusiastically cleaning-up old tree roots and soil that remain from a decade ago when the runway was made. A couple of days back everyone was doing so well on their own that I decided to play with the other all-terrain loader for an afternoon and managed to build a forty yard stockpile for the driveway project. 

We recently switched the watering system over to another truck and WOW, did I ever get a big surprise when I fueled that truck. I had been pumping for a ‘while’ and when I stopped to peer inside the tank, thinking that it must be nearly full – well, ‘quel surprise’, it wasn’t anywhere close to full. The punch-line is that the Ford F-600 4x4 has a fifty gallon fuel tank!  I sure don’t miss owning vehicles like that and I feel extravagant even when the truck I am using belongs to someone else.  The International Paystar diesel 4x4 truck which the Ford replaces, has gone back to it’s intended role as a dump truck, and not a moment too soon. We really need something that can haul lots of dirt. 

 

It was a unique sighting for me. They were too big to be geese, and the noise which they made as they flew past in the middle distance, distinctly different from that made by geese. I looked them up and found that the bird formerly known as the Whistler Swan is now known as the Tundra Swan. They seem to have begun to nest at the northern end of the ‘back’ lake, perhaps two miles away.

Susan managed to get fairly closed to one of them, which was swimming in the shallows in front of the Lodge, late one evening this week.