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.