Winter Diary Extract 2004 - 2005

Blitz and Spoons are four months old. Saw three wolves on frozen lake when walking the puppies out. Twizzle was particularly upset when he sniffed the huge pad trail. His tail, a sensitive mood indicator, is usually a tight scythe shape when he’s happy and relaxed. This morning he was anything but.
 

On the phone tonight I mentioned this to Jo Kelly. Apparently a wolf pack tried to separate Twizzle from his mum. I haven’t noticed Saxon being bothered by a thing but I know wolves in Churchill, Hudson Bay, ate his father. A bounty was on the head of the killer. Forty-five days and nights of waiting and the dog killer was shot dead. Three and a half hour run with adults. I Sewed beaver trim cuffs on to my parka. Spear headed glover needles are best for sewing fur.

This morning I fed the pups and ran myself on the river as usual. Rest day for adults. Around noon I made bread and a mess, as usual. Walked the puppies for an hour and a half during this afternoon’s twilight, wore my sealskin mukluks.

There was plenty of sniffing amber stained driftwood marked by foxes, wolves and lynx. The stumps will no doubt be sporadically anointed while locked in the river ice until the break-up next May. To the north the sky was made up of beautiful shades of pinks, mauves and tinges of blue. The south looked ablaze with flaming colours of tangerine and orange, as though a city beyond the horizon was being bombed and left to burn. Thing is there’s no city for 1,500 miles. The puppies were oblivious as they made fresh footings over wolf tracks several times bigger than their own. It was forty-five below zero.

Friend Albert dropped by with fish and moose leg bones. I paid six bucks for the lot.

I filled my steel Aztec vacuum flasks with water last night. This morning it was - 42°C but the water was still piping hot enough for a brew. Quality flasks can keep water to at least tepid after three nights and days left out at forty below. My flasks do this. Fitted the adults into their new harnesses today. I had eighteen made up in four different sizes.

Three and a half hour run with the adults at forty below under a splendid display of northern lights and spangled stars. There will be no rest day for them until Saturday.

I was on the phone for best part of the day. Olav is on the way back from being down south with his freightliner. I gave him some cash for smaller items and today it was time to pay for major stuff. Everything is cheaper in the south. So what’s coming? Nearly fours tons of Nutrience dog food kibble, one ton of tripe (cow stomachs), a ton of processed chicken fat, high density plastic for new sled-runners, twenty litres of cod liver oil and loads of food for me such as 33lb of dehydrated banana chips, 66lb of dried fruit, 11lb of dried milk.

This will see me and the dogs through training and a couple of extended training trips before the ice breaks-up in May. Another chainsaw of mine is also being serviced. It’s 2,800 miles to here from Edmonton. Olav usually does the journey in three days. Sunrise was at 1.31pm and set for the last time at 1.57pm. It won’t appear now for six weeks. I was up until 2.30am sewing, making gear alterations and mending. Listened to Motorhead, Sex Pistols, GBH and Sham 69.

After an hour’s run with the adults I came back and harnessed Twizzle for the first time. I took him alongside the adults for a mile, enough for him to have experienced a load. He took to it instantly. Apparently the UK is going to experience a cold winter. It’s 10°C there right now. Here it was another forty below day.

I ran myself without mercy for an hour and a half run in the dark, on the river ice. It felt cruel. My eyelids felt gluey like sticky clotting wounds and were in danger of freezing together. Another late night sewing and altering gear.

Ran adults and Twizzle for two and a half hours. Nine hours total for the week. Pups are growing. I adjusted their collars.

Rested adults. Reporter Claire Watson asked me a few questions for a Western Morning News feature article expected out over Christmas.

 
This evening I went along to the carol service in Inuvik. The church is beautiful and shaped like an igloo. Inuit elders sung Silent Night in Inuktitut, the official language of western Arctic Inuit and I thought of my folks in the UK. Late this evening I made new tug, neck and mainline sections for new dogs arriving next Saturday.