Monday Morning Musings

Posted on February 1, 2021 under Monday Morning Musings with no comments yet

Smitten with my new mittens

 

“I’ve been everywhere, man, I’ve been everywhere, man,

Crossed the desert’s bare, man, I’ve breathed the mountain air, man,

Of travel, I’ve had my share, man,

I’ve been everywhere.

I’ve Been Everywhere. Hank Snow

I’ve been to the Coop, man,

I’ve been to the Northern, man,

I’ve been to the clinic, man,

I’ve been everywhere.

I mean no disrespect to Hank Snow nor my adopted village of Kangiqsujuaq. I have done my share of traveling over my lifetime. I have been in some of the hottest places on earth and now one of the coldest and coolest places. I have met so many remarkable people and hope to meet many more. That’s if we are ever able to travel anymore.

At Christmas, I decided that traveling anywhere was going to be complicated and potentially dangerous. I stayed in the north and as I have documented in this space previously, I had one of the most enjoyable and memorable Christmases ever.

Now, I am staring at Spring Break and the oddsmakers are painting a rather bleak picture about travel anywhere except to the grocery store. Travel restrictions around the globe are piling up quickly. It is not surprising that Canada is facing problems with delivery of the game changing vaccines. Rarely have 7 billion people all wanted the same thing at the same time. There is only so much production capacity. Finger pointing is not particularly useful. The vaccine will arrive when it arrives. If we were the only country stuck in the mud, spinning our wheels, I might be annoyed. Just watch the BBC news on any given night and you will find similar situations in almost every country. I wish that there was such pent up demand for my books!

I am sure that I will have a wonderful spring break in the north but visiting friends and families would have been great too. It seems like our lives are in suspended animation.

I am involved in an after school activity with another colleague. We have a small chorale group of young girls. Last year, this group had a big excursion planned to travel to Montreal but Covid scuttled that. This year we had hoped to travel somewhere in the region, possibly another village, but alas this is not going to happen. The good news is that we have a world class National Park right in our backyard. Well, not quite in our backyard. It’s a 5- hour skidoo ride to get to Pingualuit. We have our group booked in to go there at the end of April. Our plan is to produce a music video featuring songs in Inuktitut, English and French with Mother Nature (and a giant crater) as the backdrop.

I would love to be able to say that I skillfully made the incredibly warm mittens shown in the picture above. Yes, there is a small piece of me in these pualuuks… probably blood from stabbing myself repeatedly with a sewing needle. I attended a couple of sewing classes before Christmas and was able to stitch some of the rabbit fur to the leather in the hand of the pualuuks. Classes ended before I had a chance to really learn the skills necessary to make the mittens and complete my project. My teacher, Jessica, had all of my material in her sewing bag. January zipped by (as all months seem to do) and a few days ago, one of the teachers approached me with a bag from Jessica with the finished product. She is an amazing person, and I am so grateful to have yet another souvenir from my time in the north. When I eventually make my way back home, I am not sure what I will do with all my acquired winter wear. It wouldn’t be practical in Nova Scotia or Africa.

Africa? Huh?

I have been intrigued with Africa all of my life. I won’t stay in the north forever. My next stop could be Africa. I have two volunteer opportunities that I’m looking into, realizing, of course, that neither Africa nor Antigonish are accessible for me these days! I’ll keep you posted.

Have a great week.

P.S. I started to read a new book on the weekend. Thanks to GMD for sending this to me. In the forward to the book by Barry Lopez called “Arctic Dreams” I read this quote from N. Scott Momaday. It beautifully describes what I have been unable to articulate during my time in the north.

“Once in his life, a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience; to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder upon it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of the moon and the colors of the dawn and dusk.”

 

Finally finished my Christmas puzzle!

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Monday Morning Musings

Posted on January 25, 2021 under Monday Morning Musings with 4 comments

St. Joseph’s Lake

(Photo credit: Joe MacDonald)

A frozen lake.

A pair of skates.

A hockey stick.

A puck.

A moonlit evening.

Who were you when you swept and soared across pristine ice with a chill in the air turning your cheeks a rosy red? Were you Gordie Howe, Frank Mahovlich, Jean Belliveau or Bobby Orr? The only sounds you could hear were your skates cutting grooves into the ice and the clackety clack of sticks maneuvering a black disc among fast moving feet.

This was not the place to master your shooting skills. No wristers or slap shots, for those foolish enough to do this, often had to skate hundreds of yards beyond the goal posts (often a pair of winter boots) to retrieve the puck after an errant shot. With little or no friction on a glassy surface, the puck had no brakes and no intention of stopping.

Instead of shooting, young boys and girls learned first and foremost how to skate. After all, when there was little else to do in a distant time, you skated and skated and skated. Having to go home for supper was groan inducing as a spirited game had to be interrupted. Homework was an afterthought. After bolting down a meal, you were back on the ice, ready to go for another few hours. Lighting in the dark winter evenings was provided free of charge by the moon.

Hockey players learned how to stick handle and pass a puck. Many a pro hockey player of that era will tell you that these skills were honed on vast expanses of frozen water in the great outdoors.

The number of players varied but this was of little consequence. If only a handful showed up (a rarity), the size of your own personal rink was small. You simply moved the two pairs of boots closer together.

When a mob descended, which was more often the case, the dimensions of your personal outdoor rink were adjusted accordingly. Speaking of mobs, fights were virtually non-existent. Skill trumped brawn.

Work ethic was part of the experience. Often the conditions on the pond or lake weren’t pristine, especially after a dump of snow. This meant carrying shovels from home and spending the first hour clearing the ice before play could begin. If you refused to shovel, you weren’t allowed to play. Pond hockey justice.

There were no referees. Fair play wasn’t a slogan back then. It was expected.

Scores of 50-48 were common. Playing for hours on end produced these kinds of results. When scores got lopsided, teams were changed. No one cared much about routing the opponent, at least most of the time! Everyone relished good competition and keeping teams evenly matched was paramount.

From time to time, a small bonfire may have been lit on the banks of the lake to warm partially frost-bitten fingers and toes on bitterly cold days. No one complained. There were things far worse in life back then, like boredom.

Oddly enough, hockey reduced the incidence of hooky. We skated to the point of exhaustion and school provided a respite from this vigorous endeavor. Nobody was thrilled to go to school but skating all day and all night would eventually wear thin as surely as the ice did in the spring.

Climate change has rendered outdoor skating almost obsolete. It is almost impossible to get consistently favorable conditions.

This does not mean we cannot dream about of the days of our youth when things seemed so simple.

A frozen lake.

A pair of skates.

A hockey stick.

A puck.

A moonlit evening.

With our lives stretched out in front of us on the endless horizon.

Have a great week.

P.S. The photo for this story was provided by a lifelong friend, Joe MacDonald. We played junior hockey against each other over 50 years ago. He played for the Port Hawkesbury Pirates, the hated rivals of my hometown Antigonish Bulldogs. I’m certain that Joe learned how to play hockey on a pond in Judique. All of the niceties of pond hockey were long forgotten when these two teams squared off!

 

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Monday Morning Musings

Posted on January 18, 2021 under Monday Morning Musings with 2 comments

 

Oh, Lord, for a hot tub…

 

“My body’s aching and my time is at hand,

And I won’t make it any other way.”

Fire and Rain. James Taylor

When one is completely baffled for a conversation starter, he/she can always fall back on the weather and health.

So, I’ll start with the weather. I’m not about to trot out my bathing suit any time soon but the weather in the north is unseasonably warm. We are in the heart of winter up here and we have only had a handful of days when the temperature has been in the -30s. Normally, days of -30, -40 and -50 are the norm for January but so far this month most days have been in the -20 range with the odd day in the teens. Let me be clear. Those of you in the south must think that -20 is brutally cold but I can assure you that the same temperature in Montreal or Halifax feels markedly different. I have found that the cold in the Maritimes can go straight through you even when properly dressed. The problem in so many places is that the temperature whipsaws and one is never sure what to wear. Up here, it is winter. Most days are sunny and cold. If you’re dressed properly (a given) you rarely feel cold.

If you have any doubts about global warming, just ask the Inuit hunters. Freeze ups are later and shorter, affecting the hunting season.

I received a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle for Christmas. Under normal circumstances, I can finish a big puzzle in a reasonable amount of time. This Christmas was not normal. I couldn’t go back home to Nova Scotia so with fewer distractions and a vacation spanning three weeks, one would think that I would have made a significant dent in the puzzle. Wrong. I was so busy watching and participating in Inuit outdoor games, working on my next book, going for walks, watching movies and hanging out with colleagues, that there were days on end that I didn’t touch the puzzle. And now that I’m back to school, my output is even lower. At my current pace I will be lucky to finish it by next Christmas. I guess it’s better to be busy than bored.

Do you remember when you were young and strong and fleet of foot? I’m sure you do. The problem for many of us these days is trying to remember what we did yesterday. I can see the nods of agreement. When we were young, we attacked everything with vigour and rarely suffered any consequences.

I was reminded last Friday that I no longer enjoy the vitality of youth. I decided to join our two grade six classes in a game of indoor soccer in the gym. While I was running up and down the floor for nearly 35 minutes, I felt awesome. I never considered myself a superior athlete in my youth, but I loved sports and tried most of them. I could skate endlessly on frozen ponds or play basketball for hours at “the Centre”.

Luckily, this soccer game was the last period of the day and the week. It didn’t take very long for my body to revolt. I have a bad back, a wonky knee, and a weak mind. If I had a strong mind, I would have chosen to sit on the sidelines and not play soccer with children nearly 60 years younger than me. Dripping with sweat, I walked the hundred metres to my house. Good thing it wasn’t -50 or my face would have turned to ice.

I sank into the couch and then all hell broke loose. EVERYTHING hurt. Of course, my knee and back were absolutely killing me. Ditto for my neck, my arms, my toes, my fingers. I swear to god that the hair on my head hurt. At least there were only a few strands of hair! I had a headache and my ears were ringing. My eyes hurt.

I dreamed of the hot tub at our former time share in Florida.

The couch in my apartment might be as old as me. When you sit down, it kind of takes the shape of your body. When you lie down, you simply disappear. Like a five- alarm fire, my body told me that it immediately needed help in the form of painkillers. I’m fortunate that there were no hidden cameras in my apartment to watch the pathetic display that ensued. How does one extricate themselves from a couch when their body refuses to cooperate? I rolled from side to side and tried my hardest to swing my legs over onto the floor. Of course, I hurled expletives at no one in particular. My back and my knee told me to just shut up and get the extra strength medication they needed. I wobbled and teetered and eventually got myself upright. I inched towards the medicine cabinet looking much like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I took double the recommended dosage and slathered Voltaren all over my body. Being Friday, I silently prayed that none of my colleagues would pop in for a sociable at happy hour. There was nothing happy about this that I could discern.

Note to self. In future, stick to gentler pursuits like knitting, puzzle making, pie making, and writing.

Have a great, pain free week!

 

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