Squeak, Rattle, Howl and Bang

Remember those gum soled shoes we wore as kids? You know the ones. Mine were Sparx brand, my family could not afford NorthStar or Adidas. I remember when these types of sneakers were new they would squeak on the floors of the gymnasium or in the hallways of the school. If I walked with the weight of my 11 year old 60lb (soakin’wet) frame on the outside of my foot I could stop them squeaking. I looked awfully funny walking that way I’m sure but that didn’t cross my mind. Being stealthy was the thing. Hide and seek: was there anything more fun?

I was reminded of those shoes and in particular the sound that they make recently. A man I am getting to know here in Délįne made the comment that he is waiting on the wind and getting tired of waiting. He was referring to caribou hunting. These impressive beasts are known to have exceptional hearing and spook easily. As a consequence hunters need wind to cover the sound of their boots on the snow which is powdery and dry AND guess what? Sounds like my Sparx on the gymnasium floor. I was going to advise the man, who is known for his hunting ability that surely if he just transferred the weight to the outsides of his feet… I thought better of it.

There can be wind and then there can be too much wind. This past weekend the hunters got wind but it was the wrong type. This wind was clocked at about 40 km/hr (or 21 kn for my buddy Captain John C.). This fiend bashed against the the house bawling out an unearthly guttural moaning noise and during the night there were a few times when it felt as though the house would slide right off it’s wooden pilings. The wood siding on the house I am staying in is rounded and sudden gusts of wind would sound off like an old washboard each time it pummeled the town.

I feel pretty... oh so pretty... I feel pretty
and witty and bright

The temperature on the weekend was around -30°c.  According to Environment Canada, at these temperatures, skin freezes in minutes and hypothermia sets in just as quickly. Add the wind chill and suddenly that freezing takes place much faster. How fast? The wind chill dropped the temperature to about -40°c. I don’t know that anyone round here wants to find out. Needless to say I broke out my parka for the first time. My neighbors will now believe that I have regained a smidgen of sanity as just last week they had expressed their concern about me wearing my cold weather field jacket in -20 weather.  "My wife, eh, she's worried about you, ha. She says you aren't dressed for the cold. You got a parka?" 

As you can well imagine the hunters did not go out on the land this past weekend.  It would matter little if they did because most animals take shelter in these conditions and become very difficult to find as tracks are hidden by fresh and blowing snow. Animals ain’t stupid. I saw nary a track in the snow; not a hare, fox or martin or wolf. Most often there are tracks everywhere you look.

The lake is frozen over quite solidly in vast swaths many kilometers wide. I went gliding over the surface on my snowmobile for the first time this week. Ptarmigan flocks scattered in front on occasion. I’d been told these birds were not skittish and people ‘round here joke about being able to lean off your snowmobile as you pass them and grab handfuls of the birds which are the size of grouse.  It’s only a joke of course but one can easily see why it’s said. I had a flock appear on the backside of a drift. I startled them but instead of taking flight they attempted to outrun the snowmobile. I slowed and they continued for some 50 meters before scattering and a few taking to wing.

White on white on white. I sailed past hummocks of ice encircled by eddies of airborne snow the texture of dust. I gave full throttle on a straight of snow covered glass as flat as new asphalt and felt the bite of cold poke it’s needles at even the smallest uncovered skin on my face. The sound from the snowmobile drowned behind the machine in the death howls of the wind. Trees thinned to almost tundra with undisturbed snows. Such beauty and fearful calm was everywhere. White is the colour of purity but this white is a distillation of purity into its antithesis. An alchemy of its own. It is beautiful in its danger, stark and bleak and enticing.

To contrast these images imagine columns of rainbows. There are still areas of open water which when it meets with the cold creates streams of fog. The sun when it shines brightly, which lately has been a rarity, refracts like a prism over the water and creates columns of striated colours.  I see these most frequently through my office windows during the zenith of the sun on its 4 hr. journey across the sky. The days grow shorter even as I type.

Bang! I woke to the sound of a crack like a gunshot one morning recently. After wiping away the sleep from my eyes I heard the sound again and then again. I got up and bundled myself up to walk through the early morning cold of the house to stand at the kitchen windows. I could see nothing but heard the shot again. It dawned on me that the ice had cracked and was shifting. With each shift the of the ice a sharp report.  Just as suddenly as it began the sounds ceased and the early morning returned to dead quiet as is the norm.

It’s funny how much sound we are exposed to in our lives. I have often commented on this when camping. After a day of paddling, finally relaxed by the fire with a comfortable sleeping bag awaiting my grateful body there is that moment when you realize that there is no noise. The frogs have not begun their night time chorus, the loons have discontinued their sunset hauntings and the crickets are friction-less. In these moments we are surrounded by ominous quiet: no telephones, no chatter, no electrical wires humming, no tires on pavement, no radio squawk, an absence.

 I don’t know what god is to you. I don’t honestly know what it is for me either.  The end of earth people believe that Yamoria set the world of the North in order and brought it out of darkness but they say nothing of his voice. If there is a voice of god I don’t think that it is a thunderous boom that shakes the heavens. In a moment of stillness I know that if some spirit inhabits this earth, or some essence deep within, that Voice is found in that moment. It is quiet and still and can only be heard when we, for one brilliant moment, filter out the background.  In not speaking of the voice of their creators the Dene may have captured this notion in the best of ways: in silence.