Freeze Up on the Churchill

Freeze Up here in northern Saskatchewan is a distinct season between Autumn and Winter. This year's seasonal changes have been unusually unusual. Last winter was much more frigid than the average brutal normal and winter was followed by a record late Breakup (also a separate season in the Cree calendar) with the ice lasting in Bonehead Bay into very late May. Then followed a cool and rainy Summer  that wasn't much of a summer at all. Finally in September we had some warm weather with the highest temperatures of the year (30+ C), unbelievably, in the last week of that month. And the weather has remained mild through October and November. I think the first frost came in October; this is almost unheard of. Most of the aspen leaves were green until mid October long after they should  have turned their red golden colours and blown off. Instead many froze green on the trees and many refused to fall. Even after a few good blows, I still see some of them frozen on the trees now, on November 19.

When I first came to Stanley Mission in  1978 I remember the river (Mountain Lake) freezing suddenly in plunging temperatures and crystal clear and calm weather in early November. Within days a skating rink of epic proportion (10  square km?) was scattered with skaters of every age. As I recall, the following few years we experienced similar freeze-ups, and I assumed that a week or so of good skating was the seasonal norm. Sadly not. Over the next decades, the norm proved to be a river freezing up slowly in blowing and snowing conditions leaving a rough snow covered and un-skateable surface. Small rough patches would be scraped clear of snow for the kids, but that was it. I would have to wait a long time to strap on the blades and cruise that unfettered expanse of glass again. The thrill of cruising over the this thin black skin of transparent frozen water as it groans and whistles is utterly unique. Finally, after maybe 25 years, we are experiencing a perfect freeze-up for the skaters of Stanley Mission! A week ago Joan and I tip-toed along the shores on the virgin ice, patches of open water not too far off-shore warning the obvious. Two nights ago I returned to Stanley in the dark, after a few days away, to hear the sounds of skate blades and hockey sticks on natural ice below our deck. Where the hell are my skates!!?

Yesterday morning (-8C) I could see the evidence of ice skate traffic below our deck and that Bonehead Bay was frozen smooth and black, clear across. I walked a few kilometers  of the frozen shoreline in the dead calm of the soft sunrise light and took a few photos and calculated the ice strength. At 1 pm I strapped on the blades and took my first strides in five years. Good thing I was holding my hockey stick or I would have gone down. (the stick would also be good for helping to haul yourself out of the drink too, should it come to that... ) My old bones groaned but not as much as the newly forming and expanding ice sheet. It's difficult to describes these sounds; if they were played in isolation one might think of whale and dolphin conversations or alternately the soundtrack from a Star Wars battle scene, and sounds loud enough to echo off the rocky shoreline too.

 I woke this morning to another clear calm day (-6C) and went for another skate in the sunshine, this time intent on recording the the ice symphony with my little Lumix camera. Mixed results. If the weather holds I'll borrow Brendans Q-2, a high end portable microphone and try again tomorrow.

Another sign of the season is the increased activity at our bird feeder and around the yard. Today we 've seen juncos, chickadees, redpolls, pine and evening grosbeaks, nut hatches, grey jays, hairy and downy woodpeckers and a pileated woodpecker.

Tarves tells me he noted a temperature of -40C two years ago today. Sure hope this lovely weather lasts a while longer and that the freeze up deepens before the snow falls. A blanket of insulating snow now will make for weak  ice, slush, and treacherous travel conditions. People here still use the lakes and rivers for snowmobile travel to their winter traplines and to their favourite fishing holes, so they will be hoping for the same.

One month till we depart for India, Joan for a month and me for 9 weeks.