Someone went through the muffins in the office kitchen and ate all the tops off them and left the poor sad-looking muffin bottoms sitting there. Dave tells me this is a Seinfeld episode. I wouldn't know: I grew up without a TV.
So summer winds on. I was thinking the other day that this summer seems to have lasted forever, what with the amazing weather in May and June. I am certainly not complaining, despite the fact that it's taken a distinct turn for the worse. Why is the weather always gorgeous for the Heritage Festival and miserable for Folk Fest?
I was on the LRT yesterday with the entire contents of the Canadian Transplant Games. Most of Saskatchewan was in my train car. I once lived with someone who had a liver transplant and am all for organ donation - and rather like the idea of all these people who would otherwise be dead getting together to play sports and, presumably, celebrate not being dead.
So! It's been busy. To wrap up my trip to the Great Not-So-White North:
- I got to go for a picnic in a restored vintage freighter canoe (enormous canoe designed for, funnily enough, hauling freight - but no paddling required, as there is a motor at the back).
- The picnic was on Pillow Island, which is very interesting geologically
- and also home to an eagle nest with THREE BABY EAGLES! Two were in the actual nest and one had fallen or hopped to a spot a few branches below. They were all dark - apparently the white feathers on the head appear as they mature. I was extremely fascinated and borrowed Bob's binoculars to examine the babies. I was only a stone's throw away from the tree. Amazing!
- Saw two to three more eagles - one adult and some babies - on another island on the trip back
- Ate both caribou cooked over a campfire and fried greyling, the official fish of the NWT, according to the display at the Legislature
So then I came back from Yellowknife and did some laundry and found a place to live and sorted out some insurance paperwork. And then it was Friday Feast (amazing stew by Remkes with cornmeal dumplings) and Heritage Festival (more dumplings, Nepali [Nepalese?] this time) and then Valerie and I hit the road. We miraculously managed to get a campsite at Gull Lake in the middle of a long weekend, thanks to some reconnaissance work by her brother. He camped with us for the night and very helpfully started a fire with the help of a Coleman pump.
It was perhaps not the most organized camping trip ever, but it was very fun. We waded out to a marooning island and lay on a beach and I read a lot of Susan Haley and Valerie read about a golden spruce. Then we packed up and did a completely gratuitous roadtrip to Torrington to see the dead gopher museum. Very bizarre. The best part was the book of letters - a selection of ranting (and some foaming-at-the-mouth) letters from activists and self-righteous ones from rednecks. And one from an animal-lover in England in beautiful copperplate handwriting, asking the farmers to please not kill the gophers. Hate to tell you, lady, but this is Alberta and I can't see us all suddenly deciding to live in harmony with the Richardson's ground squirrel.
"Farmers facing off with gophers, man it ain't the same
As being home at the Saddledome for the Oilers at the Flames."
Now I am home, and tired, but it is Folk Fest weekend! On with the show...
