Tenth Blog

Ice floating on God's River

This is my second try at posting this, the Tenth Blog. I wrote it last weekend but lost all of it at the end due to loss of connection.

I cant believe it is almost the end of November and soon I'll be heading home for the break. It seems it was just the other day when I had packed and left for Shamattawa. And I am certain I will be saying the same thing in few weeks time about the holiday!

Last weekend three of us, teachers went for a short outing on the freshly frozen wetlands leading to Ontario. It was nice to see areas and step on the ground that has been out of reach since last April. I cant wait for the river to freeze so we can go north west and explore the other side of God's river. There seem to be much more wildlife on the other side as it is out of reach of humans for long periods. I am pretty sure it will happen before we head for the holidays.

The road East to Ontario

I must say that we are having a relatively mild fall so far. Outside temperature is about -4 which is pretty warm for a late night in late November. The rive is completely frozen to the East and it wont be long it stops flowing completely for the next 4-5 months. Fishing is sadly out of the question, well at least comfortable fishing that is. The open sections of the river has ice formed on either sides by about 20 meters or so which makes it impossible to cast. The only option would be to wait for it to completely freeze, then attempt ice-fishing. I have limited my free day-light time, roughly 5-6 hours on Saturdays and Sundays, to walking in the woods and looking for Ruffed grouse and Willow ptarmigans. It has been slim picking but not bad nonetheless. I should have had two more of those today if it wasn't for my useless dogs chasing and scaring them away. Not only they didn't spot the birds first, which was supposed to be their natural talent, they came running back to me as soon as seeing me crouch to shoot. After the mishap I decided to get rid of them; easier said than done. I went back to the main road in hope of getting a ride further up the road just to lose the dogs. Fifteen minutes later I got lucky and jumped on the back of a pick up truck. Dogs followed us for a couple of hundred meters but as we sped up they gave up. Mission accomplished. The look on their faces was priceless!

River starting to freeze from the East

I jumped off the truck and ventured in one of the side trails. Right away I noticed a few rabbit snares and looking closely I saw a dead rabbit in one of them. Its sad to see animals suffer a dreadful death like that. I wish people shot them rather than snaring and trapping. Further up the trail I noticed that I was following a very large wolf's path on the trail. It was obvious that it was ahead of me by an hour the most. I guess they have learned of the snares and check those spots regularly. Right away I regretted not having the dogs along! Although there were quite a few fresh tracks of birds all around, I was more concentrating on spotting the wolf than looking for birds. Unfortunately there weren't any large tree for me to climb either, so I had to be extra vigilant. It took me about 20 minutes to round that side-trail and was very relieved to be back on the main road where there were plenty of large trees to climb in case of an emergency.

Dead snared rabbit

On the way back I walked through the garbage dump, landfill, and noticed a few dogs feeding. Its nice to see they have a last or only option for food!

Trying to get the dogs in the picture

As for work, days are moving along smoothly and I am happy to have the core group of serious students still intact. My only issue is to wrap up the respective sections and chapters before the festivities begin. I know as soon as the holiday spirit kicks in it will kick out the learning spirit. So I better be ahead of the curve by finishing what we are doing now and start something relatively different after the break.