Prince Albert

Well, so far everything rules about my new home. I have been neglecting posting about it though as I have been busy settling in to my surroundings. Hopefully next week I will get around to building a nice screened porch for my trailer and maybe even get out bird hunting already. I believe the season starts September first but I will have to double check on that. No one is living on my fourteen acres of paradise except for me right now which is mind blowing. The family that normally lives there is renovating the house and so they are living in PA for the time being. Their renovating is also to my advantage as I may have struck a deal to roof the house for an entire years rent. I will take some more pictures this week, especially of my neighbours set up. They have a really amazing log house that is heated entirely by a wood burning boiler in the back yard and have a wonderful garden and chickens running around everywhere. And he even has a meat processing shed so I have somewhere to take a deer if I get one. It pays to have nice neighbours.... and to go and meet them.

Home Sweet Home.

This will potentially be my residence for the next two years. I can't really call it home I suppose, as to me, Regina will always be my home regardless of where I am. But that is not to say that this experience will not bring forth feelings even more enduring than that of home. My trailer is located about 3 km North of the South Saskatchewan river and that is very hard to complain about. It is in the middle of fourteen acres of bush and the provincial forest is only a short bike ride away.

I have purchased a re curve bow so I will get plenty of practice shooting apples off of unwilling heads with all the space I am going to have. Hopefully I will get the chance to do a fair amount of hunting while I am up here. "Here" being just North of St. Louis, which is 20 minutes South of Prince Albert.

School, environmental and resource law enforcement, starts Monday. If you can call it school. I'm pretty sure there are classes where I take ATV training and go camping for weeks on end. hmmm... it's pretty tough being in the first world I will tell you.

northern feasting

When I go places I really get a kick out of figuring out what tasty edible wild things exist in the area. I think my favorite place though has to be the Canadian shield in summer time. Fish, clams, grouse if you wait until early fall, wild mint, rock tripe, Labradore tea, raspberries, saskatoons, cranberries and wild blueberries everywhere, you name it really.

Most of these are common knowledge things except for maybe Labradore tea, rock tripe and wild mint. Wild mint occurs in places along the shoreline that are somewhat sheltered, it obviously is delicious in tea and what not. Rock tripe is some sort of black brittle thing that grows on the side of rocks overlooking the waters edge, but it turns rubbery when it gets wet and can be eaten like a leafy green, added to soups or even used to lengthen your flour if you crumble it up when it is dry. But Labrodore tea is the real kicker. You find it in boggy areas and you obviously make it into tea if you could not figure that out. I don't want to sound like a new age hippie but I swear by its affects as a cure all. If I feel ill it always solves my problems, and lord knows I have lots of those. Some also say if you seep it enough it becomes a mild narcotic. Nice.

Here is a couple pics.
One is my lunch bucket for the day.
One has a bag of Labradore tea while the other bag is wild blueberries
The third picture is some wild onions I picked up in Fernie, these can also be found along the North Saskatchewan river for certain.

The old Comealong

I really can not pass up a trip to Fernie every summer, as come August every year I seem to always get a strange itch. It's not the type of itch you get from a night of unprotected sex, but rather it is an "Itch," a hankering, a need to do something, I great fucking desire to go see the rocky mountains. Anyway enough about Fernie for now, other than to say that Fernie even takes precedence over my yearly family fishing trip. Not that I would bail out on that, but I can always come late. Usually everyone flies in together but three years ago I paddled in, last year I hiked in and this year I decided I would try something different. I would come late and borrow my brother's mountain bike. This proved to be really really great. Tons of fun as always on two wheels, even if the quad trail to the lake sometimes resembles the bog of no return.

Now this morning I woke up at five to take the route out once again. All went well, I made it to the car in one piece and my car was still in one together... for now. In case anyone out there was wondering, a Volkswagen Jetta is not a suitable off road vehicle. "But Jeff! I always go off roading in my Volkswagen Jetta," is what I am imagining you are all crying right now....right?
soooo ya I went and got it stuck in two feet of water, I could not get out of the car without water coming inside the vehicle. Luckily though I had my bike. The nearest house by the way is a solid twenty kilometers away, and when you get there, the community is a secluded four house reserve. I approached one man, who only spoke Cree and who directed me to a neighbour, that neighbour also only spoke Cree, but her grandson inside was home and directed me to another neighbour.

Here I met Marshall, A strapping young man of about thirty who would start his truck by coaxing it down a hill and slamming it into gear. I have found just the man for the job. He even had a Comealong that was holding up his tailgate. A Comealong for those of you wondering is sort of like a ratchet strap in a way except it is made for pulling out cars, and it is made of solid steel. So we put that to good use, tying one end to a nearby tree and given er for about ten minutes. My car started, I slapped Marshall two twenty dollar bills and away to the city I went.


Oh, and the first thing I am doing when I get back is buying two Comealongs. One for my truck, and one for my car.