Here goes.
Many of you know that I spent five years in the Arctic and enjoyed it. I was very adventurous, young and full of mischief. I had many experiences that I would never have had if I didn't have those characteristics. Now since I'm 80 most of the adventurous side of me is gone.
I had a friend who always wanted to go goose shooting. We rented a small airplane and were dropped off somewhere in the Mackenzie delta. Other friends came with us. We had a lot of supplies. Rum was one of the main supplies. Needless to say we didn't shoot any geese or even scare a goose.
One of the hunting trips was to Richard's Island in late September of 1965. Richard's Island is a very large island on the Mackenzie delta. In the mid fifties a very large dew line site was built there. By the time I got there the site had been closed and most of it destroyed.
We found a good place to camp in some willows on the beach. We had one small tent for three. Four of us were on the trip. We took an aboriginal with us so this would be a serious and successful goose hunt. George, the aboriginal, said he would sleep outside the tent. So I thought if he can sleep outside the tent so can I. Well you guessed it . I was so cold I got very little sleep.
But another thing was a cause for lack of sleep.
One of us brought a transistor radio. We couldn't even get the local station let alone any other station. But with radio reception in the north strange things can happen. Whoever had the radio didn't realize it was still on. All night a California station would come in and out. Sometime the station would be on for half an hour. Now the content of that station is what's stayed with me for a lifetime. Most of the station's broadcast was taken up by a right wing commentator. I listened to this guy go on and on. I believe it may have been John Birch or had something to do with John Birch. I was not familiar at all with right wing ideology
So being very , very cold and listening to a transistor radio I spent one of the more uncomfortable nights in my life.
Did we get any geese? Of course not.
I have no idea what a "dew line" was/is. Please explain sir. Also what is "Pingo Canadian Landmark"? "Pingo" sounds like a cartoon character or maybe it was an Inuit form of "bingo"?
ReplyDeleteYP, the DEW line was the old distant early warning line of radar stations. One of those weird things I learned whilst doing planning inquiries.
DeletePingo is a weird formation of ice which expands into a cone. There are several large ones near Tuktoyaktuk and smaller ones in the area. They definitely are a tourist attraction.
DeleteThanks for explaining Graham and Red. Red - if the ice below a pingo should melt would the pingo collapse? And have you personally climbed to the top of a pingo?
DeleteCamping in the Arctic. What a guy!
ReplyDeleteDuring the three years I was there I did a fair amount of camping.
DeleteThat is quite a memory, the cold must have been terrible.
ReplyDeleteWell I've been colder.
DeleteLike many Canadians, Red, I have never visited the far north, so your stories are always interesting. I suspect I will never get there now.
ReplyDeleteI was fortunate to be able to have many great experiences. Many people came there and worked and rarely went out ot their house.
DeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteI do not like camping in the cold, I have trouble sleeping on warm bed. I guess the geese were happy. Enjoy your day, wishing you a healthy new week!
Now a day I also like a nice warm bed.
Deletei found this story amazing dear Red :)
ReplyDeletethis is sad that as we grow we loose much of our adventurous side but i feel for them more who lack it even when they are young
being from village and being huge huge fan of radio i know how listening radio late night can make night memorable but i am talking about musical one instead of political the one you experienced that night ,must be annoying specially when you were cold and sleepless
still that night kept awaken memory of that adventure which is plus point i think
One has to listen to some political rhetoric to have some understanding of what things are about.
DeleteLol. The context of the radio scared off the geese. Great story!
ReplyDeleteYou know we did hear geese at times during the night.
DeleteWhat an interesting memory. I'm trying to picture the scene out there in The Arctic-- the tent, you and the Aboriginal sleeping outside and a radio transmitting all the way from California. Wild!
ReplyDeleteIt was wild and I'm glad I had the experience.
DeleteSo, what is a dew line?!
ReplyDeleteFor you young things, the Distant Early Warning line was a series of radar sites in the arctic which were supposed to tell us if the Russians were coming.Technology changed rapidly so the sites were not useful for very long and were destroyed..
DeleteThe real problem would have come if you had got one of those geese. Did you ever cook a wild goose? Or try to? I know some people from Denmark and they once cooked a domesticated goose for our joint Christmas dinner. We provided the rest of the meal, it was wonderful. I learned that cooking it was a real science. About the wild goose, an old woman I knew who was the grandmother of a neighbourhood friend would have said, "You could not put a fork in the gravy."
ReplyDeleteThe aboriginals on the delta shot thousands of geese for their food supply.
DeleteSounds like an adventure! :)
ReplyDeleteIt was fun . It took an huge amount of energy.
DeleteI got news for ya -- we had plenty of geese in our tame and settled New York suburb. But not the adventure. Glad you weren't subliminally converted to be a Bircher!
ReplyDeleteThe guy had a smooth delivery and could go on and on.
DeleteI had to look up DEW line. It must have been an invasion defense installation.
ReplyDeleteShot no geese, cold, cold night. Very reminiscent of a John Denver song called "Two Shots". Google it.
It was an early warning system of radar sites that stretched across the arctic. It became obsolete within ten years.
DeleteYou should have played the John Birch guy for the geese. THAT would have scared them!
ReplyDeleteWell I think somebody else scared them. We did not know how to hunt was the problem.
DeleteYou have really had some advenures! It is always fun to hear about them. That sure sounds cold for camping Red!
ReplyDeleteYes the temperature was below 0 C. I really needed a ground sheet and more blankets.
DeleteThe adventures you got up to as a young man make my trips to London seem tame in the extreme.
ReplyDeleteAnd I still want to go to London.
DeleteYou've led a really adventurous life!
ReplyDeleteIt's what you call young and carefree. No girlfriends at that time to slow me down.
DeleteI can only imagine how cold it was outside as you tried to sleep.
ReplyDeleteI really needed a good ground sheet and a couple more blankets.
DeleteThat is a very strange memory. I wonder if it was the cold or the broadcast that caused that memory to be so vivid, all these years later. I'm glad the geese were spared. :-)
ReplyDeleteEverything was vivid. They were all new experiences.
DeleteListening to the ramblings of that sort of person would drive me nuts.
ReplyDeleteIt was something that I never forgot. I can see how people are drawn into those views.
DeleteHow strange that voice would have been in the middle of such wilderness! Probably also hard to sleep because you were cold.
ReplyDeleteThat was quite some memorable trip, Red, and it definitely made an impression, I would have most likely wanted to toss that radio rather than listen to that commentator all night long!
ReplyDeleteYou sure did some interesting things in your younger days. I would have been scared to death to sleep outside...or inside. :)
ReplyDelete