Several people in the thread in the Winter Storage Question asked me for more planning details regarding how Kathleen and I planned for our winter sojourn north of the Arctic Circle (Our Winter of Content in Canada's Western Arctic), followed by a canoe trip down the Anderson River to the Arctic Coast (Anderson River, Northwest Territories, 1999).
Some of you might know that I wrote a book about our winter at Colville Lake, titled "Beyond The End of the Road: A Winter of Contentment North of the Arctic Circle." The following narrative is from my book, and contains all the planning details. I hope you enjoy the presentation. I will begin with Part 1 of the Preface.
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Before I begin this book I would like to tell you a little bit about myself, and how it came to be that Kathleen and I spent the winter of 1999, from January 31st to June 20th in a one-room cabin 100 km north of the Arctic Circle. We were all alone, 40 km from the nearest community, 350 km from the nearest road. No running water. No electricity. A grand adventure shared with wintering caribou, proud Ravens, and one inquisitive mink. All around us, the boreal forest rested silently – waiting for the snow to recede – waiting for the rivers to thaw – waiting for spring to return. One hundred and forty-one days of complete satisfaction and contentment.
For you see, I have always been in love with the land that lies beyond the end of the road. I am drawn to this mystical place – like the moth is drawn to the flame – like the caribou are drawn to their summer calving grounds – like a young man is drawn to his first lover. My passion never subsides. I am never satisfied. I always want more. I dream always of the land beyond the end of the road.
These dreams began very early in my life. One of my earliest memories is sitting in my sandbox, at perhaps five years of age. It was early on a Saturday morning, in suburban Sacramento, California. My parents were sleeping, and the house belonged to me. I opened the cupboard and poured a box of cereal into a bowl. I sat at the kitchen table, looking out the window, beyond the walls and security of my house, beyond to the backyard. Light trickled across the lawn while morning shadows played in the shrubs lining the fence.
I opened the back door, carried my bowl and spoon across the threshold, and headed slowly over to my sandbox. I felt so very adventurous. I sat all alone in the morning stillness, and for the first time felt the warmth of the rising sun on my back. This memory remains very vivid to me, even now, more than half-a-century later.
At ten years of age, like other boys, I was reading and collecting comic books. The one that I remember most was an edition where Donald Duck’s nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, along with Scrooge McDuck, were camped on the edge of a lake deep in the Canadian forest. The Beagle Boys had just broken out of prison, and were drifting through the trees around the ducks’ campfire intending to steal Scrooge’s money. The nephews were understandably worried about the impending attack. My interest in this story, however, focussed not on the boys’ predicament. Rather, I spent literally hours staring at the scene, studying the forest beyond the Beagle Boys, wondering what other mysteries lay beyond the reach of the fire’s light. I wished that I were camping by that fire with Huey, Dewey and Louie. I wished that I could explore that pristine Canadian forest.
Our Sunday newspaper featured a colour comic strip titled Prince Valiant. I know today that the strip’s setting was Arthurian, and Valiant himself was a Nordic prince from Norway. Early in the story, Valiant had come to Camelot, earned the respect of King Arthur and Merlin, and became a Knight of the Round Table. I wasn’t aware of any of this at the time, though. In fact, I never even read the words. I simply enjoyed the drawings of Valiant on his horse, riding down lonesome and isolated trails, always seeking adventures beyond the next ridge. I wished that I were riding with Prince Valiant. I wished that I could penetrate that ancient English forest.
I began backpacking into the mountains of California with my father when I was 12 years old. We would leave after my father got off work on a Friday night, drive for several hours, and then set off down the trail by moonlight – just like Prince Valiant in the English forest. We would camp for two nights around the fire – just like Huey, Dewey and Louie in the Canadian forest. We would return late on Sunday night, and I would lie in bed, wishing that my father didn’t have to be back at work on Monday morning. I wished that we were still camping and living in the mountains.
When I enrolled at the University of California at Davis in 1965 I entered the two-year pre-forestry program. I presumed that such a career would allow me to wander through California’s mountains while also earning a living. An easy and obvious career choice for me. During these first two years I studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, surveying and other technical subjects. The actual professional forestry program began in the summer between my sophomore and junior years, at the summer camp operated by the University of California at Berkeley. It was here that I learned that the forestry profession focused mostly on cutting down trees. There would be precious little walking along lonely trails or exploring pristine forests.
Other than two summer jobs, I never actually worked in the forestry profession. I wasn’t interested in cutting down tees for profit, nor in managing blocks of even-aged monocultures masquerading as regenerating forests. Rather, after receiving my degree, I entered graduate school in grassland ecology. All the while I continued backpacking at every opportunity, always seeking more distant and more remote locations. Except for Alaska, however, true wilderness no longer existed in the United States. In fact, a 1975 report on the status of wilderness in America claimed that nowhere in the lower 48 states was farther than 16 km (10 miles) from a road of some kind. It seemed that I had been born at least a century too late to pursue my inherent passion and love for un-peopled and un-roaded landscapes.
When I graduated with my doctoral degree in 1975, I saw an advertisement for a teaching and research position at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. I had visited central British Columbia once before, on a family vacation, when I was 16 years old. I remembered a heavily-forested landscape that seemed relatively undeveloped and less impacted by industrial forestry compared to my home of California. A little research revealed that Canada was the world’s second largest country, yet had a population equal only to that of California. Moreover, nearly 90% of Canada’s population lived within 160 km (100 miles) of the border, leaving most of the country relatively unpopulated. British Columbia was larger in area than California, Oregon and Washington combined, yet its population was less than one-tenth that of California’s. Wow! British Columbia was obviously the place for me. I applied, and felt very fortunate to be offered the position.
I met my wife Kathleen in 1976, and she quickly came to share my passion for silent, empty landscapes. At first we pursued weekend hiking trips into the mountains of southwestern British Columbia. These short sojourns soon lengthened into week-long withdrawals to more isolated alpine retreats of northern British Columbia and the southern Yukon. We always sought those peaceful, special places that remained least insulted by noise, pollution and degradation.
Finally, perhaps inevitably, we discovered the pristine purity of Canada's far north. For 10 summers we paddled, mostly alone, on month-long canoeing expeditions across the remote Barren Grounds of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Rarely did we see other people. Only the occasional bush cabin reminded us that we lived in a congested world of six billion other human beings.
Yet, my thirst for purer, more extended isolation remained unquenched. My hunger to experience the natural, pre-industrial world became more compelling and more irresistible with each additional expedition, and with each passing year. Short bursts of only 30 days beyond the end of the road were no longer sufficient.
By now Kathleen and I had also realized that we wanted to spend a winter in Canada’s Arctic. Our experience on summer canoe trips seemed incomplete. We wanted to spend a winter in the North, where rivers, lakes and muskeg remain frozen for 7 to 8 months of the year. Summer is for visitors. Only by following the winter trail did we believe that we could truly understand and know the character and soul of Canada's seemingly limitless northern landscape.
We wished to immerse ourselves in cold. We wanted to be surrounded by snow and ice. We longed to know the exquisite joy of seeing the ice break apart in the warmth of spring. We yearned to witness the rivers burst through the frozen chains of winter to once again run free and sparkling in the sunlight. We shared an unfulfilled desire to hear the swans, the geese, the loons and the multitudes of ducks that would suddenly and joyously return to their northern nesting grounds.
These goals and visions were not possible to achieve in our home of Vancouver. The adjacent Pacific Ocean seldom allows temperatures to dip below -10 degrees Celsius. Snow drops and crocuses normally bloom in their flowerbeds by late January. In Vancouver, it is not possible to even begin to understand what it means to live in Canada, a vast realm that for much of the year lies slumbering beneath snow, ice and frigid sky. [Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all temperatures are presented in degrees Celsius. For a simple but imprecise conversion to degrees Fahrenheit, multiply by two and add 30. For an accurate conversion to degrees Fahrenheit, multiply degrees C by 9/5 and add 32.]
We would need to find a true winter retreat. We would need to find some hidden place to which we could escape as soon as possible after the first snowfall. We couldn’t arrive just a day or two before the ducks returned. Where would be the excitement in that? We couldn’t show up, like tourists, only a week or two before the rivers began to flow. Where would be the anticipation in that?
No, to truly experience the thrill of spring renewal, we needed to spend most of the winter in a remote, isolated cabin. Ideally, we would paddle down the headwaters of a western Canadian arctic river in the fall. We would reach our cabin, north of the Arctic Circle, a few days before freeze-up. We would then spend the winter exploring our private domain. We would snowshoe down frozen rivers. We would set up our wall tent on the shores of ice-covered lakes. On most nights, we would hunker down in our cabin, reading quietly by candle light, waiting for the excitement of spring. When the ice finally broke, we would climb back into our canoe and paddle a month, maybe more, down to the arctic coast. That would be the ultimate experience.
We began to formulate these plans in the spring of 1997, and serendipitously found our cabin at the north end of Colville Lake, on a tributary of the Anderson River, in the Northwest Territories. This book describes our life in that cabin during the winter of 1999. For those 141 days Kathleen and I lived my dreams that began so long ago in that suburban Sacramento sandbox. For those wonderful 141 days we lived a simple life of cutting wood, hauling water and travelling along our own snowshoe trails.
We also experienced and better appreciated how native people and the early European explorers of Canada could live and travel, seemingly in comfort, when the mercury fell below minus forty for weeks at a time. The history of northern Canada’s early exploration is truly extraordinary. I particularly admire men like John Rae, an explorer, surgeon and Chief Trader for the Hudson Bay Company. Ken McGoogan details Rae’s exploits in Fatal Passage: The Untold Story of John Rae, the Arctic Adventurer Who Discovered the Fate of Franklin. During the winter of 1844–45, Rae trekked nearly 2000 km (1250 miles) on snowshoes between Manitoba and Ontario in only two months. Nearly a decade later, in the winter of 1851–52, Rae averaged 40 km (25 miles) per day on another 2000-km trek above the Arctic Circle in search of the lost Franklin Expedition.
Rae entered the wilderness lightly, on its own terms. Often accompanied by only a few companions, with virtually no food or supplies, Rae moved quickly and easily by dogsled or canoe, hunting caribou and other game for subsistence as he built a phenomenal reputation for winter exploration and travel. Rae invariably returned from his expeditions healthier and stronger than when he had departed civilization.
For me, John Rae lived like a man should live! Such a contrast to my life in Vancouver – a life of ties and suits – a life of meetings and walls – a life of traffic jams – a life of line-ups at the check-out stand in the grocery store. I wish that I could have travelled with John Rae to the Arctic Coast.
Some of you might know that I wrote a book about our winter at Colville Lake, titled "Beyond The End of the Road: A Winter of Contentment North of the Arctic Circle." The following narrative is from my book, and contains all the planning details. I hope you enjoy the presentation. I will begin with Part 1 of the Preface.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Before I begin this book I would like to tell you a little bit about myself, and how it came to be that Kathleen and I spent the winter of 1999, from January 31st to June 20th in a one-room cabin 100 km north of the Arctic Circle. We were all alone, 40 km from the nearest community, 350 km from the nearest road. No running water. No electricity. A grand adventure shared with wintering caribou, proud Ravens, and one inquisitive mink. All around us, the boreal forest rested silently – waiting for the snow to recede – waiting for the rivers to thaw – waiting for spring to return. One hundred and forty-one days of complete satisfaction and contentment.
For you see, I have always been in love with the land that lies beyond the end of the road. I am drawn to this mystical place – like the moth is drawn to the flame – like the caribou are drawn to their summer calving grounds – like a young man is drawn to his first lover. My passion never subsides. I am never satisfied. I always want more. I dream always of the land beyond the end of the road.
These dreams began very early in my life. One of my earliest memories is sitting in my sandbox, at perhaps five years of age. It was early on a Saturday morning, in suburban Sacramento, California. My parents were sleeping, and the house belonged to me. I opened the cupboard and poured a box of cereal into a bowl. I sat at the kitchen table, looking out the window, beyond the walls and security of my house, beyond to the backyard. Light trickled across the lawn while morning shadows played in the shrubs lining the fence.
I opened the back door, carried my bowl and spoon across the threshold, and headed slowly over to my sandbox. I felt so very adventurous. I sat all alone in the morning stillness, and for the first time felt the warmth of the rising sun on my back. This memory remains very vivid to me, even now, more than half-a-century later.
At ten years of age, like other boys, I was reading and collecting comic books. The one that I remember most was an edition where Donald Duck’s nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie, along with Scrooge McDuck, were camped on the edge of a lake deep in the Canadian forest. The Beagle Boys had just broken out of prison, and were drifting through the trees around the ducks’ campfire intending to steal Scrooge’s money. The nephews were understandably worried about the impending attack. My interest in this story, however, focussed not on the boys’ predicament. Rather, I spent literally hours staring at the scene, studying the forest beyond the Beagle Boys, wondering what other mysteries lay beyond the reach of the fire’s light. I wished that I were camping by that fire with Huey, Dewey and Louie. I wished that I could explore that pristine Canadian forest.
Our Sunday newspaper featured a colour comic strip titled Prince Valiant. I know today that the strip’s setting was Arthurian, and Valiant himself was a Nordic prince from Norway. Early in the story, Valiant had come to Camelot, earned the respect of King Arthur and Merlin, and became a Knight of the Round Table. I wasn’t aware of any of this at the time, though. In fact, I never even read the words. I simply enjoyed the drawings of Valiant on his horse, riding down lonesome and isolated trails, always seeking adventures beyond the next ridge. I wished that I were riding with Prince Valiant. I wished that I could penetrate that ancient English forest.
I began backpacking into the mountains of California with my father when I was 12 years old. We would leave after my father got off work on a Friday night, drive for several hours, and then set off down the trail by moonlight – just like Prince Valiant in the English forest. We would camp for two nights around the fire – just like Huey, Dewey and Louie in the Canadian forest. We would return late on Sunday night, and I would lie in bed, wishing that my father didn’t have to be back at work on Monday morning. I wished that we were still camping and living in the mountains.
When I enrolled at the University of California at Davis in 1965 I entered the two-year pre-forestry program. I presumed that such a career would allow me to wander through California’s mountains while also earning a living. An easy and obvious career choice for me. During these first two years I studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, surveying and other technical subjects. The actual professional forestry program began in the summer between my sophomore and junior years, at the summer camp operated by the University of California at Berkeley. It was here that I learned that the forestry profession focused mostly on cutting down trees. There would be precious little walking along lonely trails or exploring pristine forests.
Other than two summer jobs, I never actually worked in the forestry profession. I wasn’t interested in cutting down tees for profit, nor in managing blocks of even-aged monocultures masquerading as regenerating forests. Rather, after receiving my degree, I entered graduate school in grassland ecology. All the while I continued backpacking at every opportunity, always seeking more distant and more remote locations. Except for Alaska, however, true wilderness no longer existed in the United States. In fact, a 1975 report on the status of wilderness in America claimed that nowhere in the lower 48 states was farther than 16 km (10 miles) from a road of some kind. It seemed that I had been born at least a century too late to pursue my inherent passion and love for un-peopled and un-roaded landscapes.
When I graduated with my doctoral degree in 1975, I saw an advertisement for a teaching and research position at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. I had visited central British Columbia once before, on a family vacation, when I was 16 years old. I remembered a heavily-forested landscape that seemed relatively undeveloped and less impacted by industrial forestry compared to my home of California. A little research revealed that Canada was the world’s second largest country, yet had a population equal only to that of California. Moreover, nearly 90% of Canada’s population lived within 160 km (100 miles) of the border, leaving most of the country relatively unpopulated. British Columbia was larger in area than California, Oregon and Washington combined, yet its population was less than one-tenth that of California’s. Wow! British Columbia was obviously the place for me. I applied, and felt very fortunate to be offered the position.
I met my wife Kathleen in 1976, and she quickly came to share my passion for silent, empty landscapes. At first we pursued weekend hiking trips into the mountains of southwestern British Columbia. These short sojourns soon lengthened into week-long withdrawals to more isolated alpine retreats of northern British Columbia and the southern Yukon. We always sought those peaceful, special places that remained least insulted by noise, pollution and degradation.
Finally, perhaps inevitably, we discovered the pristine purity of Canada's far north. For 10 summers we paddled, mostly alone, on month-long canoeing expeditions across the remote Barren Grounds of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Rarely did we see other people. Only the occasional bush cabin reminded us that we lived in a congested world of six billion other human beings.
Yet, my thirst for purer, more extended isolation remained unquenched. My hunger to experience the natural, pre-industrial world became more compelling and more irresistible with each additional expedition, and with each passing year. Short bursts of only 30 days beyond the end of the road were no longer sufficient.
By now Kathleen and I had also realized that we wanted to spend a winter in Canada’s Arctic. Our experience on summer canoe trips seemed incomplete. We wanted to spend a winter in the North, where rivers, lakes and muskeg remain frozen for 7 to 8 months of the year. Summer is for visitors. Only by following the winter trail did we believe that we could truly understand and know the character and soul of Canada's seemingly limitless northern landscape.
We wished to immerse ourselves in cold. We wanted to be surrounded by snow and ice. We longed to know the exquisite joy of seeing the ice break apart in the warmth of spring. We yearned to witness the rivers burst through the frozen chains of winter to once again run free and sparkling in the sunlight. We shared an unfulfilled desire to hear the swans, the geese, the loons and the multitudes of ducks that would suddenly and joyously return to their northern nesting grounds.
These goals and visions were not possible to achieve in our home of Vancouver. The adjacent Pacific Ocean seldom allows temperatures to dip below -10 degrees Celsius. Snow drops and crocuses normally bloom in their flowerbeds by late January. In Vancouver, it is not possible to even begin to understand what it means to live in Canada, a vast realm that for much of the year lies slumbering beneath snow, ice and frigid sky. [Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all temperatures are presented in degrees Celsius. For a simple but imprecise conversion to degrees Fahrenheit, multiply by two and add 30. For an accurate conversion to degrees Fahrenheit, multiply degrees C by 9/5 and add 32.]
We would need to find a true winter retreat. We would need to find some hidden place to which we could escape as soon as possible after the first snowfall. We couldn’t arrive just a day or two before the ducks returned. Where would be the excitement in that? We couldn’t show up, like tourists, only a week or two before the rivers began to flow. Where would be the anticipation in that?
No, to truly experience the thrill of spring renewal, we needed to spend most of the winter in a remote, isolated cabin. Ideally, we would paddle down the headwaters of a western Canadian arctic river in the fall. We would reach our cabin, north of the Arctic Circle, a few days before freeze-up. We would then spend the winter exploring our private domain. We would snowshoe down frozen rivers. We would set up our wall tent on the shores of ice-covered lakes. On most nights, we would hunker down in our cabin, reading quietly by candle light, waiting for the excitement of spring. When the ice finally broke, we would climb back into our canoe and paddle a month, maybe more, down to the arctic coast. That would be the ultimate experience.
We began to formulate these plans in the spring of 1997, and serendipitously found our cabin at the north end of Colville Lake, on a tributary of the Anderson River, in the Northwest Territories. This book describes our life in that cabin during the winter of 1999. For those 141 days Kathleen and I lived my dreams that began so long ago in that suburban Sacramento sandbox. For those wonderful 141 days we lived a simple life of cutting wood, hauling water and travelling along our own snowshoe trails.
We also experienced and better appreciated how native people and the early European explorers of Canada could live and travel, seemingly in comfort, when the mercury fell below minus forty for weeks at a time. The history of northern Canada’s early exploration is truly extraordinary. I particularly admire men like John Rae, an explorer, surgeon and Chief Trader for the Hudson Bay Company. Ken McGoogan details Rae’s exploits in Fatal Passage: The Untold Story of John Rae, the Arctic Adventurer Who Discovered the Fate of Franklin. During the winter of 1844–45, Rae trekked nearly 2000 km (1250 miles) on snowshoes between Manitoba and Ontario in only two months. Nearly a decade later, in the winter of 1851–52, Rae averaged 40 km (25 miles) per day on another 2000-km trek above the Arctic Circle in search of the lost Franklin Expedition.
Rae entered the wilderness lightly, on its own terms. Often accompanied by only a few companions, with virtually no food or supplies, Rae moved quickly and easily by dogsled or canoe, hunting caribou and other game for subsistence as he built a phenomenal reputation for winter exploration and travel. Rae invariably returned from his expeditions healthier and stronger than when he had departed civilization.
For me, John Rae lived like a man should live! Such a contrast to my life in Vancouver – a life of ties and suits – a life of meetings and walls – a life of traffic jams – a life of line-ups at the check-out stand in the grocery store. I wish that I could have travelled with John Rae to the Arctic Coast.
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