The best part of Arctic spring so far though has been the return of songbirds. First the snow buntings arrived (apparently two or three weeks early… what do they know and how do they know it??), and then more recently the ?? I can’t tell you how much more notable a bird singing in spring is when the landscape has been completely devoid of song, other than the odd squawk of a raven, for close to eight months. It stops me in my tracks. Even the ravens are feeling the itch though. I’ve seen several go by carrying nesting material.
So I mentioned that the Bay is still frozen over and in a previous blog, and that Siu-Ling’s sled dogs have been moved down onto the Bay for easy access to the ice. Last Sunday Siu-Ling asked if I would like to join her and David for an evening run and of course, I said yes. It was such a beautiful evening! So calm and clear. The sky was a beautiful, soft greyish-purple and the sun was setting to our right, casting a brilliant shimmer on the distant mountains.
And I discovered that spring dog-sledding is much more enjoyable than -50 below dog sledding in January! There are two main reasons for this… one, it’s just not as cold, and two, the run was on a flat surface, meaning there wasn’t as much of a need to jump off the sled and run up hill to make it easier for the dogs (which I really was not very good at) like on the rolling terrain we travelled in January. I was sitting at the back of the sled, propped up and snuggled between Siu-Ling and David’s bags. Because there were three of us, and being far more practised and far less clumsy than I, both Siu-Ling and David got off the sled at times for a run; but being six and a half months pregnant, I felt no such motivation. I was perfectly warm and perfectly content to just sit back and enjoy the scenery.
Siu-Ling’s lead sled dog Lewis was away for a couple days procreating with a female from another team… there are going to be puppies again! That meant that Siu-Ling had the opportunity to try out a couple of the other dogs in front, since Lewis is one of the older dogs on the team and will not be with them forever. It was pretty touch and go in the beginning, and the dogs got their lines in an awful mess, but I found it interesting to watch the dynamics of the team shift without Lewis. Dogs that are perfectly capable of taking a direction command completely lost it and flopped when faced with leadership. In the end it was one of last year’s puppies - you might remember Bo – that found his rhythm in the front. He was SO proud of himself when we got back to the dog yard. It was very cute.
Before the run we took Tua and Parker out for a walk... this is a very happy Tua!
Parker taking Tua for a walk... I couldn't believe she tolerated this so well!
Lillian enjoying a nice warm brew before the run.
All the dogs looking ready to get going.
The take off!
Beautiful evening...
The sun setting on the distant mountains... the image is so small here... it hardly does it justice. I think you can click on it to see a larger image... give it a try :)
Like I said, it was a little rough going at first and they got their lines in an awful mess. Siu-Ling attempting to get them sorted out so no one would get caught up on all the lines.
Beautiful shot of Giller... I think he is the most handsome of all the dogs!
Iqaluit from a far...
A while back you might recall a blog entry where I talked about sun dogs. There were some great examples of sun dgos during sunset the other day. The other one is hiding behind the hill.
Taima! (that means I'm finished in Inuktitut)
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