Cooler nights

It is midnight, and I just picked up Johann from the canola field about six kilometers away where he and Carl took turns swathing today. 

It is not as cool yet as it has been other nights in the last little while, but the approach of fall is decidedly noticeable. Days are so much shorter already: the sun sets at about a quarter to nine now, and it doesn’t peek over the horizon until six-thirty in the morning. 

The moon, past half full, hung big and tangerine just above the trees to the southwest, like one of those candied make-belief orange slices. Now, it has slipped below the horizon, and all that remains is the glorious starry night.

It was much like that two weeks ago today for the Perseid meteor shower. Much anticipated, it was supposed to be one of the most spectacular in a while, and I was happy to see no sign of clouds at sunset. The best chance of meteor watching would be after midnight, when the night was at its darkest. 

As I do most nights before I go to bed I stepped out on the deck. This time, however, I was determined to stay until I had seen at least a few shooting stars. It was a bit cold, but since I didn't want to let that keep me from this wonderful experience I put on my snow suit and wrapped myself in a blanket, then pulled up a deck chair and tilted my head back. The Milky Way alone, its arc of light spanning the sky from northeast to southwest, would have been worth being out there for, but soon my wish was granted. 

For more than half an hour I sat there, watching spellbound how, one after the other, the bursts of light kept coming, streaking the velvet sky. After about twenty I quit counting and simply enjoyed. What a treat!

Leo was with me, of course - no way he'd miss a chance to cuddle up. Initially when I sat down he thought he was going to sit in my lap, or rather drape his front end over me, but it wasn't very comfortable for either one of us, and he plunked down beside me, taking short barking excursions when he heard something in the distance. Strangely, he didn't seem to react to the coyotes’ yelping but to things I couldn't hear. But what do I know? I'm not a dog.

Now, he is quiet: he, too, must be tired, just like me. Harvest has arrived, and the next few weeks will be busy, sometimes even stressful. The stars, however, will move along their prescribed paths, and I will delight in them often when, weary and dusty, I come home from a long day’s work in the field.

Thunder

                It is the middle of the afternoon, but darkness has descended on the world. The sky has taken on a hue somewhere between sulfurous yellow and angry purple. Sheets of sound unfurl like huge flags: thunder, beginning as a timid growl in the distance, rolls in, wave after wave, hardly pausing for breath. Once again water is rushing from the eaves in a thick stream. Anxiously, we listen for the characteristic change in the patter of rain on the roof, the sudden increase in volume that indicates that the drops have hardened to pellets of ice. 

               Severe thunderstorms are particularly worrisome this close to harvest: it doesn’t take much to totally devastate an almost ripe field, to split open the more and more brittle pods of canola plants. 

               This time we are lucky; half an hour later the seam of blue in the west is growing rapidly. The storm has moved on. 

                Carl, returning from work at the fertilizer dealership just north of St. Albert, half an hour south of here, has a different tale to tell. He shows us photos he took right before he left: the ground at the plant is white with hail, a wheat field across the road looks ragged, heads bent or even snapped off, grim reminder that it takes only a few minutes to turn a promising crop into a crop failure. 

                 We had enjoyed a period of relatively good weather before last night’s return to thunderstorm activity, and harvest has begun. We started combining barley on Monday, and canola is being swathed as well.  Swathing can be done even when in somewhat wet conditions (not in the rain, however), and it is important that this happens soon; the canola swaths will have to cure for about three weeks before we can start combining. The barley will be ready to thresh as soon as it dries up, and the weather forecast looks quite promising for the weekend.

                While I will be involved with the harvest once it starts in earnest I have only driven the tractor with the grain cart for an afternoon so far. My work has mostly taken place in the garden in the last few weeks, trying to cope with the huge amounts of cucumbers, beans, peas, raspberries, and sour cherries. It is work I love, but this year any time spent in the garden has been marred by the mosquitoes. I’m afraid the only lasting remedy would be a frost – and I’m not quite ready for that yet!

River

It is one of the advantages of living where we do: the opportunity to spend a few days paddling or floating down a river, encountering hardly anybody, sometimes even nobody at all.

We’ve been doing this for many years with a group of family and friends, its composition shifting a little from year to year, often including visitors from Germany. We started taking the children along as soon as they were deemed able to understand that they had to stay seated in the boat, which was around age two. During those years, the stretch of the Red Deer River between Trochu and Drumheller was often our chosen destination. It is neither very fast nor very deep, and warm enough to make swimming enjoyable. An added bonus was the interesting landscape: if canoeing became too boring one could always get out and look for fossils or scramble up the hills of the badlands along the way. 

Lately, we have often canoed various stretches of the Athabasca, which is a lot closer and provides more of a wilderness experience. This year, however, we decided on the North Saskatchewan River west of Edmonton. 

We would be a group of seventeen, with eight canoes, which requires a bit of planning, of course. Magnus was in charge of logistics, who was to bring what: we didn’t want to run out of anything, after all - not that we have ever come close to that. Usually we have the opposite problem. He did an excellent job, and we all arrive well prepared at our point of entry. One vehicle has been left at the Genesee Bridge where we’ll get out, so that we have a means of getting the rest of the cars once we arrive. 

Our gathering place, the Willey West campground not far from Drayton Valley is fairly busy on this last day of the August long weekend, but soon after we push off around two-thirty p.m. the noise fades away. A bit of shifting to get into the right position for paddling, a few tentative strokes to shake out the cobwebs – we haven’t done this for a year, after all – and we are on our way. The river is fairly high, the current fast after weeks of rain, but the North Saskatchewan is a fairly easy river to paddle here, and we all feel comfortable. 

 

There are 89 km of river ahead of us, and we want to be home Wednesday night – that’s all the planning we need to do. We’ll spend the nights where we find a place that appeals to us, and we will not have to be in a hurry, likely will not even have to paddle very much to arrive in time. 

Not long, and the lazy mood of the hot summer afternoon takes a hold of us. We drift in small groups of two or three canoes, carried by the current, sometimes turned around so that we float backward. The water sparkles in the sun, barely even ripples, the gurgle hardly more than a whisper, almost singing us to sleep. One or the other of us keeps an eye open for unexpected obstacles: log jams along the side, or maybe even a drifting log – very rare, thankfully. Gravel banks stretching out from the tips of islands or from the banks are a potential hazard, too: they often extend under water, and when it gets too shallow canoes have been known to tip. We have stuffed our belongings in plastic garbage bags so that they keep dry, but nobody is keen on having to chase for them in the river. 

Even though we know that we are not really in the wilderness we feel far removed from ordinary life.  Sandstone cliffs with columns like organ pipes line the river bank, giving way to mixed forest of poplar, birch, and spruce, and sometimes we pass a pasture or a hay field, though we see cows only once. Rarely the roof of a cottage appears between the trees, or a fancier house towers high up on a hillside, presumably with a wonderful view of the river. The small group of canoes setting out around the same time we did doesn’t appear again, and once we pass a raft pulled up on the bank. After that, we don’t encounter anybody. 

After a couple of hours we stop for a break to stretch our legs. Tracks of a mama and baby deer are outlined clearly in the wet sand; maybe they wandered by during the night. The beach is full of beautifully coloured and patterned rocks, and there is a good supply of perfect flat skipping rocks to have a friendly competition. I remember my dad teaching my brothers and me the proper technique during a visit to the Edersee, not far from where I grew up: like whistling, making that special plaintive sound with a blade of grass, riding a bike or swimming it is something one doesn’t ever forget once it’s learned. Small purple asters, goldenrod and low willow grow in abundance. Abundant as well are the mosquitoes as soon as one leaves the rocky, sandy beach and enters the shrubby area further away from the water. On the river we are not bothered by them at all.

Around five p.m. we start looking for a suitable campsite. The North Saskatchewan has no shortage of islands, but tonight we choose the right river bank. Ideally, the perfect campground has enough flat, smooth area to accommodate our eight tents, a sandy area, preferably with a few big logs to sit on where we can build a fire, and enough driftwood to keep the fire going into the night. We are lucky: we find a spot that combines all of those ingredients, and soon tents are set up, and the fire is being built.  

For a while already dark clouds have gathered all around, and by now it looks quite threatening: this morning before we left we checked the weather forecast, and thunderstorms are a distinct possibility. It’s reassuring to have the tents set up and our stuff hidden inside, away from possible rain. The canoes are pulled up higher on the bank in case the river rises overnight – last year a six pack of beer was lost that way – and turned over. 

Once all those precautions are taken we can turn to the preparation of our sumptuous meal. The fire, lit as soon as we had landed, is burning brightly: we need a sufficient amount of embers to cook potatoes and vegetables, meat and the three whitefish caught along the way. Bread and salad round out the feast, with cookies and fruit for dessert. 

The weather, however, does not yet allow us to become complacent: the wind has picked up, and it is rumbling in the distance. Will we get wet after all? Slender driftwood trunks are rammed into the loose sand, and with tarps and string and many helping hands a shelter is erected. Now we can relax! 

The wind is unrelenting for the first part of the evening, and clouds keep shifting, sometimes revealing a golden window for the setting sun to peek through. Later, a few stars appear between the ragged, drifting sheets of grey: the storm has passed us by without doing any damage.

When I wake up around seven the next morning the fire has been revived already, and the water in the blackened pot is almost at a boil for the first coffee or tea. Our most avid angler has been fishing a bit upstream since daybreak, and has threaded a couple of fish on a pliable willow twig to be fried later. Breakfast, like supper, is an elaborate, unhurried affair, with porridge, bacon and eggs, bread, jam and cheese. Tents are zipped open, and one after the other appears, stretching, rubbing the sleep from their eyes.

By the time we have packed everything up, made sure that the fire is extinguished completely and dragged the canoes to the water’s edge it is about 10:30.  

The second day passes much like the first, often just floating, with a few stops for swimming and stretching. Small tributaries along the way have added their water to that of the North Saskatchewan, and by now it is quite a majestic stream. We pass a few gravel pits and sometimes can see part of one of the big excavators from the coal mines that belong to the Genesee Power Project. Mostly, however, civilization is out of sight and thus out of mind.

Finding a suitable camping spot takes a bit longer the second night, but eventually we find a place we are happy with. Again, we sit around the blazing fire until late into the night, ignoring as best we can the whine of the hordes of mosquitoes. As soon as the breeze dies down around sunset they attack in full force. 

The night sky is beautiful, ablaze with stars, the four wheels and drawbar of the Big Dipper high above, Cassiopeia’s long “W” stretched out in the eastern sky. Every once in awhile we get a preview of the Perseid meteor shower yet to come on the 11^th, a streak of light burning across the sky for a moment. Coyotes howl in the distance, the river murmurs quietly nearby. One more night, one more day, then it is over for yet another year. How would it be to just keep going, having not a care in the world, living the life of a Huck Finn? 

It wouldn’t be the same, of course, if it lasted forever. Most of us are not made for that kind of life, and soon enough we’ll return to our comfortable homes, our busier lives, happy to once again enjoy the luxury of a shower. Yet, a slight longing remains, and it is not without regret that we see the Genesee Bridge appear behind a bend in the river on Wednesday afternoon. 

It could last just a little bit longer ...