Yukon

Last minute and in the middle of my end of term responsibilities, I went out to the Yukon to sit-in on some community consultations regarding the new wood bison management plan. The consultations were uneventful. I expected people to be outraged since the new plan fails to include a number of impacts identified by a recent socioeconomic impact statement. Alas, people were civilized. But I still learned a great deal of context, got to feel what the atmosphere is like surrounding a historically contentious reintroduction of a species, and meet people integral to the species’ management. The best part about being there, though, was getting out of Saskatoon. Saskatoon is a nice city with nice people, but it is flat with only the S. Saskatchewan River to break up the monotony of the landscape. I could hardly sit in the seat of the rental car to drive out to Haines Junction from Whitehorse. Mountains loom ever larger as you drive. It is breathtaking.

Haines Junction sits in a valley surrounded by what look like huge mountains, but the mountains that you can see are only little stepping-stones, small hills compared to the rest of the range. Even so, being used to the Saskatchewan prairie, any geographic feature that rises in elevation feels like a mountain. I took a drive down to Kathleen Lake in Kluane National Park. The bases of mountains flow right into the lake on either side. On the drive home, a wolf crossed the road in front of the car. It climbed up on the bank on the side of the road and lay down. After it ran off and slunk away down the road I got out of the car and compared prints. Its paw prints were huge, not at all dwarfed by my boots. So that was cool.

I was sad to leave Haines Junction, the mountains growing smaller as I drove back to Whitehorse. The feeling of mountains around me was so refreshing, and hopefully just what I needed to stop procrastinating about my final term paper. Though, here I am, writing this blog entry…not working on that final term paper.

Most surprising car to see in Whitehorse—Smart car.

Prince Albert (11/6/11)

It doesn’t make much sense, but Canada has the same royal family as Great Britain. In the not too distant past, the British interfered with everything Canada did. In fact, Canada did not achieve formal independence until March 29, 1982 when the Canada Act was passed by the British parliament and granted Royal Assent by Queen Elizabeth II, while the Constitution Act was passed by the Canadian parliament and granted Royal Assent by the Queen on April 17, thus patriating the Constitution of Canada. You would think that once Canada formalized its independence they would get rid of all of the British stuff that has haunted them for the past couple hundred years. Nope, not in Canada. There are still all sorts of things named after the royal family, including Prince Albert National Park (PANP) where I went this past Sunday.

Kari is one of my officemates and decided to make a visit to the park because this would likely be one of the last weekends at a reasonable temperature. Lizzie and I and my other officemate Rebecca tagged along for the adventure, despite the impending assignments. PANP is a slice of southern boreal plains and plateau. The trails wind through white, flaky stands of aspen and birch, trudge through spruce bogs, and hug already freezing lakes and streams. We saw a few coyotes, a red fox, bald eagles, ravens, woodpeckers. It was a much-needed escape from Saskatoon, if only for the day.

            A highlight of the trip was seeing the red fox. We had just finished our first hike down to the shore of a lake and back. Lizzie, Rebecca, and I were in the car and Kari was rummaging through the trunk. Suddenly, she screamed, “Guys, fox!” All we heard was a bunch of yelled gibberish from Kari, which isn’t exactly abnormal. When none of us responded she yelled, “Guys, get out of the car!” She had our attention. I opened my door and a red fox skittered passed only a few feet away. I got out and looked at a handsome red fox that had parked himself within ten feet. He was not shy, and it wasn’t until Rebecca yelled some obscenity in Mongolian (she studies wolverines in Mongolia) that it ran away a bit, but only a bit. It kept circling us, coming within five feet at some points. It wanted food and had clearly been fed by park visitors in the past. He continued his investigation for another couple of minutes until he determined we were not the wildlife feeding types, and slunk away.  

Connecting with Wildlife Everywhere I Go

Sorry about the lapse in time between posts. The amount reading has escalated from day 1. I am busily trying to catch up, since I was informed of my acceptance only two weeks before classes started. Other students had an entire summer to read up on their area of study, whereas I began to read during the confusion of moving to a new country in one week, and during the hectic atmosphere of transitioning to a new life. I am ever learning, and despite how I feel sometimes I know that I am on track to meet the general deadlines of a master’s student as well as produce a cogent thesis. 

One of my classmates has picked up falconry over the past few years and, hearing how I’ve worked with birds of prey, invited me out to participate in a hunt. While she is from Ontario and just moved into the area for a master’s program, she had made contacts with local falconers.  Late Saturday afternoon we made our way to the home of Dr. Lynn Oliphant, a retired professor of wildlife anatomy and renowned falconer. Lynn, with a few other guys, practically pioneered the methods for peregrine recovery in Saskatchewan and even worked with the University of Minnesota, sharing their methods for falcon recovery in the Midwest U.S. Lynn also lives with his wife in a beautiful straw bale house and started an eco-community about an hour south of Saskatoon. In short, he’s a pretty cool dude. Lastly, Lynn has three gorgeous Munsterlanders, which are a little known German hunting breed known for their intelligence and obedience.

            We drove looking for good ponds to fly the birds around. A good pond was defined as having not too many reeds and being smallish. You want to minimize the opportunity for the ducks to hide, thus maximizing the chance that they will go airborne. If the pond is big then the ducks can quickly fly or swim to other parts of the pond. If there are too many reeds, they can simply hide. If the pond is just right, the dogs can flush them out into the sky.

            Lynn brought along two inexperienced peregrines; a male juvenile and a female. He flew the male first. He let go of the jesses and the falcon opened its wings, flapped them into the wind and took off. The falcon rode the wind higher and higher until it could comfortably soar and watch the ground. We got closer to the pond and Lynn yelled, “Flush!” The dogs took off and surrounded the pond, barking. Water splattered as duck wings battered the water. The ducks rose off of the pond in frenzied confusion and the falcon darted out of the sky. In an instant it singled out a duck and closed the gap. At the last second, the duck pivoted in the air and dipped under the falcons talons. The duck made a quick turn and plummeted, crashing back into the water where the falcon abandoned pursuit.

            It was a failed attempt. Lynn said it was experiences like those that teach the falcons how to hunt with him and the dogs. He said that the falcon was out of position, that he had let himself drift too far and that when the ducks flew the distance was further than it should have been had the falcon been keen to the position of the dogs. Lynn said the falcons quickly learn the significance of the dogs and to watch for their movements towards the ponds.

            The female fared slightly better. She made contact with her quarry but failed to injure it enough to drop it out of the sky. The duck made it back to the water where the dogs swam it down.  Lynn tossed a wing of a bird to the female falcon that he had ripped with his bare hands earlier, which reminded me that it wasn’t that weird when I didn’t use gloves to rip of little bits of quail for training Horus, the peregrine at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

            Also, we made some friends who had us over for a dinner party on Friday. Two of their friends showed up with an appetizer of mini buckwheat pancakes topped with salmon and crème fraiche. Oh, and you had to eat it while taking a shot of vodka. It was in the recipe, they claimed. We came to a consensus that the vodka should not be in the recipe. Then we made jokes about Canadians chucking beavers. Many different kinds of wildlife.

Not in Kansas Anymore/Continued Humble Beginnings

The past few weeks have been eventful and, well, humbling. From the psychological perspective, Lizzie and I have been reshuffled into the modest life of the student. We have come to terms with the sobering fact that our parents are no longer stocking the refrigerator, since we are no longer living at home. That organic produce I had gotten so morally used to eating…gone. The fanciful array of cheeses…nope, too expensive. Shit, we can’t even afford grated parmesan. (As an anecdotal note, a regular-sized Kraft parmesan cheese is 7.99 here.) This, however, is mostly due to the outrageous cost of food in Canada. Every food item is 20-30% more expensive here. Are you ready for this? Cell phone plans: a voicemail and caller ID package is extra. $12/month extra. I know. Lizzie and I decided to try it for a month without it. Every call comes up as unknown, the phone does not store the number so you can’t call the unknown number back, and the unknown caller can’t leave a message. Even if you have the number stored in your phone as a contact it comes up as unknown when they call. They have your balls vice-gripped into a system where you have no choice but to pay for all of the “extra” features. It’s crazy. That is the end of my pecuniary rant.

Saskatoon is a beautiful city. The South Saskatchewan River flows north through the city, providing a perfect place to walk, run, bike, or sit and relax after long days of classes and readings. The University of Saskatchewan’s campus has been voted most beautiful in Canada multiple times. They have done a phenomenal job matching new construction to look like the older semi-gothic style architecture. My building is a smaller yellow brick building from the 40’s that has almost been completely swallowed by new additions to the agriculture college. But it is home. I even have an office, well, I share an office with three other students, but it gives me a sense of place.

Saskatoon has fewer things to do than in say, Chicago, but plenty to keep a busy graduate student busier. A few weeks ago Lizzie and I went to Strawberry Ranch. Every year, this farm plants a few acres of corn in a differently shaped maze.  The goal is to find your way through, a task made tough by the thick corn stalks that are several feet taller than your head. I felt like I was in Harry Potter 4 looking for the Triwizard Cup. It took us nearly two hours to get through. This mostly had to do with the fact that we had to find the three hole punches hidden deep within the maze. Before entering the maze, a woman told us we would get a prize for punching our ticket with the three different hole punches. We had to find them.

There were three best parts about the excursion. First, we got out of that God forsaken apartment. Second, we encountered Saskatoon berry pie. The Saskatoon berry looks much like a blueberry, but tastes like a combination of a blueberry and cranberry. It is synonymous with a serviceberry, if you have had one of those. It makes a phenomenal pie. Thirdly, I encountered a red fox. Lizzie and I were deciding which path to take to find the third and final hole puncher, when I saw a leg and tail slink past at the end of the row. After a bit of stalking, I found the fox at the end of another row about 15 feet away with nothing between us. I crouched, he sat, and we stared at each other for a good 30 seconds before a noise from another couple tramping through the maze scared him off. Definitely worth the price of admission.

The Apartment

Lizzie and I moved to Saskatoon. We have heard it called S-Toon as well. We like to use the adjective ‘sassy’ when referring to anything Saskatoon or Saskatchewan, so, Sassytoon.

When we moved in, it bordered chaos. The rental agent we had talked to up until then dumped us onto another agent the day of our movein. Needless to say, our new rental agent was very busy. If I had kept a tally of how many times she answered either of her two phones, I might have reached one hundred. But we got in. We had to clean the place ourselves because no cleaning crew had come through yet, but that’s not at all interesting. We had a painter come in to fix a plaster problem on our living room wall. As I began to mention how the plaster was weak and might break with any shift of the wall he karate chopped the bad plaster and watched it crumble to the floor. “Yup, it’s weak,” he said with a Canadian grin. We had a different maintenance man look at the moldy drop tile in our bathroom that was now leaking water. I began to explain how worried I was about the mold and that the tile would fall. Before I was halfway through my explanation his palm had shot through the tile, and again I watched something crumble, this time into the tub. It’s an ask questions later mentality up here. 

We hope to remove this useless folding door to our kitchen soon.

We have an empty room. Our kitchen has dishes, utensils, and we even picked up a table with four stools on clearance. Our bedroom has a newly purchased, on sale, bed and boxspring in it. Our bathroom, well it’s a bathroom. Our toiletries are in there. But the living room… We moved with no furniture, and as such, there is nothing to occupy a living room. We have some ideas. 1.) The Gallery. We have lots of pictures to put up, even groups of pictures with unifying themes. I’m thinking of making cards explaining each piece. 2.) Sassy Fitness. Our living room has a 57ft. perimeter. 92.63 laps is one mile. 2426.91 laps is a marathon. During trial runs, we discovered the need to switch directions every 10 laps to avoid dizziness and leg dominance. I see this as a very profitable venture.We are open to suggestions.

Hopping the Border

On the first day we drove through Wisconsin and Minnesota, finally stopping in Fargo, ND. We had a cooler packed with dry ice from the Philippino ice cream store in Chicago where we kept our chicken salad sandwiches. We had three kinds of chips, apples, peanut and regular m&ms. We needed nothing but the miles to pass under us. We tried to stop at Culver’s twice, both times unsuccessfully. Fargo sucked.

Driving during the second day was unexpectedly beautiful. I had envisioned North Dakota to be a wasteland of dead grasses and shrubs and the bones of once roaming ungulates. Instead, outside of my window I saw brightly juxtaposed green and yellow farmland. Soybean fields marched right up to the edge of golden wheat; a ground layer in deep contrast with the dark, threatening to rain sky.

 

The border crossing happened. In short summary: I got my student visa. Lizzie and I learned that if we had lied just a tad bit more about the length of our relationship then Lizzie could have received an open work permit. They didn’t let my plants through—not even my Kalanchoe tubiflora which I had been raising from seeds for over a year. We had to take them back to the U.S. side. The border official there said he would put the plants in the new office and, provided that he would still be working there, that I could collect them in two years when my grad program ended. I will be taking ND Rt. 52 S on my way back into the states. If those plants are still there…well that would be hilarious. 

The mile marker said 223 to Regina. I said,"Holy shit! Google maps was way off!" I was now on the metric system; a first of many reminders that I was no longer in the states. Well, the third reminder. The first was those goofy accents at border patrol, and the second was that everything is also printed in French.

They call Saskatchewan "The Land of Living Skies." These two photos show that, I think.