The fear of enthusiasm

I silently dislike Nina's enthusiasm when sailing offshore. Sure, I love dolphins or a good breeze, but I would never dare to say so.

It's my belief that enthusiasm brings bad luck. Forget about umbrellas, whistling or leaving on a Friday; outspoken enthusiasm could really sink a boat.

I never had this superstition while we stayed the winter at Tapawingo. We saw a black bear not more than ten meters from our cabin door, and my enthusiasm had no limits.


But the fear of enthusiasm runs deep in the Canadian wild. Our story about the bear got played down, like "so you got to see the forest pig, aye?"

This was typical among the trappers and fishermen at Bistcho Lake; they loved wild animals, but would never dare to say so. Black bears were often called 'forest pigs', squirrels 'tree rats', and once we heard a trapper call a flock of snowy-white ptarmigans for a 'bunch of ducks'. But the lack of enthusiasm didn't seem to be for superstitious reasons.

In the wilderness you'll gain your respect through nonchalance and coolness. You have seen it all before.

The killing of wolves

There're few animals as mythical as wolves. They're the top predator in the boreal forest: intelligent, strong, fast and even organized. A pack of wolves are an efficient killing machine. That's what they do for a living. This means they compete with humans, who kill for fun -mostly- and who have to go further and further before seeing an elk, a moose or a dear.

But also wolves can kill for fun. It's been known that they sometimes go on a killing spree among sheep. There's been offered a biological explanation for this behavior: the killing of sheep doesn't wear out the wolves. A modern sheep is so cross-bred that it can't run fast. It's just meat and wool. This kind of live-stock is a piece of cake for the wolves, and there's probably nothing to the kill that trigger the wolves to stop. This makes the farmers bring out their guns.

The wolves always seem to stirr up emotions and controversy. At least in those countries where they're still around. What we often see is a polarized discussion between rural and urban areas; between the working class and the middle class; between those who see the wolves and those who wish to see them.

It's a discussion that goes way back. The wolves even play the role as a scapegoat in a much deeper conflict -i.e. the centralization of power and the historical mischief of rural areas.

But in Norway the farmers have won (joined by the hunters). The last two-three decades we've had one pack of wolves in Norway. That was the compromise with the government. Around six wolves, that is. Apparently this number was too high; not one wolf will be allowed in Norway anymore, not on a permanent basis.

In Canada they still have some understanding of the wilderness. There is no lack of wolves either. The province of Alberta -almost twice as big as Norway- has around 3500-4000 wolves. When we stayed at Tapawingo, in the NW corner of Alberta, we often saw fresh wolf tracks in the snow. Occasionally we heard them howl. But we hardly ever saw them. The wolves were extremely shy. They avoided humans as the plague.

To actually see a wolf, in the wild, is a privilege that keeps lingering in your brain, in your very soul, for a long time. In that respect I would claim that wolves not only kill, they also gives our lives depth and meaning; they give life, so to speak.

Everything is alive

I consider myself an atheist. I didn't even believe in God as a child. Actually, I'm a bit proud of this. The religious atrocities, in the name of God, are simply the way these monotheistic systems work out.

This morning I looked at the pictures from Bistcho Lake. None of the desert religions fit well with the boreal forest in the dead of winter. In 50 degrees below zero it's sort of hard to imagine, say, Jesus dressed in robe and sandals.

Still, this was the place where religious thoughts came into head.


I went for a walk twice a day. I always walked alone. After seven or eight months it seemed rather obvious: everything was alive. Everything was somehow charged.

But I never did cross that line. I never really came into the cabin and started to talk metaphysical gibberish to Nina. I held on to our notion of a rational world, though the feeling of being seen really made me wonder.

I guess the natives got it right in the first place.

The bald eagle

The bald eagle is not bald at all. I wonder how they came up with this misnomer. A better name would be “whitehead eagle”, but I guess it’s too late now.

We saw these immense birds in the fall. They seemed unapproachable then, and always kept their distance.

They returned early in the spring, before the ice was gone. Food was scarce and the bald eagles started to circle over Tapawingo Lodge. Their calls were a long thin shriek that sounded desperate. It’s not easy on an empty belly.

We once counted eleven bald eagles at the same time. The ice was still thick on Bistcho Lake, no open water for the eagles to catch fish. It was a bit strange. Why did they return to the Canadian north so early?

The ice melted in May, almost two months after the first bald eagles arrived. The bald eagles once again kept their distance, and regained their pride and posture.

Walking

Most writers like to walk. They can continue writing while walking. It gives great agitation, as in the novella Walking (1971), by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, where the actual walk is more abstract than the thoughts while walking.

Henry David Thoreau’s Walking (1861), is an essay that probes deep in the art of walking. It’s a kind of knowledge that doesn’t change much, but still, it's uncanny the way he anticipates our modern life. Thoreau’s walking is the opposite of Bernhard’s; the walk overtakes the thoughts; the walk in nature puts the walker straight.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about Thoreau: The length of his walk uniformly made the length of his writing. If shut up in the house, he did not write at all.

When we stayed the winter at Tapawingo, in Alberta, Canada, the wilderness demanded solitude and silence, if we wanted to see any wildlife. But me and Nina also preferred to walk alone for another reason; the thoughts got cleansed by nature, because the mind got distracted by something bigger than itself. Talking would destroy all this.

Annie Dillard wrote, in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, that walking in nature is not so much about seeing, as being seen. We're not really thinking either, it's nature thinking through us.

The black-capped chickadee

We had another cold front before Easter ─ windy for a change ─ and the wind chill went to the bones. The wind churned up particles and made the snow drift like smoke over Bistcho Lake.

I was driving the snowmobile from Indian Cabins and back to Tapawingo. I was driving without goggles and my eyes turned red and painful.

Towards the evening the row of pines shook wild and dark. We could hear branches break and fall.

The next day the wind had calmed, but it was even colder. We’d noticed the black-capped chickadee before, even down to ÷50˚C, but this morning was different. I kept staring at this little bird, this tiny little ball of feathers. I kept staring.

The wolf-bird

The raven has been called the wolf-bird, because of its tight connection to wolves. The ravens will enter the scene only a few minutes after the wolves have succeeded with a kill. The ravens follow the wolves, but could it also be the other way around?

Of course, the wolves will observe ravens in the air, circling around a carcass. But I’m thinking about something else. I’m thinking about an active role, a tell and show; a raven’s clue for the wolf to follow.

The ravens know what’s going on. It’s an overview in everything they do. The ravens also know what they would like to eat, but the wolves have to kill it first (unless the humans dump it).

I once tried a sound decoy on the ravens. They were gathered in the trees maybe a hundred meter away. I hid in the bushes and started the wild death-cry of the snowshoe hare.

Within seconds I had a black ball of circling ravens above me. The intensity of the ravens took me by surprise.

An hour later I tried again, but this time I observed the ravens through the binoculars. Not one of the ravens got fooled. They just sat in the trees, and if anything they reacted with contempt to my little act. But it did look like they gave each other some sidelong glances.

Flood water

I've been sifting through our pictures of fog. It turns out we had some kind of fog on Bistcho Lake, too. Although this was more a frost mist, created by the flood water (or overflow) on the ice.

During our eight months at Tapawingo we hardly had any wind at all. The snow stayed in the trees for weeks. In the morning we could see the chimney smoke gathering like a stratum in the tree tops.

I've been trying hard to avoid kitsch photography, but it's damn hard to resist when nature doesn't present itself in any other way. The beauty of Bistcho Lake is difficult to miss when taking pictures during the early morning or late evening.


The flood water was never fun, though. It often meant that we got stuck with the skidoo (snowmobile), and needed help from another skidoo to get loose. We always used two skidoos for this reason.

Often there was no telling if the snow concealed 30 centimetre of water. And it could be patches with flood water even though the ice was a meter thick.

I seemed particular prone for this misfortune. I drove deep into the flood water once I ventured out alone. The trick is to speed up, and try to drive straight through, but there was way too much water on this occasion. I could feel how the skidoo slowed down to a halt. The belt started spinning in the slush. My shoes got soaking wet, but I had to walk for about an hour in ÷30˚C, back to the cabin to get help from Nina, a skidoo and 100 meter of rope.

The fox

As the fox passed our window early one morning, I grabbed the camera and went out, wondering why the fox was so unafraid.

The fox ran around me like a dog. Curious, playful, intelligent. There’s something alluring about friendly encounters with wild animals. It’s easy to think that you’re experiencing the world like it was meant to be.

Hunters and trappers will often claim nature as brutal, in order to have a moral right to do their own killing. I think it’s interesting when, say, wolf hunters get indignant at the way wolves hunt. But this discussion is not getting anywhere. I’ve met enough hunters to know when they start to circle their wagons of belief. I’m not against hunting, either; I’m against certain types of hunters.

The fox sat down and yawned. I guess it’d been a long night. Then he suddenly sensed something a couple of meters away. He arched over and dived down with the nose deep in the snow. Up came a lemming.

It felt like I'd gotten a friend for life, but we never saw this particular fox again. Maybe it got trapped. Maybe the fur hangs in the closet of a bourgeois woman. Or maybe the fox had more important things to do, than hang around with me.

The fox acted as it was tame, even domesticated, but it had probably never seen humans before. This is the alluring thing about encounters with truly wild animals; they sometimes act as if humans aren’t dangerous. They don’t know better.

The owls

One of the most common sounds in the dark, during our stay at Tapawingo, was the calls of the great horned owl. It sounded something like “hoho hoo-hoo”, and then it would be quiet for maybe 10-20 seconds, before the call was repeated.

The great horned owl is a big hunter, up to 1.5 meter wingspan, and highly skilled (as all the owls). I once saw a great horned owl early in the dusk; it just swept from the tree and down the cut line in front of me. The wings were almost touching the snow. It was remarkable how this huge bird could fly totally silent.

We never got a good picture of the great horned owl, and I was getting a bit obsessed, since we often could hear the calling at dawn. The first times I dressed quickly, but later I stopped, thinking “damn it, the bird will be gone anyway,” and undressed. The call would continue. Hoho hoo-hoo. I couldn’t listen to this for long. I dressed up again, grabbed the camera, and went out. The bird was gone.

It sounded like a couple was going to nest close by the cabin. We even found the tree. The owls swallow their smaller prey whole, and we could see the regurgitated nuggets of bone and fur, but up in the dense pine there was nothing.

Nina discovered the boreal owl; it was just sitting in the snow, like it was sick or injured. This is a small owl, rarely seen. It seemed to accept that I was crawling around in the snow for a good shot. But the eyes flared up in panic when our cat entered the scene. We managed to hold the cat, though.

A couple of hours later the boreal owl was gone. We couldn’t see any animal tracks around, and hoped the owl got better and flew away.

The owls are mysterious, and subjected to at lot of myths in medieval Europe. We once photographed the horned owl from a great distance, it didn’t turn out well, but after enlarging the picture we could see how the owl seemed to be without a head. It was flying headless. This, of course, has been taken for an incarnation of the dead: “There is a decapitated man flying in our yard!” They didn’t need horror movies in those days.

If eyes could kill. We saw this great grey owl on our way to High Level. There were several along the road.

Music and silence

You can listen to music for several reasons, but I’m into music for its silence. I’ve come to this conclusion after looking at my playlist. It’s not for dancing. It’s the kind of tunes that knows something about silence.

At Tapawingo I woke around 5 am, ate breakfast and started to write. I listened to music in my headphones and waited for the morning light. Then I went for a walk. It wasn’t for the exercise, but to stop and listen.


We often say that snow is silent but it’s not. I’ve heard a recording of snow falling, amplified. The woods are not silent either. Just listen: there will be sound. Listen deeper: more sounds will appear. Music and silence have a lot in common.

The primeval forest is in a constant process of growth and decay. Branches are breaking under the weight of snow, in the wind, in temperatures going up and down. This kind of forest is noisy because it's alive.

Wildness

An ocean belongs to no one, but a lake is an entity. It collects everything in the murky water.

Bistcho Lake surely had some kind of memory. The still surface was like an eye, and when the lake froze over it formed a lens. Then it started to snow. The lake was blind until the spring. We forgot about the lake and acted like it was a field.

But a native collected a huge chunk of ice. It was important that the ice should come from the middle of the lake. He meant to bring it to the medicine man, but instead he got drunk, and lost the ice and most of his belongings along the trail; "[...] in Wildness is the preservation of the World".

Henry David Thoreau is often misquoted on this particular saying. He never did write "in wilderness is the preservation of the world", but he used the word "Wildness", with a capital "W", in his famous essay Walking.

I'm not sure if I really understand what he meant. It's not as obvious as it first seemed to be. And I can't help thinking about the drunk man with a chunk of ice.

Ravens flying

The ravens started mating in April, and it turned out they chose Tapawingo and the surroundings as mating grounds. Or battle field. It may have had something to do with the fact that we dumped eight barrels of discarded fish, meant for wolf bait.

The snow was getting granular and sluggish as brown sugar. We started to see dark holes and open channels on the ice at Bistcho Lake, but we used the snowmobile anyway. The barrels were heavy. They also had a poignant smell, which of course would attract black bears, unless we could get it away from the cabins pretty quick.

The ravens loved the fish. And they had more time fighting each other. The males would sometimes interlock their talons and swirl to the ground. But they would always release the grip before touch down.

The raven has one eye for genes and nature, and one eye for himself.

The ice

Bistcho Lake froze during one night, all the way to the horizon. And then it started a strange concert of deep electronic sounds, like something of the composer Arne Nordheim. It lasted for two days. There were no animal tracks near the lake.

Then the ice turned quiet. The eerie aching of growth was over.

I were cautious on the thin ice, and it creaked underneath, like some giant organism. I kept seeing icicles that resembled some sort of figure or animal. I returned the next day, but they were gone.

Bistcho Lake

If you ever travel to Bistcho Lake you’ll experience the void. That’s the Canadian wilderness. It opens easily in front of you, and withdraws as you step closer. You’ll feel like driving fast with the snowmobile, over the frozen lake, up and down the cut lines, but speed is a major waste of time. It doesn’t take you anywhere. It just slows down the process of learning the void.

Aurora Boralis

Without a full moon we needed a torch to find the way to the privy. I always flashed the torch around, the shadows of the tree trunks were like wheel spokes around me. It was a fair chance to see reflections in the eyes of animals, especially foxes, which wasn’t uncommon among the cabins.

I must admit that I also kept a lookout for ghosts. Once I saw a strange light among the trees, a ghostly flickering that made me look upwards, through the branches. It was the northern light.

This particular night was really amazing during our stay in the Canadian wilderness, away from the light pollution of modern society. We didn’t have a tripod for the camera, but brought a bucket along and went out on the ice at Bistcho Lake. The northern lights kept changing above us. Serpents of silver, ribbons of yellowish green and red. It lasted for two hours, and then we needed the torch to find our way back to the cabin.

Corvus Corax

At Bistcho Lake we sometimes saw a young raven along the shoreline. It was easily scared and took off for nothing.
 
We've seen ravens around dumpsters back in High Level; they are all the same. We've seen drunk natives crossing the parking lot, leaning forward in the wind.

How come that we so often are better off with nothing?


I once sat fishing on a slanting plastic chair, out on the ice. I was hung over and almost asleep. The raven came from behind. I only heard the wings, the speed of the dive; then it started climbing again, gaining distance and height. I didn't move. Maybe the raven thought I was dead. For a while it seemed like the young raven was turning around for another dive, but suddenly it sensed danger and got scared away.

Annie Dillard once wrote in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and I'm just quoting after memory: "In nature it's not so much about seeing, but to sense that you are being seen". Or maybe my memory fails me.

Some days later I was walking along the row of pines. I had this strong feeling of being followed. The young raven was coming from behind again, and it got really startled when I suddenly turned around. The black shape was cawing harshly and irritated as it disappeared into the forest, into the darkness between the trees.

Corvus Corax; it sounds like a raven saying its own name.




 

The cold spell

We got a really cold spell during our winter in the Canadian wilderness. It was towards the end of January, the temperature was dropping below ÷40˚C and the trappers left, since the weather was supposed to get even colder.

30. January it dropped below ÷45˚C late in the evening. We were using a wheelbarrow of wood every day. I used to stack it neatly in a wood-box, but now I just hastily rolled the wheelbarrow directly into the cabin and unloaded it on the floor.

I had my mattress next to the stove and could feel a wall of heat on my face, and a bone cold chill on my back.

I could see the metal top of the wood stove glowing in the dark. I could hear the hissing sound of wood burning.

I had to get up and load the stove during the night. I could tell by the sound of metal expanding or contracting if the stove was getting warmer or colder. I knew the sounds in my sleep.

At dawn Nina was looking at the thermometer outside, and declared ÷50˚C (÷58 F). It might have been colder. A trapper nearby measured ÷57˚C (÷71 F), before getting out of the area. The weather report on the radio spoke in general of temperatures in the negative fifties.

We went for a walk. There was no wind. No birds. It was like standing still in a photograph.

It was so quiet I could hear my wristwatch ticking. It's in a silence like this that you realize that there are always sounds. I could hear my own heartbeat: somehow transferred through clothing and amplified inside the hood.

We needed water. We carried four buckets down to the lake and started to chop the newly formed ice on our waterhole. The heavy iron bar broke like nothing. I chopped through the ice with the remains of the bar. Nina tried fishing and got a pike that wriggled just once before freezing solid.

The sun was getting low on the horizon. The woods around Bistcho Lake felt strangely fragile. Everything were covered with white spiky snow flakes. The hole landscape was like painted on thin brittle glass.

About the eyes

A street artist will begin with the eyes, and most people (who can't draw a portrait) will usually start with the eyes. People who can't write will begin their descriptions with the eyes. Eyes are important in all kinds of lifeless art. It's like an automatic approach.

A bird will also start with the eyes. It's been reported that shipwrecked sailors sometimes let go of their life jacket. They would rather drown right away, than wait for a doubtful chance of rescue, while their eyes get picked out by hungry sea birds.

We saw this dead fish at the beach in Grand Isle, south of New Orleans; it reminded me about how the ravens acted at Bistcho Lake, in northern Canada. The ravens always started with the eyes, even though the fish was lying on the ice in ÷40˚C, dead and stiff, as an unwanted by-catch by the fishermen.

But the ravens have come a long way. They are smart. Still, they pick out the eyes in a rather methodical manner. Or religious manner. The picture hasn't left me; all the fish with empty eye sockets, and the ravens in the distant trees, sort of looking away.