May 29th, 2025 Daring Lake camp, upper Coppermine River watershed

It is the season when winter can end in a day or two, 

and for some of us weirdos its ending is not welcomed. 

How strange is that?

Out the tent door, on the lake ice,

the tiny plane sits on its fat bush tires.

The ice is white, but flecked with round pools, dark bits of caribou scat soaking up sun and melting tunnels four feet deep.

A week ago, down at home, I was still hopeful we could stay there into June.

Every morning through the first three weeks of May

I watched the ice auger grind down, the chips still dry,

and I was smiling as I walked back to shore.

Thirty-six inches here, thirty-one over there.

Might we get another week? Nine days? Twelve?

Short answer, Nope.

Long answer, we might have made it a few more days, but not with any hope of having good nights of sleep, with the plane a quarter mile offshore on the distant white ice… out past the dark and candled stuff.

(“Yes, just push along with your boot and keep one foot in the canoe and we’ll go out to the plane and get going.” Not really the way they like to see us board passengers in the Ops Manual for Commercial Air Operators.)

Saturday morning we fled north, past treeline, to finish the work up here, and change the plan and re-jig the routes.

Someday, I tell myself,

someday very soon, I am going to settle in at this season

and not give a damn when the ice melts,

or what the nine-day or five-day or four-week forecasts say,

or how dry the ice-auger chips are as they churn up out of the hole,

or what the measuring stick says.

I’ll slip back to how it was when we started,

without forecasts, with nothing but wonder and whimsy and what-the-heck.

(Or at least that’s how I recall it. We all delude ourselves.)