I have no pictures, because this was a working weekend. Rather, it was a northern weekend. One without electronics, especially considering I lost my iPhone.
Saturday was a busy day. If you were me, along with family and friends, you would have driven 150km out of Yellowknife, past Rae-Edzo (Behchoko). The reason for such a drive was to cut down standing dead, also known as firewood.
We, and I say this with a grain of salt, because I am only there to help, get a cutting permit for the season so we can heat our houses with our wood stoves.
Leaving town at about 9am, we arrived at our cutting area (the location which is top-secret), break trail in with snow, cut for a couple of hours, haul it all back to the trailer, load it up and drive back to town.
It seems like an easy thing to do, but it does drain your energy. I’m also certainly not going to complain about the amazing -1ºC it was out there, but I certainly got wet and heated up quickly. I prefer this job in -20ºC. I think my gloves and boots are still soaking wet.
Now fast forward to Sunday morning. I’m up at the crack of dawn, you know about 8:30am here in the north and ready to go back out.
I fill our sled toboggan full of firewood and drag it to the front of the house and proceed to stock it up inside the house next to our wood stove. I brought in enough wood to keep us going for the week, burning only in the evening to kill the chill at night.
My next task was kindling. Kindling is also an annoying part of wood burning, because it seems you are always running out. Fear not I fill a milk crate, so again, we should be good until the next weekend.
The last thing I did this weekend was move snow. On a side note did you know this Hay River, NT company will make you snow. No thanks, I got lots. So much so I needed to remove it from the deck on our house. Otherwise in the spring water would be everywhere around the house.
If you have ever shovelled snow, you will know how straining it is. Now imagine 4ft deep snow on a deck 12ft in the air. I had to throw that snow so far.
I enjoyed every minute of this weekend, including my afternoon cooking and baking. My one regret for of the weekend is that come Monday morning I am going to be tired! Instead of being tired though, I’m going to be awesome.
Oh yeah I also blew a cylinder in my snowmobile, rendering it useless and lost my iPhone.