Winter Times in Temagami

Wow - hard to believe Marg and I will have been here two weeks come tomorrow afternoon.  As per the last posting, we hosted a great Wabun Reunion on March 16 and have been crazy busy on the island ever since.

There's been quite a bit of snow drama in and around the camp buildings:

When we first arrived, we were dealing with about 30 inches of snow on the ground - making for  wonderfully easy ice-to-land access and egress.  We built upon the work done by our caretaker Jason Ball and improved the snowmobile trails he had established before we got here.  We were also pretty impressed by the snowloads on our roofs, particularly the shop.

Snow depth on arrival - built upon daily for the next ten days

First walk over to camp from our cabin - snow still clinging to the shop  roof.  Jason and Ali lent us Luca for our stay up here, and she takes every opportunity to explore,

 point out the occasional ruffed grouse, and

endlessly chase and retrieve her frisbee

A roof can be a slippery slope - - 

Close-up of shop - advantage of the metal roofs is the gradual sliding of the snow in warmer weather or when the shop is heated and in use

Last Sunday I began heating up the shop so it could warm overnight, anticipating Jason Blais' arrival on Monday morning. Jason owns/runs JB's Small Engines in Temagami and came out to help with readying our motors and engines for the opening of camp.  While I was putting things in order before he arrived, there was a huge crashing/sliding/bumping/vibration that rocked the shop - it also felt like the building was lifting off the ground.  It only lasted an instant, but it was a loud and dramatic instant.  When I went outside to check, the roof and landscape around the shop had changed significantly - both on the east and west sides.

Here is the load shifted from the west side - nice clean roof, eh?

Then,  went around to the east side of the building - the side opposite our outfitting room where there is a porch our sections use to load their wannigans and where I keep snowmobiles for winter use - took these shots as I was moving machines off the porch

Lovely tranquil winter shots of the outfitting porch onSunday

Some far less tranquil views of that area after the snow left the roof Monday morning

I can't even begin to calculate what the weight of all of that snow must be, but it was a most impressive happening.

With no television up here, it's a great chance to catch up on some DVDs - first off, though, is getting the TV from the Walk-In which serves as our root  cellar to keep perishables and sensitive electronics from freezing when it gets down into the minus forties.  Snowmobile rides are a little rough for the more sensitive items, so it's haul out the ubiquitous tumpline and move stuff the old-fashioned way from camp to our cabin

collision of old and new - - flat screen and tump line

Marg and I head over to Bear Island every Tuesday and Friday to pick up the camp's mail.  There,

we've enjoyed great reconnections with folks who were so much a part of our lives when we lived/taught and trapped up here, and we are looking forward to visiting a host of others.

I mentioned at the outset that it was hard to believe that we've already been here two weeks - it's an equal challenge to realize it was thirty yeas ago this month that we decided to leave this island paradise we had lived in for four years and move to Michigan.  Our time living on Temagami was a profoundly formative experience for our whole family - nice to be back among those friends.