Ptarmigan Cirque de Soleil et beaucoup de vent!

Me and the littlest took a quick late afternoon trek up to see the subalpine forest and alpine tundra.  Other than passing a few souls on their way home, we pretty much had the whole mountain to ourselves.  The temperature when we started out was only 10 C and the wind was hard to keep your hat on insane.  I was glad that I brought rain suits and an extra sweater for the littlest, otherwise, I think we would have been cold.

The flowers were stunning - paintbrush in white, cream, 4 shades of pink and red, purple aster, yellow and white avens, arnica, saxifrage, moss campion, Saussurea densa, fireweed, vetch, alpine forget-me-not, rocky mountain goldenrod, luetkea pectinata or smelowskia calycina (not sure which), shrubby cinquefoil, stonecrop, and I think my hard to identify thick-rooted spring beauty plant found way up in a gravelly, shaded crevice.  If anyone has a different identification, let me know, I struggled with this one.Today, even at a much lower altitude there is fresh snow on the mountain top.  

To think last week we were melting in the heat an today, I'm wishing I had a warmer sweater on, inside...!!!

  

White and Yellow Mountain Avens    

Moss Campion

Thick rooted spring beauty - Claytonia Megarrhiza????

Paintbrush     

      

 

Little House on the Barrens

Gabe recently spent a day scanning old photos my grandfather too while working up north. (I do come by it honestly.) I love old pictures - and this would be my perfect first house complete with scraggley spruce, and a location undoubtedly proximate to a bog. They really don't make homes like they used to.

Truthfully, the urge to go north is still strong in me - unless you've lived in a remote community you probably can't understand the sense of isolation, which although occasionally is frustrating, more often it left me feeling a sort of peace impossible to capture in the city or even in Sussex, NB. The cold too. The bone wrenching, unrelenting cold of the north - unafraid to dip below -40 C - there is a quiet in that cold (and it not just being muffle in a fir trimmed parka and a few dozen layers of clothes) thatRobert Service captured in Sam McGee. I like it. I like having snow all winter and I like being able to guess the degree of coldness from tone of the squeaking-to-crunching snow under your feet. I like the hiss of grainy snow blowing over sculpted snow and the smell of woodsmoke.

So, I'm crazy. This being my first winter in Southern Ontario in 12 years (I spent 5 in TB, 1 in Kash and another 5 in the maritimes), I must admit to missing the more wintery weather I'd become accostumed to. But such is. Here is to winters of the future (immediate gradification preferred).

Funny - I wonder if this lack of winter (yes, I know everywhere else the country is having some real winter weather) will undermine our Canadianess?

Cheers,

Jennith of the North