Jig's dinner

Experience has taught me to beware the middle aged fitness instructor, especially females ones; they bring a kind of ferocious competitiveness to the room. When I got to the 9am spin class a couple of minutes late and saw two women in their 50s on the instructor stage, I knew I was in for it.

One had dyed black hair and was wearing tiny black Lycra. I know her hair was dyed, aside from the slight purple tinge, because she was joking about it running on the floor among her sweat, and boy she was sweating. We all were.

Arch Hole (around the bay)

The purple headed madwoman took the second half of the class and led us through the '7 minute mountain' with a stream of unsubtle, dominatrix comments like 'faster, harder, you know you can give me more', made more alarming to the men in the room I'm sure, by her habit of pointing a finger at them as she shouted. It was a little tongue in cheek, well she certainly knew she was being cheeky with statements like "you have to get off your motorbike and onto a real ride if you want to catch a woman like me...". Despite my being in deep anaerobic pain by this stage of the session, hot and breathless to the point of dizzy, I was distracted and amused enough to keep the work effort on to the end of the session. Her co-presenter seemed a little embarrassed, but then, she had literally been foaming at the mouth as she barked out her orders for the first half. Suddenly Newfoundland seemed more like California, with a level of whoop, whooping that I don't think would go very far at home. At the end as we disinfected and mopped down our bikes the man next to me, who must have been around my age said, "I think I kinda hate them right now".

Open Hall

I was still beaming bright red when I went for another round of meet and greets and self-promotion an hour later. I figured, it's a conversation starter.

But I need to work hard after the volume of food I consumed over Easter. I went 'around the bay' which seems to be a generic, in the way we might say 'up north', somewhere rural and a bit out there where possibly you still have family and a longing to live but can't find employment or population to stay. The weather was finally double digits for the day, and then returned to snow for Easter Sunday.

St John's

Frances, who looks after John's cabins took me round and cooked lunch for everyone. As she was serving she asked , "do you just want a bit of everything?" so I, foolishly polite, said yes. Well, the plate of food was as big as Signal Hill that marks the entrance to St John's harbour. I now know Jig's dinner consists of roast turkey, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, gammon, pease pudding, stuffing, gravy and god knows what else was lurking under the pile - possibly an entire rabbit. Actually I think the jig's dinner bit was everything but the turkey, because it really means, whatever you can cook up in one big pot.

Signal Hill, entrance to St John's harbour

I had to give up. I really couldn't get it all down me, not least because she'd already given me a massive slab of Blueberry Fluff or Flan or something laden with whipped cream and custard - to keep me going to lunch. I had to sit and chat and drink a lot of tea over the next 3 hours before I could even think of driving back to St John's. And am I fed up with 80s and 90s rock music. A land that has the most fabulous live music has shocking radio. The BBC has spoiled me forever. There was a very cool programme on CBC however, called "Three Years of Provisions and two French Horns - Music of the Moravian Inuit". It documented a tour by Memorial University brass of Inuit Labrador, (tempting to type resurrecting) the once common brass band music that was central to Moravian religion. It was quite marvellous to hear hymns being sung in both English and Inuktitut, simultaneously.

Old St John's, Battery Hill

Easter Monday in St John's was once again sunny and warm, 11C, so I picked up my trails map and headed out about 30 minutes to La Manche provincial park where there is a walking route down to an abandoned village. La Manche means, the sleeve. It makes sense when you see the geology of the place.What a pretty, pretty place to live, though winter must be a different story. The bridge across the gorge must be a good 40ft about the water and it was washed away once storm and had to be rebuilt. The trail was not much used south of La Manche and I found myself walking in mud with only moose scat and prints ahead of me. I started to get myself a bit tingly closed in the thick woods, because the radio has started reporting moose sighting by the roads and we'd seen caribou 'round the bay'. I heard a scrabble of branches and stopped in my tracks, just as a tiny squirrel ran across in front of me. Hmmmm, think I was letting myself be a little paranoid.

The bridge at La Manche

Well it is the big RW on Friday. Surely he hype here tcan't be as bad here as at home, but it is bad enough. I will be on an aeroplane heading to Halifax and on through Nova Scotia. I'm sure the airport TVs will be showing all the highlights and I won't miss her dress for longer than the morning. I hope they get better weather than us. After yesterday's sunshine we are back to snow tonight, ice pellets tomorrow.

'Top' of the sleeve at La Manche

La Manche - The Sleeve

PS Why does Lycra have a capital?

A walk in Newfoundland: Bread and Cheese Point to Bull Head Light

I love the humour in Newfoundland names. There are plenty that are more famed, such as the village of Dildo which has many a postcard of its sign, but even a simple coastal walk, only 7km there and back, takes you from Bread and Cheese Cove, along Raspberry Bottom and The Flats, over The Oven headland before reaching your turnaround, Bull Head lighthouse. The many lighthouses are very much needed as the map shows there to be 19 wrecks on this one 3.5km stretch of coast alone, but it was not built until 1908, too late for every one of those 19 ships; the earliest recorded on my trail map is HMS Saphire, sunk just before, or in, the safety of the Bay Bulls harbour, in 1696. The ship names give indication of the families left behind: Ann, Sarah Jane, Marilyn Donald, Elizabeth E Annie, Thomas, Eliza, Dora, Frances Russell and so on. In 1701, both HMS Loyalty and HMS Asia were lost. I wonder if it was the same storm. These names are serious reminders of the dangers these early voyagers took on.

Like home, there is a Pulpit Rock, however this sea stack stands at 14.7m high, and the interpretation tells us that "if any worshipping took place at Pulpit Rock, it was done by duck hunters". Not for them our stories of hidden services in stinky pigeon infested caves during the Reformation. Perhaps they were hidden enough just being in Newfoundland, or perhaps I just haven't heard those stories yet.

Next weekend I might do the next part of the route, from Monkey Cove, past Bald Head River, Landing Place of Bald Head, Rust of Bald Head, Bald Head, Turn of Bald Head, Bight of Bald Head....I'm curious to know who had the bald head. Likewise, I wonder who the 'American Man' was that has a hill top named for him. Is there an unknown American buried their perhaps? No wonder this is a land of storytellers. Every place name charges the imagination. The short, overland route between Bay Bulls and Freshwater, before reaching the boggy marshes is called.....The Clappers. It was an old horsetrail. Other points of the map are more literal. Gull island for instance, within view on this walk and now a seabird ecological reserve is home to 'Shitting Cove Rock'. For sure there is plenty beside the scenery to keep me occupied.

Bull Head Light

Front Door 

Looking into Dungeon Cove

The Flats

The Pulpit

Wet socks chase rainbows

Sometimes I have to remind myself, firmly, of what I have done, instead of walking around with endless 'to do' lists in my head. In a new place is it easy to feel inadequate when there is so much to find out, so much to see, so many people to meet and lots of things to establish. So today I left aside the laptop for the morning, went on a short drive and long walk in the sunshine and then sat myself down at the institution that is Tim Hortons with a large cup of tea to write a list of all the I have done in my first week here, just to remind myself I don't have to do everything now. I won't bore you with it, but it calmed me down at least.

For the second time my trainers are now drying off very slowly in the misleading sunshine. I woke at 7.30am to a gleam through the blinds that told me it was already bright outside. I wanted to see Petty Harbour, the village that we'd reached the other day overland by trails. I knew I could walk from there along this wonderful coastline towards Cape Spear - the most Easterly point in North America. I forgot however, that spring takes a long time to come here and last night it was snowing when I left the gym and as I dropped off to sleep the radio was reporting an overnight low of -9C.

So instead of striking out immediately I bought a coffee in the cabin by the jetty of Petty Harbour and had a blether with the woman behind the counter. I forget still, the question 'and where are you to'. They don't mean at all where am I going, but rather where am I from. At least, that's how I think it works. I pictured a Newfoundlander meeting a Ugandan:

"and where are you to?"

"I'm on my way coming."

Apparently we all talk English.

I had a such a lovely chat with the lady over my coffee I completely forgot to pick up the postcards I'd just bought, but I'm sure if I go back in a week I'll find they've put them aside for me just in case I come in by again.

I wrote up my journal in the car and made more lists, because I do have plenty to do and let the sun rise a bit higher before heading out. I just love it here I have to say. I find it so calm. It reminds me of the north west of scotland, which I suppose it should as the rocks are all connected. The sea was mirrored blue and below a deep green and clear so I could see the rocks at the bottom of each geo, but like the sunshine, the sheen was misleading. Every now and than a wave would break heavy over a rock to remind me there was swell out there somewhere and with several nights of wind warnings this week, there had to be sea further out. The horizon was tell tale raggedy and I'm not sure I'd have wanted to go very far offshore in a small boat.

The trail wound through old forest and dorment blueberry shrubs which still had their rusty autumn colours and finally cleared so I was just walking along the edge of the rocks, feeling like it was the edge of the world. I can't wait to see the icebergs passing from Labrador and a whale fluke. Then I think I'll begin to feel I'm really here somehow. I hit upon a small stream which I couldn't leap and as the ice was still forming on the plants beside it, I didn't much feel up to taking my socks and trainers off to get across so it became my turnaround. I wasn't going to get to Cape Spear today on foot anyway, it would be a full day to get there and back, but I'm glad I was stopped because I followed the stream instead and it ended in a pretty waterfall into the sea. It is cold still. The fringe of splatters were frozen as was the sea spume washed up at high water. The strong sunlight made all the icicles sparkle and formed a delicate rainbow through the spray. A little treasure for my viewing. 

People have been wonderful. Newfoundland is famed for its hospitality and it certainly has not let me down one bit. I realise I have to stop asking everyone if they are from Newfoundland. Of course they are, almost always. I got used in Alaska to everyone having come in from 'away' and partly attributed their positive nature to being proactive enough about life to have got themselves there. Newfoundland somehow is humanising. It is easy to remember here how little a gesture needs to be to make the difference to how a place feels, because people are forever making small but welcome gestures.

I baked some shortbread and went across to see the neighbours who I had met on Hogmanay. After they placed me, we had a long chat over another cup of tea about politics as Canada is in the middle of an election period. Then they invited me to join them at their son's saxaphone recital tonight. It's part of his music degree that he has to give a show, so I think that will be really fun.

But that will be my second concert and I've only been here 8 days. On Wednesday I went to meet a communications company I had contacted through a PR firm in Aberdeen. I was hoping they might give me some pointers on what the local industry is like, instead they completely opened their doors. First of all, the entire PR team met me, then they gave me an hour briefing on the major industries, who's who, what jobs come up where, what kind of salary scales I can expect. The girls were on their phones texting people to ask if they were still recruiting for positions they'd hear of and by the end I said to them, I'm going to feel I've let you all down if I don't find work now.

I wrote a thank you email when I got home and in reply had an invite to their coporate suite at the local civic centre come ice hockey rink come music arena, Mile One. It was some guy I'd never heard of, Jackson Browne, but now know co-wrote Take It Easy for the Eagles. I went along and a chance to meet some more people and get to feel a bit more orientated to how things are. Most importantly, the week has just made me feel right at home. I won't struggle to be here if I can make the leap jobwise.

Part of me is aware I could just be casting rainbows through everything I see just now because I want to feel I belong. Scotland is still intoxicatingly beautiful and I have a strong sense of home that I hope I never leave behind, but this place feels like home should be and can be but somehow it is harder to connect to. Didn't we too have communities where everyone played something and storytelling was central? Perhaps I'm just nostalgic for something that never was, but I like to be in a corporate setting were people are telling me how important community and landscape are to them, they get misty eyed talking about the wilderness of Labrador and explain that music is absolutely central to their lives. I get the feeling people do their work and do it right and then get on with the most important parts of living. I like that the lawyer across the road plays in a band in the pub in town on a Saturday night and that is not in anyway unusual. No doubt there will be plenty obstacles to come so for now I'm just enjoying the journey of where all these trails are leading to, which right now could be anywhere between here and Goose Bay and that's all fine with me!

Back on The Rock

It's good to land in a place that already feels like home. As we flew in the snow was driving past the window but the winds were light. Today there is a wind warning and I'm glad I'm not in the air. It feels like February again.

I've just taken a few days to try to straighten out my body clock and get orientated. I picked up the car and set up a bank account on my first afternoon then tried to shop, but had slept so little I found myself wandering around the aisles completely unable to register what I was looking at or make any decision. I bought chicken and salad and apple pie and gave up on anything else at that point. When I drove home I completely missed my street, then missed the house which is hidden behind a still thawing snowbank. Time to sleep.

Moose the dog has grown from cute puppy to splendid husky with a long back and ridiculously curled up tail. He looks all set to be hauling all the way across to Alaska to me. Tiffany and Justin have him trained up to beg, bow, sit, roll over and shake hands. He's not so quick on coming back to you when there are interesting things going on in the woods, but I still reckon he'd be fun to skijor with and more than capable of figuring out his Gee-Haw. He's got the pulling thing down no problem!

I finally felt I needed to get out and get some exercise so Justin showed the trails right behind the house. I have to love a suburb which quickly leads to frozen lakes and into forest.

Spring is just coming now. The snow was sugary enough on the trail to walk in trainers, though I ended up finally with wet feet. Where someone had cut wood along the trail the smell of resin was hovering warm in the sunshine and we walked in t-shirts until we got high and clear and then the wind was still biting. We followed a snowmachine route for about an hour and a half, over the top of a hill which eventually lead into a different drainage system and on to the hills above Petty Harbour. It is my kind of 'city' that I can walk from the suburban door, straight to the seashore along perfectly mushable trails and wind up in a pretty village that looks to be a thousand miles from anywhere. There are plenty places to run a dog team around. The snow is too patchy now for snowmachine but a few people passed us blasting around on ATVs and I was thinking I'll be wishing for my mountain bike soon. As I stood in the old Catholic graveyard above Petty Harbour I was wondering if the 'residents' would mind my putting a dog yard right there on that flat ground?!

 The gravestones were a real mixture of elaborate granite carved with scenes of fly fishing, boating and duck hunting, even people's photographs etched into the rock in the most recent monuments. I wondered how different genealogy searches would be if all our headstones at home had photos carved into them from the 16, 17, 18th century. Others were just a simple, nameless wooden cross, all beaten up and gnarled in the winds. They nearly all faced the sea and I liked the wide grassy banks between them. It gives a sense that this has been a small town for a long time. Rather alarmingly though, the ground had subsided enough to just about reopen a 6ft hole at one gravesite. We couldn't see anything but it wouldn't take much more rain for whatever they buried under there to be coming right up to the surface again.

 Yesterday was just like spring and though I needed to get some work done and start making contact with offices, eventually the sunshine pulled me outside and I went for an explore round Bowring Park which sits between us in Kilbride and town. It lies around Waterford River and is full of little walkways, gardens, sports facilities. I think in summer it would be really a treat and in winter, fantastic cross country skiing. It certainly looked like again we were far from anywhere, but in truth the rush hour cars passing on the nearby highway were echoing around the valley. I'll take it though, as a city park!

 Today I am struggling again with being awake and trying to get some work done. I have found the local gym and plan to make their 5pm spin class so I can start to feel a routine coming back. Besides, if I don't I might be tempted to overdose on the many varieties of muffins on sale here and end up resembling one!

Claustrophobic in big sky country

I have to admit I had to try really hard to like Alberta. I loved the flight between Calgary and Grande Prairie. I sat on the westward side of the Dash 8 just as the golden sunset was laying down over the distant peaks of British Columbia. Below me the black and white contrasts of snow among birchwoods and frozen rivers created so many flowing pictures it was like cloud gazing into an amber and charcoal canvas. From 20,000ft up the black roads ran up and around remote homesteads to make a landscape full of giant tadpoles. Rivers meander wildly with layer after layer of oxbox lakes on each bend. All still frozen, the lines seem to be the doodles of a dreamy artist, languorously sketching the outlines of  a sheep, a hand, a rabbit, a bear in white chalk on a blackboard formed of dense woodland. In some areas of clearfelling, the snow and tree contrast created perfect chessboards and in others, the crisscross of forest roads between points mapped a picture like old astral charts. Maybe Santa Claus uses these to navigate. I landed quite dreamily in Grande Prairie.

But Alberta was a tough contrast from Alaska. Nevermind switching between Uganda and Homer, both equally captivating, though wildly different, Alberta on the ground felt at first like I just tied an anchor round my soul. I'm used to boundaries, corners and edges; land sloping off to rivers, lakes and coast, some curious new neuk to explore. As we drove the skies were blue blue blue, no break to the infinity land or skyward. I took a snapshot out the car window, it is 50% white, 50% blue. The endless prairie flatness was at first, actually claustrophobic to my mind which was twitching to get out of the sameness of it all.

But we rolled down to Peace River at Dunvegan and my heart lifted. The river is wide, very wide, and meandering and frozen into buckling slabs of ice and wind polished mirrors. The town landed me again though. First impressions were of depression. The largest stores were the liquidations sales warehouse and the liquor outlet. Signage is old with many places for rent. Banks and pay day loans centres were prevalent, with a thoroughly depressing looking bridal shop between them. White nylon dresses hung ill fittingly on faded mannequins in a unlit shop window decorated with plastic vines turned UV yellow. The side of the windowless liquor store had what would be a 'back of the club' entrance only it faced onto main street, with a sign that read: "rooms for rent, ask at the liquor store". I suspect rents were hourly.

I went into the salvation army thrift shop, usually always fun. There was nothing in it I think would have made it onto the shelves of our gentrified charity shops and vintage stores. Electronics I would think long considered defunct were sitting on dusty shelves. No CDs or DVDs for sale, only a few children or biblical videos and a stack of cassette tapes. Definitely no 'last season', 'bought it but never wore it', 'decided I didn't like the colour' £200 suits in here.

I wandered through the mall, full of cheap bargain basement clothes and dollar stores and empty. The whole town felt empty. I took photo of the 'friends and lovers' dating shop, now up for rent, and situated next to the health food shop which was full of crystal healing rocks and had a flashing neon signs intriguingly advertising 'full body vibration'. Even the skill hill is called Misery Mountain.

At the post office and coffee shop I browsed posters, desperately trying to find evidence that there was more to this town than first impressions and found no events advertised until May and many adverts for activities in September, one of which, ironically for a town called Peace River, was a huge Gun show, though that took place in September 2009. Christmas decorations were still up but not turned on. Every turn gave me the sense that the large retail park sitting above the village of 6500 had killed the centre and the region is waiting for the thaw - seasonal and financial - before kicking into life.

I wondered if the place is in its betwixt season. The snow and ice too rotten to enjoy, spring not yet bringing back green shoots, birds and the river currents. The still blue skies only gave the town a whistling silence rather than a sense of peace. I stood on the levee where Heart River flows into Peace River and saw the tubular steel handrail vibrating wildly in the complete calm. I can only assume it was the pressure of ice against the inside bank and the waters struggling beneath it to find their way to the sea. Deriving from Great Slave Lake, this is a historic and wonderful heritage river for Canada. I went for a run along its banks and high up out of the river valley to see the wide meanders and islands and where Smoky River joins it. It was spectacular, of a scale comparable to the source of the Nile in Jinja, Uganda. It was very, very easy to imagine the passage of riverboats and canoes along this important highway for the Mackenzie era fur traders and Hudson Bay Pioneers.

I'd been thinking of circles and things coming around again a lot lately. Partly because I've been finishing a fascinating biography of a wonderful lady who brought Tai Chi to the UK. As I browse round the $2 museum I read the journey of Mackenzie to the sea, coast to coast through Canada and was startled as it concluded in Bella Coola, British Columbia. I had forgotten that I had been to the rock he had inscribed for the crown almost 200 days after the very day in August 1993. I felt happy to have connected to another section of the extraordinary journeys that were made in these times by Peary, Franklin, Rae, Froshiber and so on. I could see that in another time, another season, and also for the native communities, this would be a very fine place to be, a place of practical and spiritual significance. Easy walking, grasslands fulls of birds and game, a huge river running slow across the continent wide enough for large riverboats, endless birchwoods to build from and make fires with. There was an interpretative sign next to the river describing a boring looking alder bush. Wrong! The bark is antiseptic, the berries pressed with fat and meat into pemmican, fibres used for ropes. You just have to know I guess. Landscapes tell all sorts of stories depending on who's seeing them.

Being here is a bit like holding a mirror up to my own culture and I am also reminded to think, 'oh this is what happened to them' all those distant relative from the generations back who left Scotland to map out and trade and built and conquer and discover, survive, prosper and rename a continent. There are other communities still here that speak only German, or French, or Ukrainian and the museum has a traveling exhibit just now honouring Chop-Suey, the influence of Chinese and their restaurants in rural Alberta. Guess Alberta wasn't so flat after all!

Farewells, reunions and new territories

The thing about being in Alaska, aside from the huge country, bald eagles, moose roaming down town centres and bear stories, is I feel I meet a new hero every day. The people are extraordinary. It feels that almost everyone has a remarkable ‘how I came to Alaska story’ whether it was as means of evading war or the law, or both, or because they read about a 3month canoe expedition on the Yukon at an impressionable age and wanted to try it, or they passed through and decided to do whatever it took to stay. For those it suits, the Alaskan way is as warm, comfortable, easy, and moulded to the soul as any goose feather filled down jacket and old felt boots. Personally, I enjoy that I can have not seen a shower for a week, smell of moose fat and wood smoke and go grocery shopping in my work dungarees and winter boots and no one bats an eyelid because they probably look and smell even worse. This is a place where you soon find if you are comfortable in your own skin because you’ll be denied the usual exteriors statements, and the weather will have something to say about how often you get to visit anyone. Neighbours are your safety net, so better you rub along and make sure they are your ‘IT crowd’.

Our last night in Homer we went for a meal of king salmon and moose burgers at Jim and Mary's huge log house which sits high on the mountain ridge. The logs are over 50cm diameter and were shipped in specially from Canada. It is a dream house in a dream spot. I found myself literally giggling out loud as I sat cross legged on a leopard print cushion, holding the sides of a plastic toboggan, while being towed (backwards to avoid the exhaust fumes)by high speed snowmachine between the car and their front door. I love a place where I have to snowmachine to the neighbours. The night sky was phenomenal and I was able to make many wishes on shooting stars and track a satellite or two. It was a perfect evening in with friends to close my too short trip to Homer.

The next day Emma, Linda and I drove the 5 spectacular hours up to Anchorage, stopping for donuts at The Moose is Loose cafe, and for a ski in Turnagain Arm where the sun was so blinding on the snow my eyes were streaming without sunglasses. I was reunited with another old friend in Anchorage, Marybee, but had to say goodbye to Emma as she continued her drive to Tok, onward to Bellingham to pick up the ferry to Vancouver.

Linda, Marybee and I made the best of our reunion, drinking sake cocktails in Anchorage museum at lunchtime before working our way around the Mammoth and Mastadon exhibit, perhaps enjoying the children interactivity bit with more gusto than we would have ordinarily. Again, as ever, I was amazed by the vast collection of pieces from all the native tribes, but was especially drawn to the Yup'ik section because of my dear friend Wesley, who while now in his 70s, enchants me every time I meet him again.

At dinner the previous week I has asked Wesley what his Yu'pik name is and he told me it is Tulukaru, which means Raven. The Yu'pik believe the clever raven created everything around them and the museum had a quote from one of the Yu'pik elders: The legendary creater, Raven, strode across the sky and burst a light filled bladder to make the sun.

Wesley amazes me with his knowledge, kindess and warm humour that he can express in very few words yet is evident every times he talks of hunting and the wildlife he lived with, hunted and believed with. It is evident in the way he drew simple sketches for me of different types of fish and the traps and lines the used to catch them. The drawings were sparse but for that the exact curve of the fin, and the placement of the eye relative to the body and the arrow to show the flow of the fresh water as it meets and swirls with the less dense salt. His is a kind of animation of connectedness, rather than movement, noise or disturbance.  Wesley always tells be he love me, but I think it is because he loves the world.

I have many heros in Alaska but Malamute man is another. He lives next door and has a team of 12 malamutes, weighing between 130 and 160 pounds each with names like Massive and Buffalo. He read a book and decided to move with his wife and two sons, aged 2 and 5, high into the arctic circle to live in a sod house and live off the land. He created everything around him. He built his house, his sled, his tools, he learned to hunt and trap, they made clothes, they built boats, they became commercial fishermen off the horribly dangerous waters of Kodiak despite a history of being landlocked, they had another 5 children. His wife told me she felt fine about having children up in the bush because she's already had 2 without any problem and they had a copy of the New York Fire Service guide to emergency childbirth.

Malamute man, Dave, now in his 60s and still mushing and fishing told me something that many people have said to me in Alaska - that the biggest fears we have are those we internalise and allow to become monsters in our mind. Thousands had lived in that terrain, for thousands of years so for him it was all about humility and being willing to learn, work hard and accept that very often once we commit, those things that we were scared of turn out to be not nearly as bad as we feared. I always leave Alaska feeling ready to live outside my boundaries. I think perhaps that is because of Ella. Ella is not a person, but another Yu'pik word. It means 'awareness' and that is what Alaska, its people, its landscape and the dogs does for me.

Onward again. Hopefully Ella has come with me as I've travelled into Northern Alberta and tomorrow I will set out to explore a completely different town, set on the very wide and still very frozen river that is its namesake - Peace River.