Happy Mother's Day, Moms.

For the first time in my life, after stopping for lunch on a mountain bike ride, I noticed that the tires on my bicycle were covered with fur. I said to Steve, who was busy trying to eat a six year plus expired cliff bar, "Hey, my wheels are covered with fur"!
We had attempted a ride out to the beginning of the trail we hiked over for 100 miles last summer. We were hoping it would already be snow free and willing to carry us over the country to a hut about 6 miles from the trail head; here we could get away to fish for arctic char, watch for snow geese and perhaps see some loons.
The snow was knee deep and rotten with water running beneath it. I should have worn plastic bread bags over my socks, like our Moms taught us to do when we were kids. We pushed our bikes most of the way, an hour out and an hour back, slogging through wet thaw under blue sky. A small flock of snow geese did fly overhead encouraging spring, lightening our hearts to smile. The lakes were deeply scored across the middle by last winter's dog sled and snow machine tracks; straight lines traveling towards the next landmark, a cairn on a knoll, which had behind it yer another small lake, that when frozen became another "road-way". And so the distance is covered (three days by sledge, 3 hours by snow machine) for the team bound for Sisimiut from Kangerlussuaq.
In the ice free times of the year, one must walk around every little lake, some small enough to pass in an hour, others lapping at your ankles all the day long.
At this first resting place where we stopped for lunch, there is a hunters camp. Two cold war era streamlined trailers are placed on the rock in an "L" formation anchored down by stones and cables. The doors are not locked. Inside there is an oil stove and a propane cook stove and a small kitchen space. There are bunks for sleeping and a table with benches at the back for hanging out. I tap the barometer glass for the sky is filling with mare's tails and sure enough it falls a wee bit down from fair.
The second trailer is a meat locker, hence the reason for the ground being covered with tufts of fur blown like flour about the millers yard. Hocks and hooves and heads and horns also lie about. A pair of snow buntings flit through the air. The peripheral circumference of the little salt lake is melting so that there is a turquoise ring gleaming around it in the sunlight.
The 109Th came and went, after still another week of missions. I am vowing to set up a time lapse camera next year in the warehouse in an attempt to capture a smidgen of what happens in there as crates and boxes and bags and people and coolers and fork lifts and Shannon and Steve and Ed and Sparky and wood pallets and air force pallets and frozen food pallets and do not freeze air sample flasks and solar panels and batteries come and go.
This weekend has been quiet, and the weather beautiful. There are fresh green grasses poking out of the earth. On Monday, four more Hercs will fly north and yet another week of missions will begin. June will arrive in a burst of green before we even know it for the days are nearing there longest.
This past Friday we went down to "dog-lussuaq". Ed had asked one of the men in town who keeps a team of sled dogs if he could feed them some meat we had to pass on. The man obliged us and we all went down to the makeshift kennels to feed the dogs. There are, as best as i can make out, about 7 private kennels which are made up of makeshift fencing which partition more than contain teams of dogs. The dogs are kept on chains inside these partitions. They drink from old plastic drums which there handlers keep filled with water. While this man was dangling 2 pound slices of beef over the cyclone fence to his dogs, a women and her young daughter were moving about inside there dog pack adjusting dog's chains, asking certain dogs to sit, then petting it in its head. The young girl helped the mother remove several caribou hides tied to a sled and they then went about releasing 2 of the 12 or so dogs which took off with tails wagging and hearts pounding and bliss shooting out of their very marrow. It was a joy to see the mother and girl walk off over the dry land with there dogs racing about, but with the dogs getting meat and the other dogs running free, the rest of the inmates began howling and barking and barking and howling and some even fighting so that we decided it was time to go.