The new year. well the last one was probably one of the best years of my life so it's easy to have a positive outlook for the new one. great kids, great marriage, a job i love. what am i looking forward to? nothing I guess. I wouldn't change a thing. well it would be nice to quit the cigs. I am finally grown up enough to know that I'm happier than I deserve to be, karmically speaking.
I'm also finally smart enough to know when I've got it good.
well, that's all from the messy mind, happy new year to everyone out there.

well it's that time of year again, when we all stop and celebrate a very special birth a long time ago in a place far away. I am of course talking about the birth of santa claus around the turn of the century in newfoundland.
I'm kidding( hopefully that was obvious ) But really the religion aspect of it never rang for me.
I'm a spiritual guy just not a religious one. so it's all about the fun for us.
When I was a kid, christmas would be going along just fine and then the clock struck 11 a.m.
church time. oh well the service usually only lasted for a million years, so it wasn't too bad.
I don't look sideways at those folks that do follow and practice organized religion, just not my cup of tea. And for my own kids I'll encourage them to follow what they want,but I would be surprised if they went that way. Miranda is not too big on religion either. so no battles there thank god ....or buddha whoever, you know what I mean.
anyways, messy christmas from the merry minded fool.

no more calls...we have a winner

That's right Jason, the fifth was my birthday and for cracking Da Brownie code you win a genuine Fort Simpson toque- to claim your prize simply e-mail your mailing address to contest organizer at timothy.w.brown@hotmail.com

well as of approx 0230GMT 42 solar circuits have been completed, and number 43 is under way.

Yeah, I eat onion now, like dad was with it though, I like the flavor of it but don't like great big gnarly chunks of it. But you guys asking me about the onion thing brought something out of the messy mind.
About a year after my first wife walked out on us, I guess Rebecca would have been about 2 years old, I woke up one morning and could hear this munch-crunch noise echoing through the apartment. I jumped out of bed and went out to the living room, and there's Beckers, sitting on the floor watching cartoons and munching on a great big onion- just like an apple. I mean taking GREAT big bites and chewing it up- I was ten feet away and those onion fumes were almost like a pepper spray. "Beckers" I said "What are you doing?" She glanced at me and says "apple"
Another time I was at the fridge, and she saw a lemon inside and asked if she could have that orange. I told her it was a lemon and she wouldn't like it, but she insisted. I peeled it and broke it into sections-she ate that whole lemon without so much as a squint.
Anyways, to get caught up, yeah mike those are all pike. There's a lake outside of Yellowknife that has char in it, but I've never been there. For trout you have to go to a lake but Salmon have been caught down by Willow river. And of course everyone else's favorite the pickerel, I don't mind catching them but for fight and ease of catching you can't beat northern pike and those bad boys are everywhere. They are actually quite yummy too if you catch them early in the year or late in the year when the water is good and cold. You have to be a bit of a surgeon to get the Y bone out of them though.
We are just getting ready to go out in the boat right now.
Sis I know, what you mean about the life jacket thing. But when I first came up north I was fortunate enough to go up to Great Bear lake on a fishing trip. When we picked up the boat we were going to use I asked the guy( he was a native elder) about life jackets he laughed. "why?" he asked " Do you want to bob around for awhile before you die?" "A life jacket won't save you,just prolong the outcome"
The water is so cold there even in the middle of the summer you got about 5 minutes before hypothermia sets in. I tested the theory by having a bath in the lake, and I tell you when I ducked under to rinse my hair it was like having your skull squeezed in a vice. I was in the water for about 8 minutes and my lips were blue and couldn't move my arms and legs very good. The other guys were gonna have a swim til they saw me when I came out of the water.

well, I tried to post video of me and steve-o sailing down the lake (no joy on that one) so some still pics are the best I can do. Mike I guess I haven't changed much since those days on the Basin as we couldn't resist putting up a sail out on the lake in stiff wind. we used a ten by fourteen foot tarp. As i said in the video "we don't have much say in where we're going, but we're going there pretty quick"

I tried using the kicker for a tiller but it was sluggish at best.

Oh one other thing bouncing around inside the messy foolish mind, brought forth by Jason's soon to be trip home and his food list. To me as a kid growing up going to the city(halifax-dartmouth) meant one thing.....sunnyside donuts. Tim Horton's is a johnny come lately also ran to these guys. Anyone else remember sunnyside donuts? gimme a holla back, as the kids say.

I do indeed like fish in fact I love it. I remember when I was a kid I could take it or leave it, but now it's one of my fave's. We just came back from Willow river, we took off yesterday on a whim.
While we were down there, we cooked up a twenty-five pound lake trout. mmmmm yummy. we cooked it over an open fire and it took a little over two hours. a few rums and the night was complete(except for the whole sleeping in the truck thing thanks Coleman, owe you one-Ill get ya back for that when yer a little older.)
Cooking that trout down there gave me a reason to poke around inside the messy mind. When we were kids we'd be out the door in the morning and lunch was usually a big galvanized tub full of clams, mussles and crabs that we'd dig up and catch and cook over a fire right down on the beach. Mike remembers that I'm sure. We'd tie a bunch of drift logs together and go waaay out in the Annapolis basin.
I believe Mike and I probably still hold the record for going out the furthest. I remember Barry Watson's mother just screaming at us way out on the water. I admit I was scared but Mike was fearless.
Jason, the north is here, and you are welcome to come up any time. I think that would be cool.
I know the previous post alluded to the fact that I was giving up on the excursion vacation for something more main stream...uh not yet. I'm currently planning next years trip- it's a two day trip up a river system with two portages to a lake where there's an old abandoned lodge, couple of days on the lake, trout and pickerel fishing, and then two days on the river back out. 6 or seven days total. can't get that from a travel agent.

pics from previous post are of one of the thunderstorms overhead at camp on Willow lake and one of Miranda's grandfathers old trapping cabins. pics from this post are of a t-storm over the lake and another one of his old cabins. they are actually side by side not far from each other in the bush at the edge of the lake. the older log one is from like the early 1900's. The cabins were easily recognized by the building style, as soon as I saw them, I knew they were his. after having spent a week up there I can understand his life long love of the area. The entire Horn Plateau is a protected area. Not a park, as you can hunt and fish there. but protected from exploration and developement by the oil and gas and mining folks. I was flying in a plane one time and the guy sitting next to me is looking out the window and says "look at all that nothing" I leaned over a bit and glanced out the window and looked down and replied "look at all that everything".

I came back from my trip in better shape than I've been in years. I was not feelin great if you recall about a week before i left. But a week of drinking lake water and 18 hour days on the lake will set you right.

That being said this will likely be the last time I go out on a real excursion like this. Miranda worries and would prefer if I did something a little more orthodox like going to a lodge on a guided trip. I 'm starting to see the light on that. I've had my risky fun, and I will admit when the plane came to get us this afternoon, I was ready to come home. There was one point out on the lake when there was a question wether we should keep going or go back to camp. The waves were crashing over the boat, we were airborn more than a few times the wind was strong and steady and the waves were at about 4 feet I was having a blast...and i turned back to camp. There was a time when I would have kept going. but not now.

you bought a what?

Departure for the trip has been postponed til June 21. Kind of funny as it was the same day last year that Steven and I left on our trip, of course, that didn't work out so good for steve-o.

We have to delay because the lake is still 80% ice covered(difficult to operate on floats)

the pic if it comes up, is of the coolest thing I've bought in a awhile.

it's a personal satellite tracker/messenger. It's an in-expensive alternative to a sat-phone.

It comes with a $100,000 LLoyds of London insurance policy that covers the cost(up to 100k) of helicopter extraction anywhere in the world. Plus the wife can sign in to the web site and see where I am in real time on google earth. It also sends an OK message or a non-urgent help message, or an emergency reponse required message-this message goes to GEOS world wide rescue operations as well as all local responders. Miranda likes the idea of peace of mind while I'm away. She's heard all the stories so she's probably right to worry.

the countdown

30 days til my fly out fishing trip, god willing the ice is gone when we get there. I sought out some advice about our egress off of the Horn plateau. I've decided to have Simpson Air come back up and get us with the float plane.
The owner of Simpson air, Ted Grant advised us that the Willow lake river is a bit rough coming off the Horn. I'll quote him as best I can, "Imagine a twenty-five foot wide chute that's nothing but jagged rocks and foamin' white water. The river drops about 400 feet over a two mile stretch."
My first thought was..."COOL!!!" Then I actually did imagine it and thought "Not Cool, that's not cool at all."
I've had a lot of close calls up here,but never because I didn't heed a warning or sound advice.

the dirt on mom for jason

Sorry man, there is no dirt that I'm aware of (I don't deny the existence of said dirt, just my knowledge of it) frank and margaret were just old enough that most of their transgressions went by me and mike.
I do remember she taught me how to clean the bathroom, then gave me a snoopy sticker and told me if I clean the bathroom I get a sticker. man, I think I cleaned the bathroom three times that day, and used a whole can of Comet to get those stickers. Mike, were you in on the sticker deal?
Jason I've racked my brain, checked every file in this messy foolish mind, and the bathroom cleaning for a sticker is all I got for you.

A hammer story

When I first came North, I'm talking about literally the first two days. I flew from Halifax to Toronto,2 hours on the ground then on to edmonton, 2 hours on the ground then on to yellowknife, 15 minutes on the ground then on to Norman Wells. I was nervous about moving away from home, scared shitless about flying and excited about a new life all at the same time...soooo I drank my face off- straight thru to Norman Wells. My buddy met me at the airport and we went back to his house for a very late supper and a few last beers. It was past midnight and still broad daylight which was unnerving.
My buddy Kirk told me at about three thirty in the morning that i would be flying out on a "bush" plane in the morning to Fort Norman to start work- "what?!!??"
I wanted to sleep for a week, but I got up and got to the plane on time. About twenty minutes later I'm on the ground meeting my new employer. Straight to the job site. Straight up the scaffolding, three tiers. I'm holding up the faschia, the long straight piece of wood that hangs under the eaves at the edge of the roof, while the other guy is nailing it in place. he's taking his time. It's a nice sunny day. It's warm. the birds are singing the bees are buzzing around. Sure seems like a lot of bees up here, some of them are pretty big too. So I'm standing there, my left arm up over my head holding up this piece of wood, the other arm hanging loosely at my side, with my brand new 18oz. framing hammer in my hand.
Suddenly there's this knifing pain in my left shoulder- in a milisecond I glance down and see this HUGE "Bee" on my shoulder. Instinct takes over I swing to swat at the thing(had to be a right hand swing, I was holding the fashcia in my left) Of course, still had that framing hammer in my mitt when I swung at the bug-"THWAAACK!!!" That hammer hit me in the head, as hard as I could swing it. Off the scaffold I go AAAAHHH!!! boom into the mud and wet moss. Head pounding, shoulder bleeding. I look up at the other guy on the scaffold and he says"you had a bulldog on your shoulder."
That frigging thing was as big as my thumb, and took an enormous divot of flesh when it took off.
The guy tells me that everywhere else they would be called a horsefly. NOT BLOODY LIKELY!
But that's what it was, a bulldog. The northern steroidal version.
It's funny but everytime a hammer goes flying by(or into) my head I think about that story.
Thanks to my wife for inspiring this post(via the hammer)and helping me tidy up the mess.

Sis, you are one hundred percent correct. mom never made us do anything she wasn't doing right beside us, indeed, we even had to insist that she take a break when she would start having trouble breathing. I remember mike and I making deals with her that we would stay outside for another half hour or however many more loads of dirt if she would pack it in and go inside and rest.
I've outworked guys twice my size for twice as long in the worst kind of conditions without complaint up here(I worked construction for YEARS up here) and I've earned the respect of bosses and subordinates alike because of the work ethic I learned from mom. I don't regret it a bit, and you are right it was some of the best times growing up. But when I remember, and I reach back in time and touch that time and that place....

Now you can

I'm still figuring this stuff out, but apparently I've been discriminating against the anonymous users out there. Well no more of that.
All are welcome into the messy mind.
I got an e-mail from my brother mike, and he indeed does remember the time in the labor camp.
However, he credits that experience for making him the workaholic that he is today.
funny, to me "credit" and "blame" might be interchangeable words there.
I certainly recognise that it helped me come to terms with the inevitability of work.
WORK that demon time stealer who accepts no excuses. too cold? forget it. too hot? same thing.
I'll admit that I am a workaholic- no meetings for us though. 12 steps? jeez! who has the time?
I gotta get to work!

work, then and now

After getting a load of gravel in for the driveway and around the front of the house, I got to remembering(asI often do). I've told Miranda about when Mike and I were kids and how Mom always had a project on the go(usually landscaping-or flood control).
Mike and I had a choice, when school was out for the summer. We could work everyday for three hours-for twenty-five cents an hour...or(wait for it...)OR we could work everyday for three hours for free. It was our choice.
Our friends knew that if they were foolish enough to drop by, they too would be enlisted or maybe conscripted is a better word.
I remember on more than one occasion one of our friends would sneak up the driveway ninja style too peek and see if it was safe to enter the yard.
I bought my first boat with money I earned in Mrs. Brown's top-soil pits. It was an inflatable and cost forty-two dollars and came from, you guessed it, Canadian tire. Mike if you read this do you remember the old EM-GEE 4 ?

That reminds me...

A comment on the family blog by my older brother Frank got me thinking.
When my brother Mike and I were kids(I think I was six when this started) my mom said that if we let her cut our hair;as opposed to going to the barber in Bear River, she would put fifty cents in a jar every time. The plan was we were going to go to Disney World on the money my mom saved by cutting our hair and making our clothes instead of buying them. It took four years (and all of dads tips) but we went to Disney World.
The last time I paid for a haircut I was fifteen years old. I've been cutting my own hair since then. Granted, I don't have to spend a lot of time cutting my hair these days. It falls out fast enough on it's own. But like the lawyer that represents himself; so too does the barber that cuts his own hair have a fool for a client.

It got up to plus three today. I've been torturing myself with online shopping-catalog shopping from my two favorite places to shop: the fishin' hole and Canadian tire.
we're going to yellowknife tomorrow and I will be going to the crappy tire store there.
I'm not sure if it's just me, or maybe it's this way with all canadian men, but, I LOVE THAT SMELL!! , and they all smell the same. I remember going there with my mom and dad when me and my brother Mike were kids. looking at all that camping gear and new bikes, man that was the best.
But I digress, the reason for all the shopping of course is the impending summer. I like to be sitting ready, fishing rod in hand, tackle box stocked anew, waiting for the ice to crack.
This year, I will be chartering a floatplane and flying out on to the Horn plateau for some fishing.
Steven of the burnt leg will accompany me. we'll take my boat and take the willow river back down off the horn plateau. Hopefully there are no major falls or anything.

It's all about perspective

When I first moved to Fort Simpson, I met a fella on the jobsite and we became friends. One day after work he asked me if I wanted to go out on the river with him for the weekend, do some fishing, maybe shoot a moose.
I had never been out on the river yet at that point. So I agreed instantly. The added bonus- his wife would take beckers for the weekend.
So off we go, I'm loving it we're zooming down river. I've never seen this kinda big river, so I'm fascinated.
After about three hours we come to a confluence with another river-the North Nahanni river.
Nice big gravel bar to camp on, lots of wood handy, nice mountains..perfect.
We caught a few fish, played around in the boat. Shot off a couple boxes of shells target shooting. We stayed there for three days,and didn't see a soul.
My buddy, Stan, is Inuit from WAY up north. To say that these folks don't waste words is an understatement. Long periods of quiet and isolation don't seem to bother these hearty people either. I'll admit while we were there, there were some loooong silences.
But on the afternoon of the third day, and we haven't seen another soul for days...we hear a boat motor in the distance. I can barely see it going down the far side of the river.
Stan looks at me and says in all seriousness "Jeez, busy place around here".
I burst out laughing- to me we were two guys in the middle of nowhere, and if there was someone else there, who was so far away I could BARELY see them, that was fine. I still felt isolated, away from it all.
Stan felt crowded.
It's all about perspective.

okay, where was I?

oh, yeah read the previous post or this might not make sense.
The weather was getting worse, I don't know if it was snowing or just blowing snow, but I couldn't see the moon or stars or anything by this point.
I was getting a little bit nervous. I knew enough to know that if I walked by the camp, or worse the wrong direction I was done.
The boys would notice me gone at some point, but the helicopter wouldn't be able to look for me til daylight.
So I sat down for a second and tried to imagine I was looking down from above kinda like a google earth shot. I knew where I was sitting, I knew where the boulder was I had a smoke by-and the direction I had approached it from.
BOB'S YER UNCLE as I say, and off I went, secure in the knowledge that over the next eskar was the camp, by my reckoning.
Man, when I got to the top of the hill-(Jeez I still get goosebumps when I think about this!) and saw below me-...NOTHING-every direction, as far as I could see(wasn't far because of the snow)
nothing. An unbidden google earth type image popped into my mind of me standing alone in all that frozen nothing. Oddly enough, I was able to instantly push that thought aside, and convince myself that if I kept walking, til the NEXT eskar, the camp would be behind that one for sure.
I couldn't even see the next eskar and the longer I walked the more doubt started to whisper in my mind.
It sure seemed like a long time, but finally I came to the steep side of a long curving eskar I climbed to the top and there on the other side were the tents, all warm and glowing in the night.
When the wind turned I could hear the generator chugging away.
I walked down into camp, and into the kitchen tent. There were four drillers playing crib and this one guy says to me " where were you cookie?" (cookie a nickname reference to camp cook)
My knees were knocking, my face was covered with frost, "Nowhere", I told him " I just went for a walk."

lost in the barrens

When Chuck Fipke first discovered diamonds out on the barrenlands it set off a staking rush that hasn't been seen since they found gold in the Yukon.
Claim staking is a very labor intensive activity. Then once a claim has been staked and recorded, the company or individual, as the case may be, must "work" the claim. This usually means moving around the claim with a big drill, and taking core samples of the rock at certain depths to see what was there.
When working out on the barrenlands you stay in tents, big canvas tents. Usuallly four guys to a tent.
I was working as a cook and camp man. It was my first trip out on the barrens and I was jazzed!
My day started at about 4a.m. and usually ended at about 9p.m. There was nothing to do in camp, there was no TV, just books, magazines and newspapers.
One night after supper, it was about 6p.m., I decided to go for a walk and check out the lay of the land. It was just coming up on twilight but you could still see pretty good as there was not a cloud in the sky and about a 4/5ths moon just coming up. It was about -35 and there was a stiff breeze(the only kind you get out there).
So I'm walking along, the cold air biting my nose, back of my throat, and lungs.
At the end of the last Ice age as the ice sheets retreated back northward, they left behind these big, long tall piles of gravel and rock called eskars. These eskars are pretty much the only physical feature out there (no trees or anything) They wind along, stop, start, turn back on themselves. I guess I had climbed over a few went and around a few more. I figured I'd have a cigarrette and then head back to camp. I crouched down in the lee side of a boulder and lit my smoke.
As I watched the wind grab the smoke and my breath and instantly carry it away I got a funny feeling. But I didn't know why....until I looked down and saw my feet buried in the snow.
I looked at my tracks in the snow and saw them filling like a time lapse film.
I stood up and stepped out from behind the rock. My tracks were gone. shit. okay.
It was considerably darker out by this time. I kinda remembered which way I approached the boulder from, so off I went. Around the end of one eskar, over the top of the next.
I was breathing heavy, and decided to stop and have a look around, I climbed to the top of the eskar and looked. Nothing. In every direction. Right to the horizon, nothing.
My gut crunched up to the size of a walnut. I had no idea where camp was. My tracks had been obliterated by the blowing snow. I was lost in the barrens at night, in what was quickly becoming very bad weather.

just a story

When I lived in Yellowknife, I guess I had been there about a year maybe a little more. This would be about maybe 15 or 16 years ago now.(where does the time go?) Anyways I got a chance to move in to this really nice big log cabin about 8 miles outside of yellowknife, right on the yellowknife river. It was awesome. Back then even 2 or 3 miles outside of town and you were in the bush.
It was a cool place to live and I really felt like I was doing the farley mowat thing(I would take that theme to it's limits)but walking into town absolutley sucked(I once walked in to town and back 3 times in one day..at -30)but I loved it.
One of the things that I had to do was fill the water tank from the river, we had an 1100 gallon tank in the basement and we would run this great big long firehose from the tank to the river and put a pump on it and fill the tank. The house was maybe 40 yards from the river.
In the summer you would put he pump on the end of the dock, in winter you'd drill a hole in the ice.
Usually this was a two man operation, you'd need a guy at the tank in the house to yell out the window and tell you when to shut off the pump.(or you'd flood the basement)
I timed it a few times and then could pretty much do it on my own. The only trick was getting that firehose rolled up and back inside before it froze.
One day I had just finished drilling a new hole and decided to go for a walk up the river before
I filled the tank. So I started walking up the river, the ice was about 21/2 feet thick. i walked maybe thirty yards up from where I had drilled my hole and my dog stopped and started barking. I walked about ten feet more, told the dog to come, she wouldn't.
I took one more step...Bam! right through the ice! my arms caught on the ice and the current of the river started pulling me sideways under the ice. My brain never processed information so fast in my entire life. " I'm dead" I thought. "this is what kills people up here" I remember thinking. The water was so cold-I panicked, I went completely bats**t. The riverbank was only about 8 or 10 feet away and the water was about 10 feet deep. I'm splashing and gasping, the dog was on the bank barking. I got my belly up on the ice and pushed forward I grabbed some willows and pulled myself up over the bank and lay down. I instantly felt relief and then terror as I realized that even on the bank I was screwed. I was soaked, It was about -30. I honestly thought I was going to die before I got back to the cabin.
I got up and started walking my teeth were chattering and every breath came with an involuntary uunnnhhh! every breath uuunnnhhh, uuunnnhhh step after step along the bank back toward the house. My boots crunching on the snow. crunch, crunch uuunnh crunch crunch uuunnh. My footsteps and breathing giving me a rythm to focus on. crunch crunch uuuunnnh.
Finally I made it to the short hill up to the cabin. My clothes were already almost frozen stiff, I could still move my legs but it was getting harder to do.
When I got back to the house I had another problem-there was no one else home. And I couldn't open the door my hands were useless. The door had been booted in previously and repaired hastily. So I figured I could maybe bash my way in.
BANG! nothing. I swear I had tears in my eyes(I thought I was done for) But I tried again and crack! the doorframe cracked, one more time and I was in.
It took me awhile to get out of my frozen clothes, but I was okay.

the ship

The oil lamp casts a shadow on the wall, and it dances and sways in the slight breezes that play with the flame on the wick. I notice and exhale a little harder and grin as the shadows dance.

The cool blue formica table top is cool on my cheek as I sit in the chair, with my head lain down on the table.

In an instant the wind is howling, sea spray and rain. The deck tilts wildly, then dives down forward into the trough of a wave; as it comes up the other side the wave breaks over the bow.

The sails are cracking tight overhead. A large groan and the big ship crests the wave and dives down into the next trough.

Water runs everywhere on the deck, the ship pitches suddenly to one side. A loud creaking cracking sound and the ship seems to turn in place.

My face is wet. I close my eyes.

When I open them, I'm awake, the power is back on, mom has put out the oil lamp and is making us go to bed.

When we were kids and the power would go out in the winter(it happened lots) we would use mom's old newfie oil lamps in the kitchen, and she would tell us stories about growing up in a fishing outport in Newfoundland, or maybe dad would tell a rare story from his time on the ships in the navy.

That dream I had was SOOO real at the time(I was like 5 or 6 yrs old). I kind of thought that little ship was maybe magic or something.

And since all I have to do is look at it, and I'm that little kid again for a second or two, I guess it kinda is. it's my most prized possesion. my talisman.

Why?

Good question. Honestly I think it's because of all the hours I spend at work when I'm not busy.
Lots of time to think and read and then think about what I've read.
I guess I'll probably just ramble on about some of the crazy stuff I think about as well as some of the normal mainstream things that I'm sure we all think about.
I read a lot of books about history,both modern and ancient. Religious history (I know weird, huh?) Astronomy and theoretical physics.
So I'll be yakking about everything from ancient cave art, to the theory of faster than light travel,with a few childhood reminiscences thrown in for good measure.
I also may at times comment on current events, but I'll try keep that to a minimum.
no promises though.
I guess I'm hoping that maybe this blog will help me tidy up the messy mind of a fool.