When you live in the north, it's important to have friends in the south. GOOD friends, or family, who like you enough to go out of their way for you.  I have a daughter in Toronto who regularly stuffs express mail envelopes with the things I can't live without, but this week she is going way beyond that.  This week she is buying me a kayak. 

You can do practically anything on the internet, but buying a used kayak from a private seller is problematic, for obvious reasons.  He sends me pictures of a lovely boat, but is it HIS lovely boat?  Is there a hole in the back side big enough to put my head through?  You see my problem.  So, my darling daughter, who knows nothing about kayaks, is going to see the seller and the boat, armed with a copy of the picture he sent me.  If everything is as advertised she will buy it, and then she really gets to prove she loves me...she has to get it home.  It's a small kayak, as kayaks go, but it's not going to fit into the trunk of her Focus.  It has to go on top.  So, why are they making cars with no rain gutters to clamp to and holes to tie through anyway?  There have been a couple of phone calls, a trip to Canadian Tire to get a foam cartop cradle kit, and now she's ready to go ... I hope.  I'm telling myself that the guy who's selling the boat must know how to tie it down, and it's only half an hour on the 401, and there's a Canadian Tire near the seller's house for emergency supplies (I checked).  But I won't completely be sure it's mine until suppertime Sunday when I hear that they made it.

Then I will owe her, big time.

With my southern expectations bolstered by reports from family of rain and above zero temperatures, it's becoming hard to appreciate the cold weather, but this time of year really is delightful here.  The snow is still very much with us, more falling regularly now that it's warmer, but the sun is so warm in the afternoons that I'm tempted to sit myself in a sheltered snowbank and take a nap.  The time change has given us evening light, making me feel more active at the end of the work day.  The hibernation mode that I, and many others, go into during the northern winter, is ending.

It's been too cold here to get out much for several weeks, but this past weekend the afternoon temperature went up to -15.  It's amazing how warm that feels when you've been dealing with windchills to -40.  So, I geared up and went for a walk, following the ice road out to the first river crossing.  I love to listen to the silence out there - nothing but the wind.  There is nothing as quiet as frozen landscape.  I sat for awhile on a snowbank in the sun, having gotten warm on the walk out. The wind, which had been behind me on the way out, made the return walk much colder and I arrived home chilled; a good reminder of the lesson the Inuit taught me: not to get too hot or too cold out in the cold.

Now it is back down to -23 with 10 degrees of windchill - no sitting in snowbanks for me.