A Thousand words

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. What then are a thousand words worth? Are they devalued by a picture? What is the current exchange rate? Might I wait until a picture would only cost me 997 words? I am a northerner. I am a writer. A storyteller. A wordsmith if you will. I would love to paint a picture of the north for you in flowing colors; with perspective and line and form. But I cannot. I cannot draw. I cannot paint. I can barely make a straight line. Truth be told I can barely write. Were I born three hundred years ago I would not even be able to make my thoughts known as you would probably not be able to read the drunken scrawl that is my pitiful handwriting. But today I accept the challenge and I will attempt in one thousand words to tell you something of what it means to be a northerner. I will paint you a picture without paint. But most assuredly with perspective and line and form.
I once heard a Yukon artist say that when she painted the summer landscape it was almost monochromatic; being dominated by only two colors, blue and green. The blue of sky and water, the green of the hills and the water. She had to look for color. She found it in the foreground, not the far ground. It was there where she least expected it, at her feet. It was in the crevices of the rocks and in the thin and nearly non-existent soil. But it was there. In the form of tiny plants and passing butterflies. In the north life is said to cling. It does not cling. It bounds forth from every nook and cranny. It bounds and abounds, it is verdant, blatant, adamant, even rampant. It does not shirk or cling like some furtive thing. It does not skulk or cringe. It bursts forth. In every spring it surges forth with the first crack of the frozen river. The crack becomes a fissure and the fissure a lead. The pent up force of stream and river cracks and breaks with a force that awes the viewer and the listener alike. The blind would have no less a sense of awe when they witnessed the Mackenzie’s break up. To hear the huge sheets of ice, weighing more than a luxury liner; grating and crashing into each other and the shore. To hear them crushing trees and rolling boulders then size of Chryslers on the river bottom.
For here as anywhere water is the fountain of life; if not of youth. And once unlocked from winter’s grip water transforms the north. It beckons the migrations, the return of Swan and goose. It beckons them back to the land of their birth to once again complete the cycle and bring forth even more life. If you have ever seen the sky full of geese in wave after wave to the distant horizon you would never think that life in the north clings. Likewise the caribou. In herds that pour through the Yukon’s mountain passes like grains of sand through a child’s fingers. Caribou surging through the breaking Porcupine river; so full of the driving force of life that they plunge into the frigid waters amongst the sheets of broken ice, to complete the journey home. I have even seen groups of animals climbing onto an ice pan to use it as a lifer-raft to reach the other shore; in a race to reach the calving grounds before the birth of their young. Pursued to the tree-line by another animal; another factor in the equation of life for the caribou, the wolf. But the wolf itself must find a place to have its’ young.
All the while that the fauna struts and frets its’ brief hour upon the stage the flora is bursting forth. If that artist found summer a monochrome of green; she could find; in the arctic spring a polychrome in just that one color. For in early May the long days bring the sun that unlocks the soil and frees up the trees to paint the hills in vibrant and verdant profusion. In greens that are so bright in the new-found sun that they are almost yellow. Nearly neon in their brightness. When backlit by the morning light the hills themselves seem to glow. Likewise at dusk the hill; like the moon itself take on a light, though not their own. Soon, so soon that the snow has not even fled the field of battle, its’ head bowed by the soft but relentless rains, the crocus appears. I have seen it smother an alpine hill north even of the Arctic Circle. The vibrant hues of magenta as sweet as any orchid in any hot-house. No skulking here. The hills are fairly blushing crocuses apologetically almost for such an ostentatious show of life’s profusion.
As soon as the water pools in the awoken soil the insects return. The air will soon carry the buzz of the bee; feasting on a banquet of bouquets. The air too will be home to the drone of mosquitoes and black flies; not to mention the aptly named bulldog that will bite you through a pair of blue jeans. If you questioned the tenacity of life up here then stand at the edge of a swamp at twilight. You will have more life flying around your exposed skin than you thought possible.
Life does not cling up here. It defies the climate whose extremes would deny it. It flourishes with a flourish. It starts with a bang in the opening act as the house lights go up. And what lights they are; in full glory around the clock. As the lights fade and the stage goes dark the flora and fauna have already laid the seed; already raged against the dying of the light. This is my picture, my thousand words