I took a walk in the woods the other day and when I looked carefully through the layers of decaying leaves I could see signs that some animals had been busy preparing for the coming cold weather. Squirrels were building nests filled with leaves, toilet paper, cardboard and pink insulation inside shacks, outhouses and cottage garages. Mice were scurrying around the leaf litter searching for more places to store food or find new supplies. In the trees, the chipmunks were chattering in my general direction hoping that I would leave while they prepared their shelters for the cold.

When you think about it, we are a lot like these little animals in many ways. Sometimes, the only difference seems to be that we walk on two legs instead of four. These days, most of my activity surrounds the fact that I have to prepare for winter in one way or another. It is not so much for survival at this point but more for convenience and forward planning. I busy myself cleaning up the yard so that the lawn furniture won’t become buried in snow or at worse, I won’t be walking into fluffy layers of white stuff only to twist my ankle on underlying clutter. I search through the garage to decide on what is safe to freeze and what is not. It will be 40 below zero in a few months. I must also finish any outside work around the house because it is not easy to shovel frozen sand and dirt or to move heavy material around in freezing weather.

I learned about winter preparation up on the coast in Attawapiskat. It was simply the safe and wise thing to do in preparing for winter. After all, in remote communities you don’t have the luxury of hiring others to do the work for you. In the fall of the year most people could be seen putting away summer items like canoes or all terrain vehicles. It was necessary to clean up the yard because of safety. You would not want to step on a sharp or unstable object hidden in the snow. In the far north, if you don’t clean up your yard before freeze up, outdoor clutter can turn your driveway into an obstacle course. Things become frozen in the earth and mud like concrete.

In Attawapiskat, our family owns and operates a contracting business. Our yard was always filled with construction and building supplies, tractors, broken down trucks, trailers and other vehicles. Dad always rounded up his sons for a day or two in the fall to prepare our yard for the coming freeze. We never really enjoyed this yard work but we understood the importance of this job. Sleds, snowmachines and any other machinery to be used for the winter had to be put up on blocks or cribs. There is nothing worse than extricating a sled that has frozen into the ground. Any wood or debris had to be cleaned up. Something as innocent as a board or post stuck in the mud could become a hidden danger under a blanket of snow.

One activity that we always enjoyed was taking the family canoe out of the water. Back then, we had no easy way of hauling a large 24 foot canoe from the shore, up a steep bank, across town and resting it in our backyard. Normally, this activity called for extra help from our neighbours or our cousins. We all piled into a half ton truck and drove down to the bank. After parking the truck as close to the shore as possible, the boat was then man handled up and over the rear box of the truck so that the canoe rested upside down and broadside across the truck. This was an annual spectacle that always drew small crowds of onlookers. It was as though we were in some strange parade as our group hauled the huge canoe like some docile monster on a float through the middle of the community. It was a slow parade as it was necessary to move the truck along carefully in between huge potholes in the road while children ran alongside taunting the driver and movers with the hope of more excitement. As we slowly moved along we found ourselves waving and greeting our friends and neighbours who had come out to watch the great green canvas canoe take its annual ride to its winter resting place.

No wonder the small animals scurrying here and there preparing for winter remind me of we humans. Our efforts and tasks are pretty much the same. We are all getting ready for the snow and ice. Whether it be hauling a canoe or cleaning up the yard in our case or hiding nuts and pine cones as in the case of the squirrels; we are all in a hurry to make things more comfortable with the coming of freeze up. Maybe the geese have the better idea in heading south for the winter. 

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