D. Day: The D is for Demobe.

It's all over but the waiting...

The punctuated field season came to a close this week, it was never advertised as being long or arduous and it certainly lived up to it’s billing on both accounts. It’s demise most likely couldn’t have come at a better time either as Mother Nature was surely about to encourage us to leave shortly anyway. Autumn rewarded us with some stunning visuals as the tundra had already turned from green to the brilliant reds and yellows that greeted us upon arrival. We were fortunate enough to have clear skies present during the first week so as to witness some of the most amazing displays of northern lights I have ever seen. Those conditions of course cannot last forever and eventually the days of temperatures approaching 20ºc. were to come to an end, cloud cover and increasing strong winds were to be the norm. Our un-insulated canvas walled tents would soon not be enough to help keep the heat provided by our oil stoves in let alone keeping the elements out.

Time to go home.

All that was left to do was to take down those very canvas tents, a few pieces of the infrastructure like the generator that provided us with our power and our satellite system that gave us our link to the outside world. Much like many of the other duties I had to perform these last 14 days these chores would not take much time either. All that was left was the waiting and reliving the moments I have heard so many times before:

“When’s the plane coming?”

“Has it left yet?”


The only difference this time being that while those words were internalized they were in fact coming from me.


The Freedom Plane Arrives

Loaded up.

The awkward crawl back to the right seat

The last look at camp
Eventually that plane would arrive and spirit us back to Yellowknife which was still pleasantly covered in green, the trees yet to change colour like our weeds had done weeks before and at the time of our departure had rapidly been shedding their foliage. One more night in the Territories before the next flight that will take us further south to our respective homes and the opportunity to experience the transition from summer to autumn once again.
The last look at Yellowknife