Updates and possible adventures

Wow, nearly a month since I last blogged.

I like to think that I've stopped blogging because (in addition to taking lots of great vacations this summer) I finally started writing the long-awaited Saga of the Canadian North. The one that Moxie and I have outlined, researched, even travelled to three different far-flung Canadian cities to research, courtesy of various archives and distant relatives. But now I've actually started writing. And I like to think that I am using up my writing energy there, rather than procrastinating it away on blogging.

The book is painful. At every, single, sentence, I am confronted with questions. It's 1859 in what will eventually become Winnipeg, Manitoba. My protagonist is 10 years old. What does she eat for breakfast? How does she address her mother? What does she buy at the store? How high is the river running?

At the same time, our story is following real facts wherever we have them, which just goes to show that truth really is stranger than fiction. Even as I struggle with a dearth of knowledge about the details of everyday life, I am paralyzed by an embarrassment of historical riches. Floods. Political intrigue. The first steamboat. An honest-to-gosh plague of locusts, for heaven's sake. I could not possibly make that up.

I know the exact plot of land that my ancestors lived on in 1859. I can see it on a map. I can find out how high the floodwaters of 1826 and 1852 rose on that exact plot of land. I know the names of their neighbors, their clergy, their teachers. I know how many oxen and horses they reported to the census-takers. I know the location of the general store, the post office, and the saloon.

So my goal is to crank this story out, and take a couple more research trips next year, ideally one to Winnipeg in February or March (god help me), and one to the Northwest Territories next summer.

Enrico really wants to go along to the far north. He is proposing a month-long driving trip, with the dogs. To a place 1,500 miles due north of here. A place with 35,000 people spread over an area two-thirds the size of Mexico. Where you have to carry your next tank of gas with you. Where the only animal hospital - should our geriatric dogs require one - is in Yellowknife, a good 250 miles away from the places I really need to visit. Where the town has only two restaurants, but six air charter companies. Where the largest surviving herd of wild bison in North America roams. And bears - lots of bears.

In other words, it would take some planning.

But we're considering it. What the heck, you only live once, and if Enrico wants to see the Great Slave Lake and the mighty Mackenzie River - see it he shall!