Arctic Sea Smoke

The track made good sometimes takes British Airways flight BA 0085 along the south shore of Great Slave Lake on its route from London, Heathrow to Vancouver International. I recently had a window seat on the starboard side of the aircraft and enjoyed a magnificent view of the lake and even a glimpse of Yellowknife off in the distance. However, I would rather have been sitting on the port side for I remembered the country south of Great Slave Lake in intimate detail even though many years have gone by.

I contented myself with bringing up an image of Yatsore Lake. I could see it in my mind's eye. From the air it looks like a floppy glove with curly fingers. Yatsore just has to be one of the shallowest lakes in the whole North West Territories, a pertinent factor in our story. During the short summer it is warm enough to swim in and of course during the fall it freezes over quickly but that's not until sometime in October.

The cool weather starts sometime near the end of August. Bobby Heron and I were paddling across the lake one day, when the first arctic breeze heralded winter. The temperature dropped to a few degrees above freezing. It was a bit cold on the hands, so every once in a while we dipped our hands in the water to warm them. The next day a plane came to take us south to Uranium City for a little R & R.

Two or three days later, we were heading north again over Tazin Lake and then making a beeline for Hill Island Lake which was right on our course. Yatsore lay in the distance. It felt like coming home again, for Bobby and I had spent most of the summer there collecting rock samples as we had turned up some pitchblende, which had made our geiger counter zing. We had about three or four days of work ahead of us and then we'd be wrapping it up until the following spring or so we thought.

Tony, the company pilot dropped us off along with a generous supply of grub.

"See you on Sunday," were his last words as he taxied out for takeoff.

Bobby and I set to work, tagging the claims that we had staked and gathering a pitiful pile of rock samples. In two days we had finished.

"Time to go hunting," Bobby said. "I'll teach you a thing or two."

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