At the beach

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I washed off the magnificent speckled trout and got it ready to gut. It was caught earlier this year and spent some time in the deep freeze before I got around to making a nice meal out of it. Slitting open its soft underbelly, a rather large stomach made this fish a little more interesting. Nestled in its stretched stomach was another speckled trout, this one a mere panfry. I noted that perhaps using a much larger lure might get these monsters to bite my hook.

I quartered the fish and boiled it. Facebook helps passing the time and before long the fish is magically cooked. Out come the expensive blueberries from the fridge and the deliciously slick rendered bear fat. Yes, I’m making sigamoon, an extremely popular fish-and-berry salad.

After the delicacy there is an extreme need to escape from a house that used a stove in 28-degree weather. So we pile into the pickup and head down to the beach. The strong winds wick off any sweat and the dry warmth turns everyone into mermaids. The tiny cove – conveniently shallow for the young ones – is just right as the tide was going out. The beach is serenely relaxing with no one mentioning the ice still floating out on the Hudson Bay.

Days like this are a rare event. Just enough heat and wind to keep persistent black flies, mosquitoes and horseflies away from delicate child skin. No loud blaring music here, just a beautiful summer day that begs for a dip in the cool waters of the Great Whale River. I’m sure you’ll find hundreds of similar scenes across the north of families dipping their toes in lakes and rivers and perhaps even in the Arctic Ocean for a few brave souls.

Last year, we were hit with a heat wave that scorched the earth. Nearly everyone found refuge in the cool winds that come off the waters. Children and adults were frolicking about and then, suddenly, someone pointed to the river. Nothing… then it popped out again… a seal swimming up river.

The screams from frightened parents as they called the kids back to shore. Dunn dunnn, dunn dunn, the Jaws theme popped into my head. Heck, aren’t seals the friendly ones? Aren’t they eaten by sharks? Don’t we eat them too? But no, the seal disappeared and swam off. I’m just glad we don’t have any real sharks around here. We probably netted them into extinction millennia ago and had to settle for seal liver (my personal favourite) instead of shark-fin soup. Perhaps climate change might, by chance, sway giant white sharks to venture into our salted bays.

Sharks aren’t the problem up here, it’s the killer whales that just might mistake you for a slow swimming seal, their favourite food. Nothing like human flesh to spice up your diet when the orca is concerned. Humans come in different flavours, and recently, poutine-flavoured people are just beginning to catch on in the predator world. After all, what’s left to eat out there that isn’t contaminated or disturbed by the world’s human problems. If I were an educated orca, I wouldn’t question the validity of such reasoning,

This is really one of the reasons I like the north, the edible fish that abound in nearly every lake, river and creek. It really is a fisher’s paradise. No sharks to make it interesting, but I’m happy biting into my fish instead of it chopping me in half after I land it on shore or in my tiny canoe.

The beach is a great place in the summer, when the wind is right and enough clouds to help prevent skin cancer. The sand in between my toes, the kids screaming, the total relaxation …

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