This tale happened decades ago when Yellowknife was a much smaller place and most people knew each other.
It was before snow machines became popular and most local lakes in winter didn’t have human tracks around them, let alone across them.
One day a young fellow we knew walked into the Miner’s Mess and sat down at one of the communal tables. His lips were cracked, his face was bright red, blistered and pealing from a severe case of sun and wind burn. Before anyone could ask, he launched into the story of his ordeal.
He and a buddy had decided to take a walk to his buddy’s parent's cabin to enjoy a relaxing long weekend. They planned to do some serious drinking, smoking and communing with nature. On a sunny Friday afternoon, with a bit of a breeze but not too cold, they drove out to the lake. I forget whether it was Prosperous or Prelude Lake, but the cabin was on the far side.
They parked the car and started to load up the sled they had brought. They also had a beer. Their motto was, “The more we drink now, the less to haul in.”
They each had a packsack with their clothes, they had a couple boxes of food, a bottle of Irish cream whisky for their coffee, a couple or three bottles of hard stuff and six cases of beer. This was back in the days when liquor and beer came in heavy glass bottles and food was in heavy-duty cans. They also each brought a rife and some ammunition, just in case they wanted to shoot something.
Getting from the parking lot to the lake was tougher than they expected because of drifted snow and things kept falling off the sled. So, they had to go back to the car to get more rope to tie things down. Once they got onto the lake proper, things went a little faster. I should point out here, that they had neglected to bring snowshoes, because they would be walking on the lake and, “How deep could the snow be? Right?”
They tried one walking in front breaking trail while the other followed pulling the sled. That didn’t work out well. So, they tried walking side by side and that worked out less well. Eventually, they added another loop of rope, so they could walk, one behind the other, but both pulling the sled. They stopped for another break and another beer. The far shore didn’t look any closer but when they looked back, they were a long way from their parked vehicle.
They soon entered into that nebulous void some refer to as the middle of the lake, even though they had a long way to go before they actually reached the middle. Also, the sun was blindingly bright, and the breeze was turning into a bit of a wind. However, being young and foolish, they weren’t about to head back now, so onward they went.
Walk. Walk. Walk. Trudge. Trudge. Trudge. Walk. Trudge. Stumble. Walk.
It was turning out to be a lot longer of a day than they had planned. They were getting hungry. So, they stopped for another break and tried to rummage through the food boxes to find something to eat that didn’t need to be cooked. Because in the middle of the lake, they had no way to cook anything. Potato chips and jam sandwiches, washed down with beer, was their dinner, not the T-bone steaks that they had planned on.
It was sunset by the time they got to the cabin, exhausted. They got a fire going in the wood stove and sat in chairs huddled beside the stove, wrapped in blankets. They managed to get some sleep but had to feed the fire often. Come morning, they realized they had burnt up all the wood in the cabin. With a less then sharp axe and a Swede saw that had seen better days, they went out to get some more wood, before they could even have coffee and breakfast. It was a long day of cutting wood, trying to keep warm and drinking beer.
They made it through another night but by Sunday morning, they were out of wood again and had had enough. They decided to cut their long weekend of, “rest and relaxation,” short. They had had more than enough of communing with nature. So, they walked back across the lake, on another very sunny and windy day, pulling their sled behind them.
So, be careful what you wish for, it might not turn out quite as well as you thought. Have a happy and safe St. Patrick’s Day.