Postcards from the Edge Episode XI Part XIII

So a few interesting notes since I've been up here: I finally went fishing for the first time in North America last week. After all that delicious fish in NWT, I felt maybe it was time to try to get some of my own (once I got over the hypocritical guilt pangs of deliberately trying to hunt something down to eat it). So I got myself a fishing licence and went out on the water (appropriately wearing my Tilley - that really made me look like I was supposed to go fish). Of course, I was the total city-slicker girl; someone else had to bait my hook with live minnows. But surprisingly, I was the only one in a boat to actually get a bite. Managed to land a 10 inch walleye without a net (though, of course, I screamed so loud when the fish landed, flopping around in the boat, they didn't really have a chance to grab a net, and then with my attempts to jump out of the boat to avoid getting slimy fish flesh all over myself... it was a pretty feeble, stereotypically city-girl response to catching a fish, I must embarassingly say). Bleah. Of course, then one of the men had to unhook my fish, hold it and measure it for me before it was determined to be too small to take home for dinner, so they threw it back in. -That- was rather anticlimactic. I didn't even get to eat my prey after all of that.... though I then returned home and had some previously caught pickerel, so I guess over all, I did get some fish for dinner, so that was good... :)
Yet another thing in the roster of "domestic skills learned abroad": I've learned how to can and preserve things; isn't that bizarre? I haven't yet made jam (on the other hand, blueberry season is wayyyy over here, so likely won't), but I did learn how to actually make things that can go in jars so they won't go bad.... that's small potatoes for some of the people on this list, but it's a big deal for me, so that goes right up there with scrapbooking... :)
Apparently, there have been many more bears wandering around town the last little while. Ever since the politically-motivated-by-people-in-the-south-elimination-of-the-spring-bear-hunt-because-bears-are-so-cute-we-shouldn't-kill-them three years ago, there have been many more bears wandering around where people actually live up in the North. I haven't seen any personally (yet), though there is basically just bush behind my house, and most of the bear sightings have been up in my area of town (in fact, the week before I arrived, a bear was wandering around in front of the emergency dept of the hospital). I really really really really want to see one, but I hope I don't, if that makes sense. The other night I was walking home from someone's house who lives up in the north end of town about a half hour from my house, walking by the (unlit) ball park and the (unlit) curling club and the (unlit) bush, kind of far-ish from any other houses, and thought nothing of it, until a couple of nurses told me the next day that that was not a terribly intelligent thing to do. Not that any people would harm me necessarily, but that the bears could... yikes...
Love you all!
julia