Winter by Cornelius Osgood

Fine Print: This book takes place in Canada, not Alaska, and the author isn’t from here either, but the experiences mirror events here and Juneau author Nick Jans wrote the introduction.

What I’m reading now: Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith

In 1928, an ethnographer name Cornelius Osgood plopped himself down in remote far north of Canada. As he admits in the forward, his documentation of the Athapaskan peoples was a failure, but in return, the chronicle of his winter makes for a fascinating read. Osgood first published this book in England in 1953. I read the 2006 publication by Bison Books and University of Nebraska Press, which includes a welcome introduction by Juneau author Nick Jans, who also wrote “The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell’s Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears.”

This book contains compelling descriptions of the day-to-day adventures of surviving in such a sparse, cold village, a village where the inhabitants are quick to help with fishing nets and proper clothing, but where friendships can be harder to maintain than a fire made of twigs in a drafty cabin.

Osgood provides great detail on winter fishing, mushing, how to warm his dwellings, buildings and other seemingly mundane aspects of winter village life. His observations bring to life the area around and beyond Great Bear Lake. One time he is on the trail, sharing a tent with a group of people. Some are sleeping as he warms his biscuits up next to the fire. One woman sits up, spits out her tobacco juice then lies back down to sleep. Some juice gets on his biscuits, but he eats them anyway because he is that hungry and the rolls are almost thawed.

The scene of him pulling fish from the frozen lake, when the icy water is warmer than the air so the fish and net freeze to his skin, is intense.

If you aren’t into dogs, fishing or man-making-it-in-the-wild, some sections might drag. If you can’t get enough of winter adventures, pick up this book.

I’m going to pass on my copy to a friend who has been reading Alaska and mountaineering tales such as “Into the Wild” and “Into Thin Air” by Jon Krakauer. This book will provide a nice contrast to the grand adventures because while it is seemingly tame in drama, life-threatening moments are bound to happen when traveling by dog sled in isolation. The depictions of the cold have such matter of factness that you can see how it can be a nice day when it warms up to zero.

He does have a patronizing tone toward Native peoples, but given the time, language barriers and relatively limited amount of white people that had visited the area, I can forgive him. He respects the help he receives and knowledge they have, but sometimes lumps their decisions, dogs and way of life together dismissively.

“Winter” makes me have more respect and understanding of people who do the Iditarod and other winter craziness. And here I brag about running in below five weather! Hah! I have a heated shower to return to. But Bill, a white man married to a Native woman who befriends Osgood, says that up there, they appreciate winter because the fishing is better and there are no mosquitoes or sand flies.