Tilt Under Northern Lights

2017
Archive quality pen and ink on 140 lb. cold pressed acid free watercolour paper
18” x 24”

It's empty and cold in the trappers tilt on this night. The trapper is gone back to his family down river, possibly for Christmas, may have made it out just after freeze up...

The fall's catch of fur--martin, mink, weasel and lynx--all dried and ready for the sale at the HBC trading post...

Hopefully the price is good, so he can pay off his debt and have enough money left over to buy what his family needs to get through the next few months when he comes back here, to spend lonely days and nights hunting and trapping.

Now most of the old trap lines and tilts are gone, some returned to nature through aging and natural reclamation; though in recent years, flooding of land to accommodate hydro electric projects seems to be the norm.

It's a land our generation will never see, where our forefathers hunted and trapped to ensure our grandmothers and aunts and uncles would survive in Labrador. All we see is great sheets of ice in the winter, covering a history that remains in words and almost forgotten stories, told by an ever decreasing group of people struggling to remember...

The beauty of a tilt under the northern lights...