Day 31 (June 14). Crossing the 60th Parallel

From: High Level, AB

To: Hay River, NWT

Miles today: 194

Total miles: 7286

The cold overcast continues, but I am driving on asphalt so I don’t mind.  I headed north out of High Level on AB 35 this morning, following the Hay River, which flows north into the Great Slave Lake.  Just like Wikipedia said, pretty soon there were no more farms or pastures; just trees.  There continue to be stands of Aspen, but they are growing rarer amongst the evergreens. 

After a couple of hours, I came to the border crossing with the Northwest Territories at the 60^th parallel. There were a number of other people there and at the co-located visitor center, and most seemed to be staying in High Level on business and popped up here on a Sunday so they could say they did it.  Hey, that’s what I would do!

The road changes its number from AB 35 to NWT 1 and continues north.  Not far from the border are two major waterfalls on the Hay River, just a few miles apart.  The upstream (southern) falls are Alexandra falls, and the downstream (northern) is Louise Falls.  People who had been there before said the water level was very low, but they still looked pretty spectacular to me.

Left: Alexandra Falls.  Right: Louise Falls, a few miles downstream.

The interpretive signs in the park gave an interesting account of the Dene First Nations (one doesn’t say “Dene Indians”) who have lived in the region for thousands of years and continue to do so today.  There are five major tribes within this group; here is a map.  As I wrote in an earlier blog, the terms “Slave” and “Slavey” were what their adversaries called them, not what they called themselves.  Thus, if we had to do it again, we might call the big lake to the north the “Great Dene Lake.” 

Map of the five Dene tribes: South Slavey (here), North Slavey, Gwich'in, Dogrib, and Chipewyan

The Dene covered a large range, from northern Alberta to the Great Slave Lake and beyond.  The Hay River was one of their major transportation routes, and carrying their loaded canoes around the twin falls (about 6 kilometers) was a necessary and undoubtedly unpleasant task. What did the Dene think of these falls?  You might think that as a practical people they considered them a spectacular nuisance. But in what seems to be an quasi-fundamental attribute of the human animal, they considered them sacred. From the interpretive signs:

The land is the Dene lifeline here on earth and the land links us to the Creator.  Places where the Creator has placed special features such as these falls remind us of our mortality. At such sacred sites, ceremonies and offerings must be made to the Creator and to the spirits watching over the site.

Dene ask the spirits to cleanse hunters and make them invisible to the animals they hunt.  Because animals are pure and much closer to the Creator in humans, they can sense evil in humans and will avoid evil hunters but offer themselves to those who are pure and good.

A few tens of miles north of the twin falls, at the “outpost” of Enterprise (groceries and gas available!), the Mackenzie Highway (NWT 1) turns west.  I took the other route (NWT 2) and continued north to the town of Hay River, which is on the junction of the river of that name and the Great Slave Lake.  That is where I am now.