Sastrugi

In Russian it’s zastrugi, plural of zastruga. The word means, according to my Dictionary of Canadianisms, “ridges of hard packed snow, formed by the wind and at times attaining a height of four feet.”

Do not imagine that I’m thinking fondly about the coming winter. Like many people, I’m happy if the cold and the snow stays away for at least another couple of months. This has been such a glorious September, and without frost up to now. Today I picked several still green tomatoes (usually at this time of year I’ve picked all my tomatoes, green, red, whatever colour) and a couple of decent sized cucumbers.

Still, it’s a word I like and I hadn’t come across it before – all these years without a word to describe a common phenomenon on the prairies.

My dictionary states further that the word was used in an arctic journal by Osborne. More research (Wikipedia) reveals that Sherard Osborne (1822-1875) was a British admiral and arctic explorer. In 1849 Osborne advocated for another search to look for the Franklin expedition (currently a search for the latter is going on again), and Osborne subsequently commanded the steam-tender Pioneer under Horatio Austin. As part of the search Osborne took a sledge journey to Prince of Wales Island. His account of the trip was published in Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal (the one mentioned in the dictionary): “The snow ridges, called Sastrugi by the Russians run ... in parallel lines, waving and winding together.”

In his autobiography, Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and Antarctic Seas and Around the World (1884), Robert McCormick, British Royal Navy Surgeon, explorer and Naturalist, wrote, “For this purpose, I fixed upon the softest wreath, or sastrugi, of snow at hand to cut a trench deep enough to hold the two dogs, my companion and myself.” McCormick also led an unsuccessful search party for the Franklin expedition. Macormick Bay on Devon Island, in the area where he explored, is named in his honour. Check out http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/franklin-searches/ to find more information about all the searches to try and find Franklin.

The word was also used by Lord Tweedsmuir in his book Hudson’s Bay Trader, which is a diary kept by the author from 1938 to 1939, when he worked at Cape Dorset, Baffin Island. Tweedsmuir wrote, “There is sastrugi, when the snow lies in hard patches furrowed and fluted by the wind, like ribbed sea sand.” The book was published in 1951 and republished in 1978, and more information about it can be found on line at various sources. The book can also be borrowed from several public libraries in Saskatchewan.