There is Turkey in the Arctic

This weekend was my first Thanksgiving. It was a propos, as almost ten of my friends answered the call for moving day on Saturday. We moved me in a couple of hours, an amazing blitz that made me feel like this Thanksgiving I had quite a bit to be thankful for. Certainly, the meals I ate this weekend made me feel no less. At one, we had an entire table full of dessert, at another, a twenty-nine pound turkey (yes, they sell turkey at Northmart). I have never seen such a big turkey. Happily, there was a lot of cranberry chutney, homemade stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and molasses brown bread to back it up, not to mention pumpkin-sausage pasta, pies, and chocolate pudding. You see, food is an obsession for us here on Baffin island. The food may be physically removed from us, but it is never far from our minds. The holidays are just an excuse to celebrate food with each other.

Movin' on Up

At the end of this month, it's my one-year anniversary of moving to Iqaluit. To celebrate, I've decided to repack all of my worldly goods and relocate to a nicer apartment in Iqaluit. My current apartment is a nice place, two floors, hotel-style, elevator-serviced...but it lacks a certain homey feeling. My new home, also furnished by Public Works, has a little more charm. More importantly, it has a view of Frobisher Bay, a view that's worth moving for, as you can see.

Fall Colours

In Nunavut? How, when there are no trees?

Trees we may not have, but the tundra has lovely plants, the leaves of which turn bright colours in the fall as the weather cools. There is as much red, gold, and brown (admittedly, always a lot of brown) in Nunavut as anywhere else in Canada. You just have to look much more closely. When the afternoon sun hangs low in the sky and hits the tundra the right way, the patchwork of colours is pretty spectacular, especially in the Western Arctic. Above left is a photo of Kugluktuk's Kugluk/Bloodt Falls Territorial Park, near where the Coppermine River meets the Arctic Ocean. On the right is a photo of Mount Pelly in Ovayok (Mount Pelly) Territorial Park, just outside Cambridge Bay. Sunset there is worth the drive, you'll notice from the photos below.


If you are lucky, in late summer, you look and find not just leaves, but also berries shining purple, red, and almost black. The blueberries are the most prized. Small and sweet, an afternoon of patience and carefully combing the tundra will yield a large yogourt container worth of berries. I ate mine with cereal over the course of a week: along with what a got out of my organic plot in the greenhouse, it felt like I too could enjoy the idea of a late summer harvest.

Summer Tripping

Summer is a time when we are all outside. The long, sunny days and warm weather make it hard to resist. This summer was one of the warmest. Parts of a Greenlandic glacier broke off and floated into Frobisher Bay, right up to the shore of Apex and Iqaluit. So for much of the summer, little icebergs floated on the water, white and blue ones. Blue ones connote multi-year ice, the ice that was part of a glacier for more than a year. Frobisher Bay has quite extreme high and low tides, so during the low tide the ice would sit on the mud in the bay. The shapes were amazing.

Summer is also a time for visiting. Alisse and Greg came for ten days in August and we took a trip to Pangnirtung and Auyuittuq National Park. They found that Nunavut is a place where things work a little differently, perhaps a place to move more slowly?...

Pangnirtung is an East Baffin Island community located at the mouth of the Pangnirtung Fjord, which drains into Cumberland Sound. From Pang then, you can look one way into the fjord and the mountains, home of Auyuittuq Park and the Akshayuk pass, and the other way out to Cumberland Sound. The water is so clear, it sparkles as blue as the Caribbean, though a tad colder. Our trip would have been worthwhile just for the flight, during which the plane comes so close to the mountains around Pang that it feels like you can reach out and touch them.

After a couple days rest and fortification with potato chips and Nutella, Greg, Alisse, and I joined forces with Mark and Meagan for a trek into Auyuittuq park, through Askshayuk Pass. Akshayuk Pass is the most popular hiking destination in Auyuittuq. The pass, which is 97 km long, connects Pangnirtung Fiord in Cumberland Sound (closest community is Pangnirtung), with North Pangnirtung Fiord off Davis Strait (closest community is Qikiqtarjuaq). It's a traditional Inuit travel corridor, where people would go to hunt caribou. It's a gelologically active place. This summer, it experienced severe erosion. One of the lakes, Summit Lake, around halfway up the corridor, breached and the water that flooded the basins toward Pang eroded the moraine that blocks another lake, Crater Lake, from spilling into the passand creating a flash flood. As a result, our chosed hiking destination, the southeast end of the pass, from the first emergency shelter at the mouth of the pass, Overlord, to Windy Lake, just south of Summit Lake, was closed to visitors. it reopened just before we set out on our hike.

A hike in Auyuittuq Park means a hike through rivers and up sand dunes. The river crossings require neoprene footgear and good cheer. You often have to travel up and downstream to find the best place to cross. It does, however, make for a great photo!

The rivers make for easy access to fresh water. Every day, I drank litres of delicious glaciar water. Here I am refilling our water store with the most excellent water pump that Mark and Meaghan own. Perhaps a funny photo, but it's a funny process.

Alianait!

This month continues on an artistic theme.

A purple and yellow big top went up in Iqaluit a couple of weeks ago. Over the last ten days, Iqaluit hosted Alianait, an arts festival hosting performers from across Canada. I missed most of the festival, being in Kugluktuk and Yellowknife, but I did my best to catch up last weekend. I volunteered a bit and found myself helping out with the helium balloons on Canada Day. Let me tell you, tying a helium balloon in one of the windiest places on earth is a challenge. One sadly comic moment came when I tied a balloon to one little munchkin's wrist, and it flew off into the wind the moment she reached up for her mother's hand. Oops. I never was very good with the old slipknot.

Balloons aside, Alianait is really about music and culture. There are all sorts of workshops to attend. I managed to get to two, one for throat-singing and one for drum-dancing. The throat-singing was really unique, with Nathan Rogers doing some Mongolian throat-singing, and some beat to keep it interesting. It's amazing to see little girls throat sing. In case you have never seen throat-singing before, here's a little video demo:

You may have noticed I mentioned Nathan Rogers played at Alianait. He was among one of the many musicians who came to Iqaluit to take part in the festival. Others included Dave Badini (formerly of the Rheostatics), Pacific Curls, Little Miss Higgins, the Gjoa Band, and Bomba. They played in the big top and brought something lively to a pretty chilly Canada Day eve. Making music seems like such an easy way to bring warmth and energy to colder climes. It's worth remembering when the weather gets grim.

By The Pricking of My Thumbs, Something Wicked This Way Comes...

Yes, dear friends, all the fresh Arctic air has gone to my head, and I am awash in theatrical pretentions. My staged frolic took the form of MacBeth, a Part-Time Players production in Iqaluit. For months, under the watchful eyes of directors Valmai Goggin and Iona Strachan, a band of Nunavummiut brothers and sisters have rehearshed faithfully to produce MacBeth in one Act. I played the witches--yes, all the witches. It was a fun part with much cauldron bubbling and trouble. Shakespeare may be turning over in his grave, but people seemed happy with the result. I posted some pics so you can judge for yourself.

Thanks to Ed Maruyama for the great photos.

Intrepid Arctic

The snow is almost gone now. It is a little sad to see. The panorama has changed. There is a lot more brown and grey than there used to be. Even the sky has been grey, though it cleared today to reveal bright sunshine. The rivers are open too, and places where just three weeks ago there was ice and slush, there is now rushing water with the occasional blocks or slivers of ice. It makes for a whole new kind of Arctic adventure.

Here is what it was like back in the snowy March days--what I saw of them anyway. We had to get up at dawn and hike up hills with our skis to get to work...the snow was slippery, the weather -40!!

OK, maybe not. But you get the idea.

On May 10th, Sylvia Grinnell Park still had the touches of winter The river was not safe to cross, but there was plenty of slushy snow to sink into while walking up the path to picnic. Well, it was a BBQ more than a picnic, one that made me realize it was a long time since we BBQed a steak anywhere other than someone's house. Silverware, for example, is not readily found on the tundra. Perhaps that will change once the campers set up their tents in the summer...

Now, in mid-June, the rivers are entirely open, the tundra brown-green, and the Arctic flowers blossoming. The weather alternates between cold rain and bright sun. Two days ago, I did my first run--in trail runners no less. It's all part of the new outdoor adventure, one that promises to get even better over the summer.