sunsets... they last for hours

Went fishing last night. The char are running. Stood on the bridge over Freshwater Creek with Ian's fishing friend Harry, and suddenly he said, "The char are coming up, do you see them?" and down in the water were about twenty big greenish fish swimming together. They ignored our hooks. Harry said he had a 25lb fish on the line, but it took his hook. I didn't catch anything, and the wind was cold, but we didn't go home until they sounded the 10 o'clock siren. Miguel got up early this morning and went back to try again, but no luck. I stayed in bed and listened to the wind.

One adjustment that has to be made here is coming to terms with the price of food, since everything has to be flown in the stores have to charge more to make up for the freight. We went grocery shopping last night and I roamed around the store in a daze. Makes for hard decisions. Do I really like frozen corn enough to pay $8.00 a bag? If I buy a $10.00 5kg bag of flour, will I be able to make enough bread to make it worth it? Pop is $8.00 for a 2L bottle, and Miguel is rationing himself. We've been drinking iced tea from crystals, but it's not very nice. Our neighbours have told us that Yellowknife Co-op will mail food up here, but it is necessary to collect the food at the airport. So what we could order would be limited by the cargo capacity of the ATV. (It's a red Honda, Miguel bought it before I got up here). I've been doing what I remember my mother doing in England, making dessert with dinner every night so that when I produce the food and there's not that much of it, I can say, "There's brownies too" (or apple crumble, or chocolate chip loaf...) I bought four bananas yesterday, for $2.50, and this morning when I went to get one, all their stalks fell off, so I guess I'll be eating bananas today. Five pounds of potatoes were $9.99, but lettuce was on sale at $2.00 a head. Milk is the worst, $7.00 for 2L. Eggs are $3.99 a dozen, and we've been getting creative with them. Strangely enough, chicken is cheaper than in Nanaimo, so we've had some chicken, and we had stopped buying it in Nanaimo because it was about $5.00 a breast. We've been kind of looking at it all as a game: how can we eat reasonably well without spending all Miguel's paycheque on food?

Today I don't have a whole lot to do. One letter to mail, and a trip to the store to see if I can find more notebooks for Ian, he needs them for school and so far the hunt has been without success. Kids have settled in at school quite nicely so far, even Kirsten has made friends and likes her teacher. In some bizarre way, I think coming here has made her realize that her life is actually very good... in her gym class yesterday, two girls sat out of the activities because they're pregnant. Kirsten said that the teacher talked to them about it very matter-of-factly, asking the girls when they were due. I was glad that I had warned her, based on my own experience in junior high in Northern Quebec, that most of the kids would probably smoke and drink and be very casual about school in general. She said that out of her class of twenty there are four who don't smoke. Which is better than my grade 8 class, we had thirty-some-odd kids and only five of us didn't smoke.

Yesterday there was a funeral for a young man, 19, who committed suicide on the weekend. The service was in the high school gym, and then everyone headed out of town on ATVs and in the back of pick-up trucks to the cemetery, which is situated on a hill near Freshwater Creek. It is one thing to read, as I did in a few classes at SFU that the North has a problem with suicide, and that causes are thought to be deep-rooted in cultural alienation... being here when everyone is mourning, lots of hugging in the stores and downcast eyes, is something else. I feel as if I am intruding, in a way, a representative of those who make it difficult for young Inuit men to get ahead.

I've met the grade 2 teacher at the elementary school, he's a sweet man, and when I sat with Rachel while they formed classes I noticed he had a huge class. I saw him on the street yesterday, and waved. He came over and we were chatting, and I commented on his class size. He told me he was sorting them into groups, but he has a big span of ability levels, some can barely read a word, and so I said, "Well, I used to go volunteer at Rachel's old school, helping the little ones with their reading, so if you need a hand any time, I'm not doing much at the moment" and he took my phone number.

Husky dogs and pups are tethered everywhere here. There are also a lot of sleds, and people have harnesses hanging from their porches. (and furs, and fish drying) I'll be very interested to see the dogs hooked up to the sleds when it snows. Yesterday I saw a group of people watching someone drive a snowmobile across a lake nearby. Out back of the house there is a caribou carcass. Dogs or something have dragged its head quite a distance from its body...

my first fish ever!

Kids started school today. Yesterday we went down to the Northern store to get indoor school shoes for Rachel and Ian, and an elder in the post office lobby told us there was an icebreaker in the harbour. So we went down to see, and it turned out to be a gigantic red coastguard boat with a pointed front. The yearly barge bringing supplies is expected today, I'm told, and there will be a party on Friday to celebrate, a community barbecue. Rachel and Ian went to a back-to-school barbecue on Monday, and had muskox burgers. Miguel and I have been invited to play in a poker tournament this weekend, (we spent a fair amount of time this winter playing Texas Hold 'Em with Miguel's parents and the kids) but it costs 150 dollars each to enter so we think it might be a bit too rich for our blood.

I've been enjoying walking down to the post office to check the mail. It was never quite such a thrill to have it delivered to the door. I'm finding I really like it here, and don't mind the isolation at all. The only thing I've found that I miss is the Globe and Mail on Saturdays. I'll have to find a new source for my crossword fix...

The dogs like it here, too, we can walk out the door and around the corner and be out on the tundra, and they can dash about chasing lemmings to their hearts' content. Kids can wander around town unaccompanied, too, what traffic there is seems accustomed to looking out for kids.

Muskox don't like it when you try to take their pictures. They run away. As they are doing here.

I'm here. It's hard to know where to start....

We had a good trip, the girls and I. Stayed overnight in Edmonton, although none of us could sleep. It was rainy and cold, and we were impatient to get to Cambridge Bay. The plane that took us up went through cloud and wind, but emerged into a beautiful day. Blue sky stretching for miles, we flew in over the water and landed abruptly at the Cambridge Bay airport. (It's a gravel runway, and we were on a jet) I thought we had a lot of luggage, but everyone seemed to have similar amounts as we stood in the little building and it came in on a conveyor belt. All the boxes I had packed and sent by cargo a week earlier also arrived that day, so we had all our stuff. The house we have been allotted is on the edge of town, with a view of the Distant Early Warning station and a lot of tundra. Very cosy, and quite new. 1500 people or so live in town, so it's similar size to Vulcan, but different. Very few cars, everyone walks or drives ATVs, there are no lawns or gardens, just rocks and dirt. Apparently the snow only melted in May, and it's expected again soon. No trees, we're above the treeline. Everyone has been very friendly, so far, lots of waving.

Thursday night we went down to Freshwater Creek to fish, Rachel made a friend, and one of the locals was standing in the water next to Ian, helping him with his casting. On Friday after I stowed all the stuff, Ian took me down to the store, and as we passed through town we were followed by a chorus of kids yelling "Hi Ian!" He is in his element here, full days of fishing, riding a bike he was given by one of Miguel's new co-workers, playing tag endlessly with the neighbourhood kids in the long evenings. Rachel also has an entourage of little girls already, but she's a little alarmed that some of them are younger than her and smoke. Every time I go out, I come home to find the deck out back occupied by Rachel and her new friends.

Yesterday we went 'out on the land' to Mount Pelly, and climbed it. The view from up top was magnificent, out to the Arctic Ocean, and it was completely quiet. Just as if a giant hand had come down and stilled everything, even the things going around in my head. I find I'm not too worried about the future, I'm going to take it as it comes. I caught a fish, out at Grenier Lake, something I've never done, and it's now in the freezer. I apologized to it, when I got it up on land, which Miguel thought was funny.

Today Rachel and I went for a long walk, just ambling along, out to the river and then down the other side of the estuary, where everyone keeps their sled dogs. Ian and Miguel went back to Grenier Lake and caught a trout, which we ate for supper. This evening Miguel and I headed out past the DEW station so I could try driving the ATV. The road follows the coast, and as I was driving along with Miguel on the back, it occurred to me that if you'd told me a few months ago that before the end of the summer I'd be tearing along gravel roads above the Arctic Ocean on an ATV I'd not have believed it. It's good to be alive.