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31.05.2007: Springtime Update
The hobby of the month: ice fishing. Delia is getting the hang of it:
At last, the big dark tundra has turned into a nice, light-bathed traveler's heaven. Sun doesn't seem to shut off anymore; the light is continous. The conditions are at their best for moving around on the land, the snow structure being softer than any time earlier this winter. It just isn't cold anymore. The world is shrugging off its harshness slowly, yawning and stretching as it does. And our rekindled spirits are hungry for the miles. Pretty much every weekend we get our rears in gear, load the toboggan with ice augers, tents, sleeping bags and whatnots, latch it up to the ski-doo and start the caravan: south we go, east we go, west we go. Living in the middle of nowhere the adventure is served right to our doorsteps, and it keeps knocking on the door, beckoning us to join. Sometimes it gets tired of waiting and shakes the whole house, rattles the roof metals and howls in the corners. But dude: if you want to invite somebody out, you got to act polite!
At Easter we had a pleasure to be invited to Bekere Lake Lodge by our friends Jonah and Helen Nakimayak, accompanied by George and Mariah Kregnektak. At Bekere Lake, 130 km southwest of Paulatuk, Jonah and his business partner had built a fishing and hunting base for paying clients. And behold the holy cow: what a base; a nearly luxurious cabin with all the amenities you could ever desire, situated amidst superb hunting and fishing grounds in the middle of nowhere. The trip was, needless to say, extraordinary. We witnessed how hard the inuk rides his ski-doo on the 8 h ride from Paulatuk over tundra. Jonah's proud words "it's a real highway" echoed in my mind as our heavily laden group of three ski-doos was mercilessly pounding through a mess of steely wind-carved snow, sand, rocks and ice seemingly with no end in sight. In addition, the 50 km/h cruise-speed on the numerous lake surfaces looking more like waves frozen in motion would have brought tears into the Polaris warranty rep's eyes. Don't forget we were pulling several-hundred-kilo sleds behind us. Our hosts hardly checked their speed on any occasion, not even during whiteouts when ground features were nearly impossible to detect. You have to admire their confidence in traveling - and the ability to fix whatever gets broken in the process. In the end, we did get a bit of that highway, too: 15 km of flat tundra with absolutely no features whatsoever. No speed makes you feel like you are making progress in a space like that. It simply reduces the motion into a crawl by its vastness.
Anyway, creativity took new forms after Christmas, and we have a couple of new visual-musical experiences for you to survive. Following are two slideshows that you can download and watch. Right-click the links and select "Save Target As" (or "Save Link As" you Mozilla ozzies). Once downloaded, watch the show by double-clicking the file. In addition, there is an Arctic Char Jamboree gallery added to the photos section. The jamboree is held annually in the fall in Paulatuk. -Markus Note: the files are executables (.exe) because they contain a slideshow player. They don't install anything.
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