I should have started taking pictures of every hotel room I stay in - and the views from them - a few months ago. If I put all the pictures (which I didn't take) next to each other, you'd understand why the updates are so infrequent. Tonight, I come to you from a hotel room with this view:
My room at the Frobisher Inn in Iqaluit has a spectacular view indeed. Besides the hills over which the sun sets, I have a splendid view of Frobisher Bay and the mountains beyond. And earlier today I took a really great walk out to Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park. This is me at the observation platform:
The crust on the snow is thick enough to walk on in most places, if you avoid the spots where the powder that has fallen since the crust formed drifted. It's pretty special, stomping around the tundra on several feet of snow. It's also pretty special to be in a place where you can walk from your hotel to what seems like the edge of human habitation. I know it isn't, I know that Inuit have occupied the land around here for generations, but still: crest the hill, and the only evidence of people you see is snowmobile tracks.
Ah, yes, the snowmobiles. Transportation, entertainment, and - at least so far from my room - soundtrack to the polar evening (that, and the television in the room next to me or below me). All things I can live with.
But back to the tundra and the edge of the world (I didn't walk along the road to nowhere, but it exists here too). Today was particularly special because I revisted the exact spot where I first met the tundra. It was just uphill of the observation platform at Sylvia Grinnell last June, right after the solstice, that I first saw purple saxifrage and lapland rosebay. Today, in the warm afternoon sun, that spot had already started melting.
It is, I'm told, unseasonably warm on Baffin Island right now. This doesn't surprise me: it felt much warmer here today that it did yesterday at home. Not to get all cliched on you here, but - it's a dry cold. There is no open water anywhere (unless you count puddles), and it wasn't particularly windy. Toque, mittens, scarf and extra layer rapidly joined each other in my bag. Me, I think this is the pretty time in Iqaluit. No?
