There are many, many things I love about being in Chile - and not all of them have names like pisco sour, vino tinto and cerveza, not at all. However, if I´m going to talk about loving - or not loving - liquid consumables in Chile, I must take a moment to point out that I should have brought my own coffee. This is the land of Nescafe, you know, the powdered instant "coffee". I use the quotes because drinking Nescafe is to real coffee as Kraft singles are to camembert - technically, considered in the same family, but probably not on speaking terms. And the atrocious cafe rarely if ever comes with milk or cream. Black Nescafe. Yum. It would go well with burnt toast, but there´s not much else I can think of. Fortunately, today at a meeting we were served real coffee - still not con leche, but a tremendous improvement already. And there is a place on the beach with an espresso machine where the espresso is 600 pesos, which is also okay. I´d consider dashing across the road in pajamas at 7a.m. if there was any hope of them being there...
But, now that my one complaint is out of the way, let me tell you: I love it here. I don´t think I´ve ever enjoyed a trip that was technically classified as work as much as I´m enjoying this one. It´s lovely. Heh.
Maps are misleading. Few people should be more aware of that than me, but still, when it comes to the Arctic, I make some rookie mistakes. In my mind, Baffin Island is as far north as people (at least, people who aren't researchers, meteorologists, or military personnel) live - because if you look at any of our common map projections, the Qikiqtani (Baffin) Region looks like it's the furthest "up". Victoria Island, on the other hand, looks like it's "lower". Illusion? Yep, because we center our small scale maps on the middle of North America - so the Arctic Circle is actually "lower" - ie. further towards the bottom of the page - in the central part.
Holman is in the southwest part of Victoria Island, and my map impression notwithstanding, it lies at almost 71 degrees north. That makes it 925 km north of Yellowknife. Which, by the way, makes it a rather chilly place to visit in early April. How far north it really is wasn't the only thing I hadn't really processed.
Holman is pretty. Really pretty. There are these gorgeous bluffs around it and the community is built in a crescent around a bay, including out onto a pensinsula - the Diamond Jenness Peninsula, which juts out into Amundsen Gulf. In Innuinaqtun, Holman's name is Uluqsaqtuuq, which apparently means "where there is copper" - I of course think it also has something to do with the Ulu (the traditional woman's knife) - maybe where there is material for making Ulu, and Ulu here was made of copper? After all, this is the area of the Copper Inuit. I dunno...
They're the Copper Inuit, but we're in Inuvialuit here. Tiny little geography lesson: Canadian Inuit can be found in four land claim regions: Inuvialuit, Nunavut, Nunavik, and Labrador. All but Nunavut are part of larger provincial/territorial administrative units, but with a substantial degree of self-government - so Inuvialuit administration is centred on Inuvik, but the entire region is within the Northwest Territories. "Inuvialuit" translates to "real people" (as opposed to "Inuit", which is just "people"). The finer distinctions of this are lost on me - but I do know that you refer to someone as Inuvialuit, not Inuit, in these parts.
Inuvialiuit, like Inuit, did not historically live in villages. Throughout the Canadian Arctic, you can find towns dating to as early as the 1920s - but really, these were just trading posts with maybe RCMP stations and missions. Settlement in towns did not occur until the 1950s and 1960s, at the instigation of the federal government for purposes of schooling and health care (of course, resettlement was not exactly voluntary). In some cases, such as at Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord, the people who were settled in the towns were not even from the surrounding area, and in many cases people were re-located to other parts of the Arctic even if there was a village close to where they were. It's complicated. The people in Holman traditionally come from the west side of Victoria Island - Minto Inlet, Prince Albert Sound, Read Island. Of course, there is substantial movement - often through marriage - from other Inuvialuit and Inuit communities, especially the other Copper Inuit villages of Kugluktuk and Cambridge Bay. However, there is also a presence of Inuvialuit from further west, which introduces another dialect to the community.
At this time of year (early spring), the community hosts a series of "sport hunters" - big game hunters, primarily American, who buy one one of the community's allocated polar bear or muskox tags along with an outfitting package and travel to the Arctic to hunt. In Inuvialuit, you must have a dog team with you to shoot a polar bear, and there are five teams in the town - but this seems a bit gimmicky, since many hunting parties simply load the dogs into the komatik and pull them out with snowmobiles, treating the dogs (like the sporthunter) as so much cargo to be hauled over the sea ice. In this way, though, the hunting trips are not very long: the polar bear hunters were back with their two bears in three days, the musk-ox hunters were gone for only one night. It's a lot of money (well over $20,000) for a night's entertainment, but the sport hunter also gets the hide of the beast along with the appropriate export permit. This is particularly important for Americans, since their own import regulations do not allow a polar bear fur to come in unless it was shot by the person importing it himself, from a designated (by the Americans) geographical area, with all the matching documentation. Which is a roundabout way of saying that the U.S. government does not trust Canadian resource management and conservation strategies. I'll let you reflect on the irony of that one yourself (ANWR?).
Even though it was (to my southern bones) bitterly cold, I went for a few walks. I was pretty fascinated with the snow: you can walk on it, even stuff that has only recently fallen. Though, of course, the snow that fell while I was there was accompanied by 60-80km/hr winds - making my glasses ice up right away, and my face mask come in handy - so I can sort of see why the drifts are so hard. Snow like that, it's easy to cut into blocks with a snow knife. And the schoolkids had had an igloo-building session with some of the elders through school the week before. Ok, so it's not the greatest igloo ever, but... they're in primary school!
The tundra is even more starkly beautiful than in the summer, if such a thing is possible. It amazes me, that animals can live on the few grasses there are, and yet there are herds of musk-ox, arctic hares, wolves, foxes, caribou... I went out with Mel and Winnie on snowmobiles, and Winnie, when she wasn't flying over the tundra, lake ice and sea ice to catch air, found musk-ox tracks. We didn't see the beasts, though.
They took us out to their camp, which was a cabin plus a fish drying rack and a spot where Winnie sets up her tent in the summer. It's right on the shores of Amundsen Gulf, but there are lots of lakes too. We looked at both lake ice and sea ice - the lake ice was like glass, clear, and 8-9 feet thick (I was told). If I'd dusted off the bit of snow on it, I'm pretty sure I could have skated on it. The sea ice, on the other hand, is an eerie aquamarine colour, and has lots of pressure ridges. Around points and further out, toward Coronation Gulf, it gets really rough (something the people riding in sleds behind snowmobiles could no doubt tell you about).
I wasn't there for very long - but long enough to remember why I'm fascinated with the Arctic in the first place. I think it's a beautiful place to be, but not an easy place. The not easy doesn't just apply to the harsh physical environment, but to the whole thing: the isolation, the lack of services, all the problems of northern resource-based towns, the balancing of traditional and southern ways... I think, though, that all of the challenges together contribute to how compelling the place is. Maybe. I haven't really wrapped my head around it yet, even though this was my third visit to the far north and I've had plenty of time to mull it over.
But not right now... a few days ago, I was at 71 degrees north. In two days, I will fly to 33 degrees south, to come face to face with another map misconception: Chile is east of Toronto. Santiago is nine degrees closer to the prime meridian than I am right now. Why did I always think it would be closer to LA than Miami?
When the weather is this good (21 degrees and sunny at 4:30 this afternoon), you can't really sit inside. Thus, there was not much resistance on my part when Malcolm and Luke started agitating that they wanted to go biking but Lorenz was still on the tractor (when the weather is this good farmers do their farming thing) - in about 10 minutes, the boys had all three of our bikes loaded into the cargo van and managed to relieve Lorenz of the keys, and I quickly changed into pants that wouldn't get caught in the chain, grabbed helmet and gloves and off we were.
Note all the things I didn't do: I didn't, for instance, change my road-riding slicks for trail-riding nubbys, nor did I think to wear shoes that don't have cleats that mate with my pedals. I also didn't grab my cell phone, or the long-range walkie-talkies that I so conveniently own. Nor did I have a chat with the kids about navigating on trails using the sun, or discuss with them what we should do if we get separated, or issue them whistles, or hand out an edict that they should wait at all forks if I wasn't with them. Noooo... all I did was happily get on my bike and go.
So. Let's go back to the part where I've got slicks on, and my bike has clipless pedals, and I'm clipped in. Add to the above litany of things I didn't do another one: tighten the cleats on the shoes, so they take a bit of extra pressure and twisting to unclip. Now let's go to the part where we started on a windy trail that has lots and lots of blocky limestone - you know, like trails on the Niagara escarpment often do. The sort of stuff real mountain bikers eat up. Real mountain bikers like I'm not - see, it's been at least five years since I've done any serious mountain biking (and don't interpret that as me ever having been any good at it) - I think I've averaged about three decent trail rides *per year* so far this century. I've become a road-riding sort of girl (or a sitting on your ass sort of girl, but that's another story). So... yeah, you got it, it took about two minutes before I had my first crash, and it hurt - 'cause of course I couldn't get out of my pedals, and the neoprene wrap on where the handlebar was shortened has long since been shredded in similar crashes, and the bar made contact with my left breast and did some nasty scraping. So I nursed my injury (pun fully intended) for a couple of minutes before not-nearly-as-merrily as five minutes ago following the trail that the two 11-year-olds had just disappeared down.
The agreement forest trail network resembles nothing so much as a bowl of spaghetti. If a bowl of spaghetti had about 12 exits. I came to a fork, no kids - no clue where they went. I guessed, and I guessed some more, and within 10 minutes I was pretty sure that I had no idea where they were. Within half an hour, I came to the conclusion that rather than wait until it got dark, I needed someone to check the other exits *now*, and I peeled home on my bike - leaving the van where it was, in case the kids came out - and interrupted Lorenz's quality time with John Deere. He got into his car, and started checking exits - and I went back in (and crashed again, but this time it didn't hurt much).
When I got back to the van, Lorenz had chalked a note below mine - "found them!" (in addition to leaving cell phones and walkie-talkies at the farm, we were not equipped with pen or paper - but there was a piece of chalk in the van, and a 4'x8' piece of plywood). So, I loaded my bike into the back, and started driving home - only to meet Lorenz in the car, since I had his van key he'd left kids and bikes on 6th Line and gone looking... actually, I don't know what he was looking for. Me, I guess, but I wasn't at the farm. So, vehicle switch, and half an hour later two very impressed with themselves boys are back home ("we biked all the way to Glen Eden!").
Sometimes, it amazes me that people trust me with their children. Or that I get asked to teach navigation workshops. And my left breast hurts. Who has road rash on their boobs, I ask you? Never mind - if there's an answer to that, I don't want to know it.
I'm sitting at 71 degrees north, in the community of Holman Island, NWT. There are a couple of local dialects, one of which is Innuinaqtun, which is spoken here and in Kugluktuk (formerly known as Coppermine) and Cambridge Bay.
That's what I learned this morning, anyway. I was (shamelessly) eavesdropping on some locals, and I noticed that they would speak English to some of the people at their table, but the local dialect to others - so I took my coffee cup over and asked, and that's when I learned about more than one local language.
Last night, a couple of young girls here in town were trying to teach me some words - I'm not very good at it, but I did check the bit of Inuktitut I've picked up (all 10 words of it!) with them, and some words are the same, others aren't - about what I'd expected. Innuinaqtun, unlike Inuktitut, commonly uses Roman letters, not syllabics. That actually makes it a little bit easier for me - because at least if I know what a word sounds like, and then I see it written, I can match the two up. I still don't know a lot of syllabic characters (though I can do my name!)
So... Huliniakpin? is What are you going to do? and I could answer, Hulinahuangittunga (I'm not going to do anything). Or I could say nauna, don't know. You can say Kinauvit - what is your name - or Qanugitpit - how are you -and answer Naguyunga (I am good) or Namaktunga (I am fine).
The one I like best, though, is the same as to the east: Taima! Which means, enough. There's another word that can come after it, to make it "stop it!" as I would say if two kids were fighting (can you tell who's been teaching me?) but I can't remember.
I have many pictures of my few days here, and before I leave, if all goes well, I'll get to go a bit further. But all of that will have to wait until there is more bandwidth!
Taima.
In the grand scheme of things, I'm just about keeping up with my list: I knock off items as others are added, leaving the whole list about the same length. That statement can be applied equally to work and fun, I guess, but it's the fun stuff I'm talking about. Entry on the list: check out an ice road.
I can't honestly say that I can cross ice roads off my list: not only did I not drive on it, I didn't get to see a transport truck lumber along it. It was still plenty cool (though rapidly warming, I gather - the road was closed for the season at noon today). How's this for potholes?
Actually, I don't think that's so much a pothole as part of ice road technology. See, the ice roads are actually on thicker ice than the surrounding lake, because the roads are cleared of snow (yes, to make them easier to drive on, but primarily to remove the insulating effect that snow would have and allow for thicker ice). The cleared roads are repeatedly flooded, to ensure thick, strong ice. I of course pictured massive water trucks going out there to do the flooding, which I know is an awfully silly idea seeing as these things can stretch for over 500km (though this particular one, the Dettah Ice Road, is only just over 6km long). Not only would it be an awful lot of hauling to bring water to the ice roads, but, well, why? They're built on water, after all - so all you need to do is drill a hole every now and then and then drive a truck near the holes - the ice gets pushed down, water bubbles up through the hole, and freezes to the top of the road.
The idea that ice is elastic is one of the most intriguing things about ice roads. Big loads can drive over ice, and it bows to their weight without breaking. The roads are rated for different load capacities for different locations and times, but the big supply roads often take as much as 63,000kg! On lakes, the big loads can't travel for more than 25km/h because they generate a wave under the ice, travelling along in front of them. If the wave is too big, as would be the case with high speeds, it can do serious damage to the road when it hits shore. If it gets too cold (well below -30), elasticity starts to go.
Some of the roads are privately maintained, for service to diamond mines and the like. Others, like the Dettah Road, are public - and thus maintained by the appropriate territorial authority, with speed limits and enforced closures. The season is short: the Dettah ice road usually opens around the middle of December, and closes in the first half of April. Today, before it closed, it was very slushy where it met land in Yellowknife: I watched a few vehicles plow through the lake between good road and mainland. I would think that last stretch requires mental fortitude...
(Update, December 2005: My access logs show that ice roads is a popular search term, and you probably don't get all that you're looking for on this page. So let me direct you to the Diesel Gypsy's Ice Roads Page. All you'd ever want to know, I think, including some spectacular pictures of what can go wrong...)
--
I'm drawn out on the ice, for reasons I don't fully understand. Yesterday, I left my hotel and wandered down toward Yellowknife's Old Town. There is plenty to see in Old Town, but all I could think about was going on the ice. This was the first place I tried:
It's the municipal boat launch, and even though I did not fail to notice that there is water between land and ice, I decided to chance that the crusty snow at the side would carry my weight. I was wrong. A soaker, and a hasty retreat. I tried again a few meters further on, where there was a pier. Success! I managed to get out onto Great Slave Lake, between the mainland and Joliffe Island.
Obviously, people drive on the ice - plenty of snowmobile and enough vehicle tracks there. They also land planes on it! Where there is a float plane base in the summer, there is an ice runway in winter - and the planes have skis on them. Taxiing down the runway looks more like a big bird on skates for the first time - there was a fair bit of sliding as the planes turned.
Walking was good on the runway and snowmobile tracks, but there were big puddles where bigger vehicles had driven. The crust on the snow kept breaking under me when I ventured off-snowmobile-trail, so, realizing that I would get very tired and my shins bruised, I followed one trail to the east for quite some time. Thing is, trudging along a narrow ribbon of path (and still sometimes breaking through) gets kind of boring. I longed for my snowshoes, and finally, I couldn't stand the prescribed route anymore and set out cross-ice. More cursing and some sweating, and I decided that following an orderly path was just fine, thankyouverymuch, and I followed the very next snowmobile track I came across back towards land.
Only one problem, though: when I got to the point where I had to cross the runway, I stood on my safe snowbank and looked down at the ice. It just didn't look that sturdy! I reasoned with myself that it had to be perfectly fine, planes land on it. Still, I contemplated. Then, I very gingerly stepped off the snowback - and very quickly got very wet. See the holes in the ice? those were made by my legs! I scrambled back up lickety-split and debated my options - I knew it was just a slush layer with a thin crust of ice on top, and I probably wouldn't fall through and drown. But I'd get very wet! In the end, I followed my snow bank to the very end of the runway, accompanied by a random dog - and then crossed snow-covered ice back to the land side.
Glad to be back on firm ground, I poked around Latham Island for a bit. The part closest to the causeway was full of fancy-pants homes. The part further away? Not so much. I looked at my map, and discovered I was in N'Dilo, which is (I think) a Yellowknives Dene community. I say "I think" because there are many aboriginal groups here - something like six aboriginal tongues plus English and French are the official languages of the Northwest Territories. Of course, the conversation I heard on the street was in German. I'm sure if I'd stuck around longer, I would have heard Japanese (there was lots of that on the plane on the way up).
--
My jeans froze, and my wool socks kept my feet from doing the same yesterday. Dry again today, I was back to wanting to be on ice. After the ice road checking out noted above, I started wandering around town, and then realized that there is a lake in the middle of it: Frame Lake. And Frame Lake was covered in ice. And I wanted out on it. It took a good three minutes before I broke through the crust on my snowmobile track and got a soaker, but at that point I realized that the crust was actually strong enough to carry me today, and I merrily bopped about. The only disconcerting part was crossing all th cleared path - remembering my runway experience, I was nervous of breaking through again. As luck would have it, I didn't, and made it back with only one wet foot. And now, back in my hotel room, 3100 km from home. Tomorrow at this time, I'll be 600 km or so further north, back inside the Arctic Circle.
