kayaking season in full swing

I've been out kayaking a lot lately, battling my way around the ice floes which often block my passage, chasing birds, getting chased by mosquitoes, and getting a suntan everywhere that is not covered by my wetsuit (my face). It's my favourite part of the day, hitting the water with my paddle and watching my kayak glide along the water's smooth surface, like sliding over glass.

Kayaking in the Arctic Ocean is one of my favourite things about living in Cambridge Bay.

A lot of times, we'll dock our kayaks on some quiet shale beach and go for a swim to cool down...until the mosquitoes annoy us enough to go back into the kayaks.

my first swim of the year (I was cold)

golfers

And then we'll climb on to an ice floe or two. Because it's July and we can.

Sometimes we'll even do a photoshoot on the ice floe. Because, again, we can.

walking on water

And then, of course, there are the birds.  We've developed a new hobby of trying to sneak up on the birds.  It's kind of a hard thing to do quietly in a kayak.

not a bird: oil drum

my first time fishing

The first time I went fishing, I didn't catch any fish. That's because it turned out my reel was broken.  I didn't know that when I bought (secondhand). I wish I did. I'm very new at this whole fishing thing.

So my friends tried their luck with fishing at the float base while I decided to turn it into an impromptu fishing-themed photo shoot, because that's the kind of thing I do while my friends fish.

bug jacket

(Unbeknownst to me, our friends at Iqaluit's Finding True North were doing a similar fashion photo shoot , but with a lot more flair.)

The float base is where the little Cessna float planes land.  I found that out last year when I was kayaking in the bay and suddenly found out that the bay is also a runway for the float planes and I had to paddle for my life to not get run over by a plane. I mean, who does that? Who gets hit by a plane while kayaking?

Christine let me practice casting a few times.  I got better at it, and on my third time I actually caught something! A piece of wood. On one hand, that's kind of disappointing because it wasn't a fish, but on the other hand, it's kind of impressive that I caught a piece of wood in a land with no trees.

Other than the piece of wood, we weren't getting any bites at the float base so we decided to try a different spot, at the bridge by the river.  We took our respective vehicles there - Jeep, ATV, truck - and parked again, ready to resume our quiet night of peaceful fishing.

That's when we found the boy drowning in the water.

At first, I just heard a terrible cry, but I couldn't tell where it was coming from. It sounded like a choked wail. I figured it was coming from kids near the shoreline, and I thought to myself, "These kids shouldn't horseplay around like this. Someone's gonna think that they're in trouble."

Then I saw my friends suddenly break into a run and jump into the freezing cold water.  Then I knew something was wrong.

It turns out that three young boys had been playing in the water when they suddenly lost their footing in the steep drop off where the water suddenly becomes deep, right where the current gets strong.  Two of the boys eventually got back on their feet again but one boy was struggling.

I watched as my friends made their way to a barely distinguishable figure bobbing in the water.  I was frightened.  Just the other day I had waded into the Arctic ocean up to my hips and felt intense pain from the shock of the cold - and that was with a wetsuit on. My friends were not wearing wetsuits, just all of their clothes as well as their boots which I knew must have been only weighing them down.   I could see that the current was strong, because the boy was caught right where the river meets the ocean.

Just to give you an idea of how deadly the situation was, the sea water around Cambridge Bay is currently -0.6°C.  If you are in the water unprotected for more than a few minutes, you are at serious risk of hypothermia.  I have swam in the Arctic ocean when it was warmer; even then, after being in the water for more than 30 seconds, you stop feeling the pain and instead you feel total numbness as your body starts to shut down.  My friends - and the boy - didn't have much time.

The boy continued to cry out, although every once in a while the cry would be cut off when the water overwhelmed him. It was one of the worst sounds I have ever heard in my life and I don't think I will ever forget it.

Meanwhile, I was standing uselessly on shore, trying to figure out how I could be useful.  I wasn't going to jump into the water. There was no way I was going to make it to them in time and besides, I'm not a very strong swimmer. I was certainly not going to make a very good lifeguard. I have nearly drowned twice in my life before, and both times, it was because I was trying to save someone and that person was holding me down.

So I ran in circles like a chicken with its head cut off, clutching my cell phone, trying in vain to remember how to dial 911 in Nunavut.  The number is not 911 here.  I couldn't remember the RCMP emergency line after hours (which...as it turns out, was 1111, which just goes to show how much I wasn't thinking).  So I dialed the regular RCMP line. But I only dialed the last four digits.  And then I tried again, with seven digits this time. And then finally I remembered the area code, because I was dialing from an Ottawa phone number.

By the time I got through to the operator, my friends had reached the drowning boy and were just trying not to drown themselves, being weighed down by the water that was filling up their boots and their pants. I couldn't bear to watch.  I don't remember what I said to the police, but I guess it wasn't total gibberish because they did send police trucks and an ambulance right away.  By that point, my friends had finally brought the boy to the other side of the shore.

So by the time we left, we hadn't caught any fish, although clearly it wasn't a totally unproductive day.  I'm going to have to buy myself a new reel this weekend, but hopefully not all of my fishing excursions will be this eventful.

Read the newspaper article about it here

water woes

Water has sometimes provided an interesting and unexpected challenge for us here in the North.

First of all, it's somewhat scarce, given the fact that we're sandwiched between a rock desert and the salty ocean. The ground is too frozen from permafrost to lay down water pipes, so our water is delivered to our house by truck, from the aptly named Water Lake.  They usually do a good job of providing water on a regular basis, but every once in a while our timing is off and the water runs out.

I've mentioned before the Northern experience of running out of water.  Once in a while, you'll wake up, wander over to the bathroom and realize that you're out of water.  Then you'll hear the low grumbling of the water truck's motor nearby, growing fainter and fainter as it pulls away, and you'll send your poor husband out of the house to run across the street in his pajamas in -40 degree weather to chase the water truck down and service your house. It's a good exercise, in terms of survival skills, but also, actual physical exercise.

When the water truck disappears around the corner, and you trudge back to your house feeling a little defeated, you'll then make calls to the hamlet office, leaving your address, hoping that they'll be able to find your place despite the fact that 1) your street has no street sign and 2) your house has no house numbers.

Eventually though, the water truck will come, as will the sewage truck driver.

and then sometimes this happens.

Besides being relatively scarce, there's also the quality of the water.  I'm not a particularly picky person when it comes to the taste of my water, so when we first moved here, we just drank from the tap. Then someone pointed out to me that most people drink filtered water here, because, well, "How often do you clean your water tank?" she asked. (Our answer is never, because it's located in a different unit.) "Also," she said, "you realize that we have no control over the cleanliness of the water up to the point it reaches our house?"

There's no denying that the water is...different. The best evidence of it is the slow death / early retirement of Herbie the Humidifier. I have no idea why, but I had decided to name the humidifier that pumps enough moisture in the air to keep our guitars happy. Herbie's been working hard for the last year, but lately he's been having a hard time catching up.  We re-fill it every day and clean it out every week, but I guess after all the hard water that we keep dumping into him, he's getting ready to give up, after working overtime too long.

For drinking water at home, we use a Brita filter.  Two of them, in fact, one connected to the kitchen sink tap and a Brita pitcher.  Despite the double filtering process, Herbie has still been struggling, and our kettle gets these little floaty bits in them. Needless to say, we have to change the filters more often than the box recommends.

The water in our office is generally too weird-tasting to drink straight.  We don't bother putting them through a filter, because we'll go through the filters way too fast. Usually I just bring bottled water from home. Sometimes, though, if I'm particularly thirsty or forgot to bring my bottled water, I have to drink the office water.  That gets to be more of a process.  I have to boil the water in the office kettle. Then I pour it into a mug.  Then I put the mug in the fridge for a few hours to cool it down.  By the time I've got my drinking water available, it's time to go home. So, I try to remember to pack my water bottle to work.  Hopefully a blizzard doesn't ever hit while we're at work, with no drinkable water...

Basically, we end up using the kettle a lot. Boiling water is the simplest safest way to go.  Like I said, though, if what you want is cold drinkable water, rather than hot boiling water, it becomes a bit of a process to cool it down. Luckily all of outside is one giant freezer.

dirty tricks for living without running water

We went a couple of days without water last week.  Although we do sometimes run out of water, it's usually only for a couple of hours, and not for days. This time though, it took two days for the water truck to get to us.  In those days with no access to running water in our home, we learned a couple of handy tricks...

• Leave those dishes in the sink. Avoid looking at it. There is nothing you can do about it until you get running water again. 
• Go to work early. Pretend it's because you have initiative and you want to seize the day, but really it's because you want to sneak into the office bathroom to brush your teeth, wash your face, and wipe down your underarms with baby wipes.
• If nature calls, consider the fact that if you go in your toilet, you will probably have to flush it down with multiple expensive Dasani bottles of water that cost three bucks apiece at the local Co-op grocery store.
• However, if you pee outside your house, consider that while everything is frozen outside, it doesn't actually snow all the much, so you will probably have to stare at that yellow patch outside your house for the rest of the winter (ie, until June).
• Always keep a reserve supply of water in your house for moments like this. However, if you decide to go outside and melt some snow from outside, don't eat the yellow snow.
• You can only go so long without a shower.  Do you still have that key your friend gave you so you can keep an eye on her house while she's on vacation? Use it. Go take a shower in her house. I'm sure she won't mind.
• Apologize to your plants and the empty humidifier in the guitar room.  It's not fair, but the law of the jungle says you've got to prioritize, and any water you have is going to have to go into your vodka water cocktail.
  
  
  to avoid doing dishes at your own house, invite yourself over for dinner at a friend's house. bonus points if it's chocolate fondue out of a decapitated snowman's head.

Eventually our water service was restored.  It was a glorious feeling to have running water again.  Now I could do laundry! Now I could do the dishes! Now I could take a shower!  I never thought I'd be so excited to do these things.

bought this beautiful print from Ulukhaktok. Water, water everywhere!

the last kayak trip of the year

"Who left their party yacht at the dock?" I asked, mainly because I was miffed that I was not invited to the party yacht.

Nobody in town seemed to know. It was too small to be a cruise ship, and it was definitely not the Coast Guard...but it was definitely the right size of a boat to be an awesome party boat.  The kind you'd invite TI and the guys from the Lonely Island to join you on and make a music video.  But no one seemed to have a clue what insanely rich guy had brought his boat to shore.

Maybe, I pondered in my head, he was hiding something. Treasure? Booty?  I decided it was time. It was time to become an Arctic pirate and explore. And conquer.

I set out and left shore in my own pirate ship, the  Britney Spears.  The Britney Spears may be only a red kayak, but she's trusty and has pulled through many rough trips with choppy waves and foul weather.   She's smooth and stealthy and was the best vessel for sneaking up on a party boat, pirate-style.

Unfortunately, the party yacht must have seen the Britney Spears approach, because it pulled away suddenly and before I had time to start the chase, it was just a white speck on the horizon. Dammit.  I'll have to party with TI another time.

I had brought along S, who was there for the ride not so much for the  pirate adventure but because he's leaving soon and this would be his last kayaking trip in the Arctic. He suggested that if we couldn't hunt pirate booty, we could just paddle out toward West Arm. If he were a proper pirate, he would have said West Arrrrrrrm.  But he's just Ukrainian, so he didn't, and we headed for West Arm.

On the way there, we encountered the most beautiful sunset.

I love the sky here in Cambridge Bay.  They seem to stretch on forever over the flat tundra, and they are like nothing I have every seen before.  

The waters were calm and the cool breeze seemed to push us along towards our destination.  It was a lovely moment. It didn't feel like the temperature was below zero. We didn't feel it at all.

We stopped at a remote beach.  I love the fact that I am always finding new beaches while out kayaking, and they are always abandoned, without another soul around.

We rested on the beach for a cup of tea.  I found a muskox skull.

But then the weather turned.  The weather changes quickly here in the Arctic; one moment you could be enjoying still waters under a clear sky, and then the next minute the clouds have settled in, the winds have picked up, and you're scrambling to get into your boat while the waves thrash it against the rocky shores.   All of a sudden, we could feel that the windchill was -3°C; we could feel it in our spines.  We were going to have to head home quickly.

The first thing that hit me when I got back into the kayak was how cold my hands were.  You know the kind of cold where it pricks you like a sharp pain and you suddenly can't put your mind on anything else?  I was wearing fishing gloves, but they were soaked all the way through.  The rest of my body was fine, because my wetsuit covered everything else, but I realized that my hands were experiencing exactly what you'd think you would experience if your bare skin was immersed in the Arctic Ocean. A little shock, a lot of pain.  But I couldn't exactly put my paddle down to warm my hands while the kayak drifted, because the fierce winds were pushing me back in the wrong direction.  So time to bear down and just push, push, push.  Try not to pay attention to the fact that my hands hurt.  Try not to pay attention to the fact that my hands no longer hurt...because I was losing sensation in them. Push, push, push.

At least the waves were getting to be fun again.  S had been complaining that the calm waters were getting boring.  Of course, he's the guy who saw the snow storm last week, and the white caps in ocean caused by the 90 km/h winds....and decided to jump right into those waves with his kayak.  People in town were filming him and B, the crazy dudes going kayaking in the middle of the storm where sleet was blowing sideways.

The waves were nowhere near crazy this time around, but they were big and powerful, and I had to concentrate on watching them come in to meet my kayak. Honestly, it's fun.  When the stormy waves drop you down, it's the exact same sensation as riding a roller coaster, and trying to keep the kayak in balance gives you a better core workout than any Pilates ball ever will. I love riding the waves.

Eventually we made it back to our home base, having returned with no Arctic pirate booty. My biceps were starting to look pretty good, though.

As we pulled into shore, I began to regain feeling in my hands, which is also an incredibly painful process.  I knew it in my heart.  This was going to be my last kayaking excursion of the year.  Things would only get colder from now on, and the adrenaline rush from riding stormy waves was no longer going to outweigh the pain of rigid temperatures. At least we had been treated to a beautiful sunset.

Oddly enough, after battling the choppy waves of the Arctic Ocean in sub-zero temperatures and losing all feeling in my hands due to the cold, when I got home I found that I was craving ice cream.

Tourists (and Tagaq)

Nothing happens in a small town that goes unnoticed.  One night, four Sea-doos with bright headlights pulled into the harbour of the bay, accompanied by a larger motor boat.  We all watched from our living room windows and discussed who they could be, and what they were doing.

I heard several stories stories:

1. Someone had found a human skull and now the police were bringing it back to investigate.

2. Whalers.

3. Invaders. (Space invaders?)

4. They were adventurers going through the Northwest Passage by sea-doos, traveling from Inuvik to Greenland then Iceland and then on to London, England.

5. They are Americans filming a show called Dangerous Waters, having arrived here from their last stop in Kugluktuk.

The correct answer for these particular arrivals were #5. As a side note, Dangerous Waters, pshaw.  I go kayaking in these waters all the time, and I don't use a motorized vehicle to travel.  If they think this is dangerous, wait till they come across that swimming grizzly bear no one's caught yet. Personally, I liked the human head story better.

Elements of most of these guesses end up being true to some extent or another though. The Coast Guard was docked in the Bay, perhaps investigating the human skull. There was also a film crew in town who wanted to shoot a bar scene - I guess they were stuck with the Elks, which is the closest thing to a bar. At a party, I met Swedish sailors were were sailing a sailboat through the Northwest Passage from Alaska to Greenland.  One of them looked like the exact replica of Mr. Clean, down to the bald head, white eyebrows and earring.  He claimed to be a sailor but I'm pretty sure they were pirates.

The truth is, it's tourist season and there are a lot of visitors in town. That's right, Cambridge Bay is a popular tourist destination. For those with adventurous spirits, bird-watching tendancies, or a passion for exploring typical Arctic communities, Ikaluktutiak is a pretty great spot. As a result, we're a popular stop for cruise ships making their way through the Arctic.

The local businessfolks go through a lot of work to make sure the cruise ship tourists have a good time when they stop here for the day.  The artists sell their craftwork and carvings at the Artisan Market, Inuit guides hire themselves out to take tourists out on the land and show them around, and the town even organizes Arctic games and sports that the tourists can watch.  I've played the tourist for so long that it's kind of neat to watch it all from the other side of things.  Watching the tourists wander down the streets in fascination, taking photos of random things like the ATVs, trucks, and me (does this mean I look like a local?).

This week the MV Bremen was in town, making their way through the Arctic Ocean from Germany. It was pretty amusing to watch the grey-haired Germans with matching coats walk around, asking where they could find the closest grocery store so they can snap photos here.  They were all wearing coats and snowpants that made me want to sweat just looking at them, because, you know, it's summer for us here right now.

The town put on for them a cultural show, showcasing artwork and Inuit fashions.  I stepped out of work to catch some of it.

traditional hunting outfit for the fashion show

Germans 

Inuit throat singers

The German tourists looked a little nervous at the bannock that the volunteers were passing around as free samples.  Little did they know that these free samples weren't anything terribly exotic like raw beluga, but just fried dough...originally brought to the Inuit from Europe.

a video of traditional Inuit throat singing!

I love this middle piece by Tanya Tagaq

My favourite portion of the evening was the headlining performance of Tagaq, which came as a big surprise for me.  Tanya Tagaq Gillis is a well-known musician that has recorded and performed with Bjork, one of my favourite musicians.  She's also on the theme song for the CBC TV show Arctic Air.  I knew she's from Cambridge Bay originally, but it just seemed surprising and unusual that she was here now, in her hometown, performing in front of a bunch of mostly elderly German tourists.

As Tanya explained to her audience, her music is not traditional, but is all about being Inuit now, in the present day.  Her music therefore contains elements of throat singing, but it's also different, evolved in the way that music does develop over time. I have really enjoyed her music for a while now, but this performance really took me by surprise.

Tanya performed with a violinist who had his instrument electrified through an amplifier. The result was a haunting avant-garde performance with an electroacoustic style,  Tanya's vocals providing both a fluid rhythm and context that rippled against the violin, which was at times a counter-melody and at other times ambience. I loved it. I didn't know if everyone else appreciated it as much as I did, but I was enthralled.


you gotta hear it for yourself
It reminded me of this one time in high school where all the arts departments held an art night, displaying paintings. performing plays, and playing music.  My musical partner and I performed an installation in the lobby.   Our performance consisted of my playing repeating riffs on a piano while my musical partner provided ambient sounds on an ARP, a really amazing vintage 1970s analog synthesizer that my school had kicking around for some reason. We took ourselves to be pretty avant-garde because we were listening to a lot of Steve Reich at the time.  I guess the janitor didn't really care for it through, because he started vacuuming in the middle of our performance.  He didn't realize that this was an exhibit; he thought we were just goofing around. Oh well, sometimes a true artist is just not fully appreciated at home.