A lesson in optimism

Those of you who've visited this blog before may have noticed I changed its name. It occurred to me the previous moniker, YOU'VE NEVER BEEN HERE, probably came off more hostile than satirical, as I'd intended. Also, I can't stand all uppercase. I don't know what I was thinking.

Besides making vague and slightly cliched reference to my geographical location, this new title matches my writing process. I think we'll be very happy together. It's likely, though, that my few readers couldn't care less what I name these ramblings and I'm lucky to have readers in the first place. So, moving along.

I have a week to enjoy the sun before it disappears until next year. As of Dec. 5, little orphan Annie is wrong: The sun will not come up tomorrow. Next Sunday is expected to be the first day of about a month of darkness in the arctic. The town of Inuvik is set to celebrate the sun's return with its annual Sunrise Festival on Jan. 9. Right now we're down to about two hours of daylight, which has felt kind of surreal. While out and about yesterday around 3 p.m., I saw the moon rising on my left and the sky still pink from sunrise on my right.

One of my last sunrises of 2009, photographed Nov. 28 at 12:30 p.m.

Thanks to my experience living nocturnally throughout university, I don't anticipate spiralling into depression because of a lack of natural light. But just to keep the positive energy flowing, and throwing "balanced" journalistic convention to the wind, I've decided to share some of the things that make me happy to be here. Here goes.

Things I like about living in Inuvik (in no particular order):

• Never missing a November sunrise
• The view of the Mackenzie River through my window
• Walking downtown in the morning as the only pedestrian
• Reading the "social bulletin" board at the post office
• Wide open space
• The underfoot crunch of dry snow
• Town council meetings
• The smell of wood stove smoke
  
• Endless summer days
• Taking Inuvialuit language and culture lessons from a nine-year-old
• Tracking down people's unlisted phone numbers by calling anyone with the same last name
• Being completely unreachable when I want to be
• Being completely connected when I want to be
• Writing about polar bear sightings, whaling camps, seal hunts, but mostly about people
  
• Eating bannock and char
• Seeing someone I know at the grocery store every time
• Meeting the many eclectic and engaging personalities who also make their homes here

It occurs to me how many of the above only encourage my loner tendencies. Hrmm. Well, I've heard it said that these dark arctic winters bring people together.

And on that note, here's a song that makes me happy.

Cold

Shadows slouch against the glass, muddy mannequins thawing in a heated storefront.

Cold air rushes me in, carrying away most of that sharp smell. Avoiding eye contact, I half-nod in their direction. It's a generic, almost undetectable greeting, motivated by a shameful mix of pity and fear I didn't know I would feel. And I feel eyes on me.

"Hey, Katie."

I hear the words as if reading them in blurred ink, dripping and pushed together.

I stop, facing the stranger in a flash of surprise and poorly hidden hostility.

The old man's dark winter jacket wears him, so permanent and starched with grime it seems just another rough layer of his skin. His red face is pinched and creased so deep the wrinkles have shadows. Impossibly ancient.

He's smiling and I can't think of why, besides the liquor. He's looking at me from under the brim of his baseball cap, small brown eyes close together, bloodshot and foggy but shining and – familiar?

No. It can't be him.

This can't be the same well-dressed, levelheaded, charming elder who – just yesterday – sat with me in his counsellor's office declaring a month of sobriety. Trashing alcohol for burning through his vulnerability after he dropped out of residential school, for keeping him from education, for destroying his family, for throwing him out on the street, for stealing his power. He's on the waitlist for treatment even though he's been down that road twice before. The third time's the charm and he wouldn't be here all the time talking to Jeffery if he didn't think so. He had to sober up just to get on the list and he's not wasting it. He tries to bring his friends around when he sees them out with their bottles, telling them "he's a great guy. Jeffery's a great counsellor. He understands – he's been there." Residential school was a hard time, the first of many in his life. But he's done blaming himself and he wants to heal, he needs to. He'll go to treatment whenever, "where ever they'll take me." He's so close.
I extend my hand to him, proud of his purposeful handshake, matching his steady gaze as he smiles and lifts the brim of his Inuvialuit Regional Corporation ball cap off his forehead. I say congratulations.


What's changed in a day? I look into those eyes again and wonder – but no. It's not him. This man is wearing a different cap. It's dirty and so is he. This is a different man. A stranger.

Comfortable relief trickles in around the emptiness of robbed feeling as I convince myself and continue on, not looking back on my way out into the night.


I still tell myself it was just a drunken slur. He didn't really know my name.

Summer reminder

"I thought we were going to walk."

"I thought so too." Grinning in his Ray-Bans and caramel leather, hand on the gearshift, he watched her. "And then I got drunk."

She reached for the handle of the mud-caked passenger door and pulled it closer, knuckles brushing a listless seat belt.

He reversed.

"I'm kidding."

"Yeah."

There's an Arc(tic tour)

Hey Rosetta! played The Mad Trapper bar in Inuvik Sept. 10 for an audience of about 150 people as part of a fundraiser on the St. John's band's "arctic" tour, consisting of stops in Iqaluit, Inuvik and Yellowknife. The show raised $2,000 for a children's charity. I took off my reporter's hat to check it out.

"Never seen so many white people in the Trapper all at once," someone commented, to big laughs. Funny because it's true.

No showy chitchat means more space for conversation as we sit. Seems strange not to dance but we're not there yet.

The cellist's frayed bow curls over the strings like a mischievous moustache. I glance over to see if you've noticed this silly juxtaposition of images. You're not looking at the band.

You look so serious/The night is serving us/But you look so serious

This wasn't what you expected, you mouth to me, leaning across the table, but in a good way.

"Do you play any instruments?"
"Yes. The radio."

I watch the piano keys move under red stage lights and turn around to see lines of shadows waiting at the bar.

And a smile is what I least expect/In the clutches of this darkness

Everyone listens.

Better make it a double; don't want to wait anymore.

The tallest guy in here is dancing now - finally, someone is. He looks like he forgets how to stop and it seems to be catching on.

You pull a camera out of your jacket pocket and we find ourselves up front in an explosion of sound to represent a first-time view of the Northern Lights.

Cymbals clanging, violin screeching, drums thumping until we all stop thinking.

Tired eyes/Open wide/Either side, all these/Veins of lights

At the edge of the stage you tuck your camera away, step back, into the dance.

And then we're just standing there, surrounded by applause. Three hours snaps by.

Are you a wolf? / Warm in your pinstripes?

We walk past the clapping crowd out into a cloud of smoke after the second encore, just as the house band strums its first familiar chord. A reversal.

The only thing I've ever learned/is when trusting a stranger/Your trust will be returned.

In other news...

Off the coast of Paulatuk on a summer mid-morning.

• I took my first real "business trip" to Paulatuk, NWT, 400 kms northeast of Inuvik, with a mining exploration company.

• I discovered getting a brand new camera will not magically make me an amazing photographer.
  

• I was surprised (not unpleasantly) to find a fellow ex-Cornwallian up here above the Arctic Circle.

Katie's first ever Dempster adventure Part Three

So where was I? Ah, yes: the music fest from a month ago. This has gone on long enough.
Which is exactly what I was thinking on my way to and from the "big event." I made it there in time to snap some photos of the band - a country/rock setup from the prairies that played Pink Floyd's "We Don't Need No Education." Not super-appropriate given the audience, I thought, but maybe I'm just losing my edge.

I can't post any of those pictures here, since the copyright belongs to my employer and posting photos taken on assignment, no matter "the hour or the camera used" has been expressly forbidden via staff memo.

Anyway, I also made friends with some little kids who were catching leeches in the lake and secretly wished someone would invite me into their camp for dryfish. Or s'mores.

It was a long, dark drive home, sprinkled with a couple skulks of almost-road-killed foxes, a bald eagle and (oh shit!) a wolf. Though I only had a little less than half a tank left upon arrival at Midway Lake, I didn't stop for gas back in Fort McPherson. I didn't want to miss the last ferry and besides, it was only four hours between gas stations and by that time I'd be home, safe and sound.

The worst thing that could happen was that I'd run out of gas and be stranded on the Dempster in the middle of the night under the almost-autumn dusk. I thought I'd wing it. That was before I encountered the wolf, obviously, or I might not have been so blindly brave.

But four hours later, around 3 a.m., with the gas meter drooped half a milimetre below the red line, I saw city lights and my tires once again felt the ecstasy of pavement.

So, my first Dempster adventure turned out to be a successful execution of beginner's luck. Just what I needed to boost my already foolhardy personal sense of invincibility. I'm not exactly looking for excuses to do it again, but I won't look for excuses not to, either. My next road trip won't be for quite a while, though, mostly due to a vehicular incident in which I had absolutely no part. But that's another story.

I still haven't checked to see whether there was actually a spare tire in the trunk. Better not to know.

Katie's first ever Dempster adventure Part Two

By the time the brakes had the tires back under their command, I'd done a 180. The Blazer pointed me back to from whence I came as I sat there in the driver's seat, white-knuckling the wheel, wondering what in the hell had just happened.

One might think, after my little conversation with God, that I'd have taken the whole incident – which lasted probably no more than 15 seconds – as a sign to head home. And if I wasn't the type of person to yearn for mass murder on a slow news day, I may have done just that. I turned the car around and kept going.

About two hours on the road after leaving Inuvik, I saw this sign:


A welcome most welcome. Tsiigehtchic, formerly known as Arctic Red River – but now only referred to that way by old, white men who can't pronounce Tsiigehtchic (sig-uh-chick) – is a Gwich'in community of about 150 people. It has no airport, so is only accessible this time of year by crossing the Arctic Red River on the Louis Cardinal Ferry. The Dempster continues on the other side of the river. As the ferry operator waved me aboard, I asked him what the toll was.

"What?" He squinted at me with a bemused, belittling smirk reserved for stupid tourists.

"How much does it cost?" I shouted over the whirring boat engines.

"It's free!" He shouted back. "You staying on the Dempster?"

"Crap," I thought, nodding my answer to him as he pulled up the ferry gate behind me, "he totally thinks I'm a tourist."

Though being mistaken for a tourist doesn't really do much for my street cred as a reporter who's supposed to know what's going everywhere in the Beaufort-Delta region, I guess I was a tourist – one who'd never been on a government-run ferry before. After all, I was just passing through en route to a new adventure. I'd never been to Tsiigehtchic and I didn't have time to stop there now. The sun had faded from view, it was raining harder, and I still had two hours of driving ahead of me.



This is a cabin just outside of Tsiigehtchic that may or may not have been part of the community's cultural centre. I don't know; I didn't have time to stop. I just liked the lonely chair.

Once I knew I was halfway to my destination, everything around me magically became more beautiful. The landscape was suddenly so scenic and not scary at all. But I still hadn't seen any wild animals. Here I was, travelling through untamed territory at the height of bear season, and I wasn't even going to get a glimpse of one? Even the tiniest little black bear? Unbelievable.
Eventually, I experienced the simple yet overwhelming joy triggered by a glimpse of the "Welcome to Fort McPherson" billboard.


Finally, I'd made it! I pulled off the highway and drove through the village streets, past rows of peeling-paint houses, the North Mart, the Co-op store with its two gas pumps, the Inns North hotel, the canvas tent factory, the Tetlit Gwich'in Council office, the – wait, was that it?

I parked outside the inn and knocked on the doorknob-less front door, figuring someone there would be able to succeed where Google Maps had failed and give me directions to the music festival. Then I saw the "closed" sign in the window. Of course. It was 7 p.m. on a Sunday. Everything was closed.

I looked around, hoping to see someone, anyone, who could tell me how to get to Midway Lake – and maybe let me use their bathroom. I spied a man working in his front yard and went toward him eagerly. When I got close enough, I saw he was chopping wood with a certain swagger that made me think approaching an axe-wielding stranger might not be my smartest move.

As I headed back to the Blazer, two middle-aged guys who looked like they hadn't slept or showered in days pulled up to the inn. I told them it was closed.

"It closed early," one of them said.

"We can't go much further," said the other.

Fearing they would expand on their surely tragic travellers' tale, I quickly interrupted.
"Hey, any chance you guys have been to the music fest?"

Yes, they said, they were there the day before. I briefly wondered to myself what they'd been doing in McPherson ("McPhoo", as the locals call it) for a whole day, especially without a place to stay. They told me to get back on the highway and keep driving until I saw a bunch of tents. Then, they said, I'd know I'd made it to the festival.

I quickly learned that not only was I still 40 kilometres away from the festival, but that there was yet another ferry ride in my future, this time across the Peel River.


I was the only one waiting at the ferry dock on the McPherson side of the river while the boat brought over a full load of four or five cars. Four or five more were lined up on the opposite bank, on their way back from the Midway.

The operator on the Abraham Francis Ferry was chattier than the last one had been, and no way did he think I was a tourist. I told him I was a reporter and he didn't even look surprised. He didn't react at all, actually. He told me the festival got off to a late start that afternoon but that people had been dancing jigs for hours under the big tent, out of the rain. This year the Midway Lake Music Festival, as it had almost every year since 1986, featured local fiddlers and country/rock bands from the Prairies.

The ferry operator, who looked to be in his mid-50s, was sad to be missing out. He'd started his shift at 5 p.m. and would be on until the last run at 2 a.m., but he worried local kids would break into his house while he was gone. That's what they do, he told me, especially now when most people are out camping at Midway.

"They're bad," he said. "You gotta be careful." His crooked teeth were brown with rot.
If I wanted to make it back before the ferry system shut down for the night, he told me I'd better "dance until 10:30 and then come on back." That way I should be able to make it to the Peel River dock by 11 p.m. and arrive in Tsiigehtchic by midnight, in time for the last boat across the Mackenzie.

It was 8 p.m. That gave me two hours at Midway. Would it be enough time?