Marc, Lori and I were only there for five days, because the flights only go there on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but so far this community has had my highest high and my lowest low. The plan was to do science camp in the community hall on Tuesday and head out on the land to Diane River with an older group of kids (10-15 yrs) Wednesday until Friday when we flew out. These plans got changed due to some community issues, ask me about it when I get home... Tuesday was great, we didn't really get to see much of Rankin, we had a great dinner at a little spot called the Wild Wolf Cafe, which overlooked the ocean. That night we ended up changing our plans for camp from Diane River to Iqalugaarjuup Nunanga, which is in the Nunavut Park about 15 minutes away from Rankin. The next morning we met our very sleepy campers (kids here don't usually get up until about noon, there is no set sleeping schedule, although there was a lot more dusky "darkness" in Rankin than Igloolik, the sun set for about two hours at night, which was great) at 9 am and sent them home again until noon. I ended up getting onto the back of an ATV, with a group of four strange Inuit men and heading an hour out of town on dirt roads/ no roads to Diane River to pick up our supplies, possibly not a great judgement call on my part, but it was worth it.
The land here was quite different than Igloolik, it had a lot more lakes and the wildflowers are in full bloom right now, which makes for slopes covered in bright purple and splotches of yellow. Rankin is also much hillier, which proved to be quite the adventure on the back of a four wheeler. We stopped a few times to make sure that all the guys were following the non exist ant path (as far as I could tell there was no path, the driver Pierre knew exactly where he was going, and was an excellent driver) on these stops, I learned what true mosquito's were. I had seen mosquito's in Tweedsmuir Park in Northern BC, but not like this, OMG!!!! We stopped in the cabins we were suppose to be staying in, picked up the food (unrefrigerated ground beef, which had been there for a few days, yecky). By the way, did I mention that there was a sighting of a polar bear and her two yearling cubs in the area the day before.... I was hoping to see her, but no luck, or good luck depending on your view. On the way back into Rankin we stopped for a breather (although it was hard to breathe with the bugs) and I got to see a wonderful view of the Diane River emptying into Hudson's Bay, just stunning!
Once back in town, we picked up our 14 campers, all their gear and some other random stuff and headed off in a yellow school bus sans shocks on a very rough gravel road, with boxes bouncing onto kids and struggles to open and shut the windows, it was a great start to the trip. We got to the park site and it was lovely, despite the low hanging clouds that were threatening to rain on us again (it had rained in the morning).
This site has an old sod house, it's a great archeology site (although all the interesting parts other than the sod house were covered by ice, which is very strange for this time of year apparently) and it's right next to a river. We spent the next few hours doing a GPS activity with the kids, which digressed, or progressed depending on your view, to a nature walk complete with a loon's nest with eggs, lots of caterpillars and moss for the fire later. Once we got back to camp, a tent had been set up, the sun and wind came out (no bugs!!!) and we had two cooks and an elder to help us out, along with three bear watchers and our community contact Pierre. After lunch the kids spent some quality time with a 2 foot wide circle of land creating their own planets out in their imagination out of what they found in the little area of earth, the results were inspiring and fabulous, I need to exercise my imagination much more!We did some more wandering and had dinner. After dinner the magic began. The kids started out with an Inukshuk building competition, with the goal of creating something in the park that visitors could appreciate and they would be able to come back and visit as they grew up. Both Marc and I got paired with a kid, so I learned how to build a proper Inukshuk, complete with legs, a body, arms and a head. It was great, and the kids totally got into it, Pierre also pointed out that they make great GPS's and they don't run out of batteries like ours did! After the building competition, we headed out on a garbage pick up session and found all range of things from couch pillows to lots of rusty nails. On the way, the kids came back across the loon's nest and tested the eggs to take home and eat, they were all edible. I had to deal with some inner conflict on this activity. I have been raised with the camping ethic of take only pictures and leave only footprints and am a conservationist at heart, so taking all the eggs out of a birds nest is wrong to me. That being said, eggs are a traditional food for the Inuit and they have been eating them since time immemorial, so who was I to say anything. I decided that holding my tongue was the best call here.
After trashed had been picked up we set off on another fun task, collecting moss. When I was in the Queen Charlotte Islands, in Windy Bay there was a most memorable patch of moss that I sunk into for quite some time just enjoying the feeling of laying in a natural bed, the tundra moss had the same magically floating feeling for me. The kids were all hard at work tearing up the moss to burn for a fire (clearly there is no wood because there are no large trees, although there are woody plants which are technically trees...). This was great fun and it ended in a campfire smelly enough to drive away the bugs and just the right temperature for roasting marshmellows and hot dogs. After the campfire, everyone piled into the girls tent (there were about twice as many girls as boys) and Pierre shared a very moving story about loosing his 14 year old son to suicide, during which all the kids were rapt with attention, and clearly got the message about the impact that drugs and alcohol can have, as well as some coping mechanism for dealing with pain in their lives, with a strong focus on getting onto the land like there were at the moment. After the talk, the best part of the trip so far happened for me. Pierre put a strong emphasis on embracing being Inuit, so once the boys left the tent the girls started throat singing. To be on the land listening to a tent full of girls throat singing was unbelievable, they all took turns doing different songs and they even tried to teach me, but I had some trouble and they all ended up laughing hysterically at me. We wandered out for a bathroom break and saw a HUGE harvest moon rising up over the horizon, it couldn't have been more perfect for the chilling ghost stories that ensued.
Throughout the night it rained, but the tent was set up very well so we stayed cozy and dry. We woke up to a breakfast of hot oatmeal with condensed milk (if you've never tried this, go for it, it's super tasty...). After breakfast the low of the trip happened. Pierre called everyone outside the tent and asked our elder to say a prayer, as a fourteen year old girl in town had just killed herself. In the mist of the morning coming off the river and light rain, I felt such a pain, I can't describe it, I looked at the young girls who I just had bonded with and couldn't imagine any of them taking their own lives, but it is such a big problem here in Nunavut. A few minutes later, two of the older girls just started howling when they found out who had died, and they were both taken back into town. A group of elders was suppose to come out and spend the day with us doing story telling and drum dancing, but that was cancelled and the feeling at camp was gloomy. This wasn't helped by the rain or the infestation of bugs that follows a rainstorm, so after some rock hunting and games, the kids voted to pack up and head back into town for the night. Before we headed back though we got to eat some freshly hunted caribou complete with the best bannock I've tasted, country food here is better than any four star restaurant!
We had camp the next morning, with some of the coolest ocean platform engineering I've seen, and then we were off to Iqaluit for three weeks. The land around Rankin is beautiful, very rolling and becoming, with lots of little lakes, filled with char, and apparently we were about a week or two too early for the caribou migration, which was too bad. I'll write more about Iqaluit later, but my love affair with the Arctic is definitely continuing! I'll try and load up some pictures this weekend, if I get a chance between kayaking, hiking and swimming....
1 comment:
Mosquito's what?
Post a Comment