Day: 65

Bad Weather, Great People

Location: Baker Lake

The weather today was absolutely nasty. It was 40-42 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, extremely strong winds, at least 45 mph, coming out of the northwest. It was a ground blizzard, the sky was clear above, but there was a lot of snow in the air. This is very typical weather for Baker Lake. They get a lot of strong winds, particularly the northwest winds.

We will be traveling, when we leave next week, north and northeast, so we are going to have a lot of these winds against us. It will mean some frozen faces on occasion.

I’m calling in at midnight. It was a really busy day today. I talked with a lot of elders, and we met with a lot of people in town. Our reception here has been just really great. They put on a feast for us tonight at 8 o’clock, there was a square dance, and we played all kinds of games with the community. All the people were involved in the games - older people, younger people, it was really a great thing.

We are really pleased with the filming we have been getting. Jerry Stenger, who is really responsible for the website down on the Minneapolis side of things, is up here for the next week filming, and we have been getting some really fantastic interviews with the elders. They are talking about their days in the 1920’s as well as their parents time, which was the turn of the century. We’ve got a lot of these stories on tape. And when we do leave here early next week, I will be covering a lot of that.

There will be short dispatches this week, and I will try to call in a little earlier tomorrow. And I won’t be writing the journals until we are back on the trail.