Day: 68

"Hot Hands" Treat For Kids

Location: Baker Lake

A pretty nice day, actually. It started out with yesterday’s southwest wind, but then this morning a strong wind came down from the north. The windchill is probably about 70-80 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. This is pretty typical - getting a southeast storm followed by a north wind.

This evening here, it’s about 7 p.m., it is still light out, as the Arctic brightness is coming back. And the wind is calming down. The weather actually settles after a storm, and about 36 hours after a storm we usually get some really fine, fine weather. This is pretty typical of the spring up here, long light with the weather settling. Depending on the season, the weather will settle for a week or ten days, and then another storm will come in.

It would have been a really tough day traveling today, because we would have been traveling directly into the wind. We continue to gather stories from the elders here, we’ve been busy around the clock. It seems like we have so many get-togethers with various people. And they are a lot more relaxed about time here. When you sit down with someone, it is usually for many hours, and you go at a slow pace. And you have tea, and so on. It is very informal when you come in. You never knock, you just come in the door, and everyone takes their mukluks off, and you enter. There is always plenty of tea, sometimes coffee, but tea is really the drink of the north. And you start talking to the elders, sometimes there are only a few people in the room, but within half an hour you have the room filled with all the various generations. Little kids are looking into the camera’s viewfinder.

One thing that is really in demand here is a kind of heater called Hot Hands. They are a chemical heater, biologically and environmentally sound. We use these for heating up the cameras and also for hand warmers a lot. We gave a couple of these heaters away to the older guys, and then they gave them to their kids. And then the word got out about these Hot Hands heaters, and now everywhere we go we are swarmed by kids asking not for money, but for these Hot Hands. It’s the big talk of the town. Jerry Stenger, who came up from Minneapolis, is loaded down with these, almost like pocket change, has been handing them out to the kids. They warm up for about 12 hours, and then will die down, but the kids keep them as kind of souvenirs.

It’s been a really interesting stay here. Just the process of socializing, other than the stories, has been fascinating. It is so relaxed, and we’ve been so well received. The family units are very strong. There are big families, and the generations are all mixed, and the elders are extremely well respected here. The young ones listen to what the elders have to say. There is a very good community spirit.

We went to one of the churches today. There was two hours of song and clapping and dancing. Jerry and I were kind of out in the aisles, having fun with everyone else. It’s been a good time.

We will be sharing some of these stories here when we leave on Wednesday morning.