Day: 70

The Door's Always Open

Temperature: -40F

Location: Baker Lake, Nunavut

Latitude: 64deg 05’ 33’’ N

Longitude: 96deg 36’ 20’’ W

Distance Traveled: 0 Miles - Baker Lake

A very cold day out there. It is about 40 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, with a 30 mph wind from the north. The winds are very gusty, with blowing snow on the ground.

We are going to be leaving here, weather permitting, on Thursday morning. We’ve got one more day here. Jerry Stenger, the webmaster and video photographer for the expedition, was up here for a week, and left early today. I guess he made it back to Minneapolis in one day, about ten hours. So I want to say hello to Jerry and thanks for all the video work you did here.

We’ve been going pretty much non-stop here, visiting until the late hours, until 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning. The usual rhythm in town is that school starts at 9 a.m., and most people sleep in until around 8 on the weekdays. On the weekends, people sleep in quite a bit, until 9 or 10. But socializing goes on in the evenings, often until the wee hours. The children routinely stay up. We have a little first grader here, Natasha, who stays up until about 11:30. She gets up about 8 or 8:30 and goes to school at 9. The little guy here, Willy, who is three years old, conks out about 10:30. So the family stays up late, which is pretty typical of these northern Inuit communities. The evening is a special time for family, watching TV, or sitting around playing games.

The streets are busy in the evening. Even around 9 or 10 p.m. you see people walking around. Snowmobiles are of course the vehicle of choice up here in the north. And the cold weather definitely does not stop people from walking around and visiting.

When you visit a house, you never knock, you just walk in. There are usually three doors, and two inner chambers. One is kind of a cold room, and the second is where you take your boots off. And then through the third door is the main living room. There are always lots of people around visiting in the evening. It is not polite to knock, you just walk in.

The culture of the north, not only the Inuit but the Indians of the north, is a little bit different from ours. You don’t ask if you want a cup of tea, you just go pour yourself a cup of tea. I asked Jeannie, an Inuit woman here, mother of Natasha and Willy, if I could use the phone here the first day. And then I asked again a little later, and she said, “Don’t ask!” That’s the way it is, you just don’t ask in this culture. It is very loose and it feels like everyone owns everything.

This is quite the opposite of some of the white trapper cabins I’ve visited while traveling in the north. When you visit a white trapper, especially someone who has been alone all winter, you don’t just walk in and open up the cupboard and help yourself. You could get shot doing that. In that situation you are always asking, and things seem a bit territorial.

Once we get on the trail again, I am going to start relaying some of these wonderful stories. I found out a lot of information, the kind of stuff you just can’t find in books. After talking with some of the elders, I’m inspired with other questions. We usually spend about three hours with one group, and then head to another. We get to know not only the elders, but also their daughters and sons as well as the scores of grandkids. The house is usually full when we come over.

We’ve stayed much longer than we thought we would, about three extra days. But the time has gone really fast. I apologize that I haven’t been communicating the stories and all the interesting things that have happened here on the dispatch, but I will do so once we are back on the trail, and I will begin the journals again as well.