Shopping therapy

There is much entertainment to be had at the single store in town.  When I'm feeling cabin-feverish, I go down there and cruise the aisles.  I've found I can frequently satisfy my periodic junk food cravings just looking at the packages and imagining eating it.  If that fails, reading the ingredients list usually cures me.  Perusing the shelves, I ask myself who would buy that, and why?   I used to wonder who buys Lunchables, but now I know: my young adult students bring them to class for breakfast (shudder).  I can spend 10 minutes considering the merits of the available soup flavours, none of which I actually buy.  When groceries lose their fascination, I drift to the clothing aisle, where sparkly purple T-shirts compete with logo-smothered hoodies for my attention.  Women's sizes jump from 2 to XL with nothing in the mid-range, so there is no danger of me appearing in class wearing a scoop-neck skinny-T with strategically placed mesh insert.  I save the back of the store for last.  There, behind the mark-down racks (where clothes I would actually consider wearing seem to end up), are glass cases.  Peering into them, I am reminded of where I really am.  Hanging behind the glass are beautiful tanned fox skins in a range of colours,  elegant filleting knives, and skinning knives with a modified ulu shape, looking like what they are: a tough and efficient butchering tool.
This place is more than a remote little town with limited consumer options.  It's a community with a different culture and value system from the south.  I'm comfortable with that.

Spring is on its way here, with daytime temperatures inching above the freezing mark and the snow slowly disappearing.  The receding snow has brought a revelation to me: Fort Chip has paved roads and sidewalks!  I have to explain how unique this is. This is the first northern town, of the seven I have lived or visited, to be so equipped.  Even Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut with a population of 6500, had very little paving and no sidewalks when I was there.  There is something incongruous and slightly disorienting about walking down a smooth, level concrete sidewalk with wilderness in full view and less than a city block away.  I'm not sure I like it, but being a good citizen (most of the time), I walk on the sidewalks (most of the time).