To finish the kayak episode - it all worked out as planned. I received a photo of the boat sitting in my daughter's spare bedroom.  Apparently her ferret loves it.

Exams are finished, marks are submitted, and I've packed all my materials for the move to a new building.  I am going to miss some of the best that Fort Chip has to offer by leaving right at the end of term.  Lake Athabasca and the rivers are still iced over and the spring growth has yet to show.  It's a mistake to treat such a beautiful place as just somewhere to work, and I will come back early or stay for part of next summer to enjoy it.  But for now, I am growing impatient and counting the days.  My family claims to be anxiously awaiting my arrival - I gotta admit I love the welcome back.  I am looking forward to visiting MEC for kayak accessories, drinking a good latte instead of the muddy stuff I manufacture myself, and getting a haircut.  My older daughter and I are going to a steampunk convention to see a band we both love, and my younger daughter and I will spend some time hiking and watching sunsets.  It's going to be a great summer.

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).

When you live in the north, it's important to have friends in the south. GOOD friends, or family, who like you enough to go out of their way for you.  I have a daughter in Toronto who regularly stuffs express mail envelopes with the things I can't live without, but this week she is going way beyond that.  This week she is buying me a kayak. 

You can do practically anything on the internet, but buying a used kayak from a private seller is problematic, for obvious reasons.  He sends me pictures of a lovely boat, but is it HIS lovely boat?  Is there a hole in the back side big enough to put my head through?  You see my problem.  So, my darling daughter, who knows nothing about kayaks, is going to see the seller and the boat, armed with a copy of the picture he sent me.  If everything is as advertised she will buy it, and then she really gets to prove she loves me...she has to get it home.  It's a small kayak, as kayaks go, but it's not going to fit into the trunk of her Focus.  It has to go on top.  So, why are they making cars with no rain gutters to clamp to and holes to tie through anyway?  There have been a couple of phone calls, a trip to Canadian Tire to get a foam cartop cradle kit, and now she's ready to go ... I hope.  I'm telling myself that the guy who's selling the boat must know how to tie it down, and it's only half an hour on the 401, and there's a Canadian Tire near the seller's house for emergency supplies (I checked).  But I won't completely be sure it's mine until suppertime Sunday when I hear that they made it.

Then I will owe her, big time.

With my southern expectations bolstered by reports from family of rain and above zero temperatures, it's becoming hard to appreciate the cold weather, but this time of year really is delightful here.  The snow is still very much with us, more falling regularly now that it's warmer, but the sun is so warm in the afternoons that I'm tempted to sit myself in a sheltered snowbank and take a nap.  The time change has given us evening light, making me feel more active at the end of the work day.  The hibernation mode that I, and many others, go into during the northern winter, is ending.

It's been too cold here to get out much for several weeks, but this past weekend the afternoon temperature went up to -15.  It's amazing how warm that feels when you've been dealing with windchills to -40.  So, I geared up and went for a walk, following the ice road out to the first river crossing.  I love to listen to the silence out there - nothing but the wind.  There is nothing as quiet as frozen landscape.  I sat for awhile on a snowbank in the sun, having gotten warm on the walk out. The wind, which had been behind me on the way out, made the return walk much colder and I arrived home chilled; a good reminder of the lesson the Inuit taught me: not to get too hot or too cold out in the cold.

Now it is back down to -23 with 10 degrees of windchill - no sitting in snowbanks for me.