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meteorology, meat

INUVIK, NT

Sometime last week, it hit –36° Celsius. Now, I will admit that there are some detractions to that kind of temperature. Previously innocuous metal objects like keys and eyeglasses freeze to your skin. Snowpants take on essential, life–preserving dimensions. But the moisture from your breath also instantly turns your facial hair into an ice beard, and you just can't help but feel hard–core.

I've thoroughly enjoyed sampling various traditional foods up here. Recent novelties include caribou heart and fried lota lota (loche) egg sacs. But a recent potluck unintentionally consisted of dishes prepared entirely from a representative sampling of the Arctic's indigenous ruminants. To wit, I cooked moose in a wild mushroom sauce, someone else broiled caribou steaks, and a third individual produced muskox meatballs—a meal that was taxonomically fascinating, but a little heavy on the gut.

Apologies for the infrequent posts, and for this brief and disjointed one. I have had consuming tasks to complete recently, but have almost emerged to the other side.

Take good care.

Photo above: The Fortress of Solitude, a popular local make–out spot.

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daylight savings

INUVIK, NT

Up in the Arctic, the exercise of falling back an hour comes across as a little silly. Rather than rising at 10:30 a.m., the sun rises at 9:30 a.m. Instead of setting at 5:00 p.m., the sun sets at 4:00 p.m. Either way, you walk to and from work in the dark.

Strangely enough—and this statement is certainly tempered by a recognition of the long, dark night still ahead—the lack of daylight doesn't seem to be having much of an impact on me. In fact, I'm quite delighted by the number of spectacular sunrises I've witnessed here, events normally alien to my matinally averse rhythms. This may be the only time in my life during which I will be able to begin a conversation with, "Yup, got up with sun this morning." And add, "Can't sleep yer life away, y'know." Now if only I had a wife who enjoyed crocheting.

It seems my years of struggle against diurnality have left me well adjusted to heliacal absence. Finally, my predisposition to late nights and even later mornings is no longer at odds with my surroundings. Now, I can toil away in the dark at 3:00 in the afternoon rather than its unhealthy ante meridiem counterpart. My only concern is that what natural light my pallid flesh does receive is no longer generated by the robust sun of the 49th parallel, but by a feeble Arctic sun nearing vernal death. Better keep the vitamin D supplements handy.

On a related note, the Arctic's fluctuating relation to the sun offers an interesting challenge to religions that developed in near–Equatorial desert regions. Like other such encounters with conditions outside Muhammad's reckoning—Muslim airline pilots on long-haul flights, for instance—practitioners of Islam in Inuvik just have to assume Allah will understand if they don't pray three times between sunrise and sunset. On the other hand, a Ramadan that occurs in winter is the easiest fast you've ever done.

Hope that all is well.

Photo above: Sunrise on Wednesday, November 3, 2004. Approximately 9:45 in the morning.