Month: May 2018

I. A Cabin in the Woods

(Some names have been changed)

Our flight from Whitehorse to Inuvik was a “milk-run”. At Dawson we had to leave the plane while it was refuelled, giving us the chance to feel what minus 40 (Celsius) felt like. That brittle air caught in our throats. We photographed the road and ran back inside. We landed in Inuvik at 1pm, the lightest part of the day. And it was light, but a weird translucent light, a predawn light, amplified by the all-white landscape that reflected it back on itself, a clear, pale blue.

Inuvik, high up in the Canadian Arctic, is home to around 3000 people. By the time we arrived in mid-December 2016, the sun had been set for two weeks. It would lurk just below the horizon for about three hours each day but it would be another two weeks before it rose again.

We were collected by Susan, who runs the Arctic Chalet with her husband Bjorn. She whisked us, with barely time to catch our breath, on to our first adventure. Judi was tall, thin, wiry, and full of energy, but her good humour could quickly tip over into petulant impatience.

“So we’ll get you ready to go out dogsledding after you get some lunch in town,” Susan said as we drove away from the airport.

“Are we going up to the cabin tonight?” I asked.

“Yes. Is that ok?”

It was getting dark again by the time we began dressing for the expedition. Neville, our three sons, and I were provided with heavy jackets, thick overalls, beaver fur mitts, and mukluks because nothing we owned would be warm enough. After a quick briefing, during which we were told to yell “chee” if we wanted the dogs to turn left and “chaw” for right, and not to let go of the sled under any circumstances, we were led out into the dark where five dog teams stood, or rather jumped and pawed impatiently, harnessed and ready to go. I stepped onto mine, Joe, one of the staff, pulled the anchor out of the snow, and with a frightening jerk, the dogs pulled me into the night, down and onto a frozen lake. Judi went ahead on a snow mobile with Kiera, another staff member, and Joe following behind, also on snow-mobiles.

It would take about two hours to reach the cabin. It was like a roller-coaster ride, but with more bumps. A foot pad worked to slow the dogs and you could stop them by putting all your weight on the brake, but they were strong. At one point I hit a tree root and was thrown off into the snow, but still held tight to the sled. At another I lost my balance, the sled slipped from my grasp and the dogs took off. All of this with only head torches for light in a vast cold darkness on the edge of the world. We bumped roughly along paths between snow-covered trees before barrelling down and into the open again as we crossed yet another lake. I wondered what the vast rumbling was I could hear in the distance and found out later that it was the ice cracking and groaning beneath us.

As we were pulled inexorably up another rough trail, the one thing that all who travel in the dark and cold crave finally came into view: the golden, warm glow through the windows of a cabin. As Kiera and Joe unharnessed the dogs and chained them up for the night, we hurried inside to the blazing wood fire. The floor became wet with the snow from our boots and jackets. Pairs of mukluks lined up by the fire to dry.

A tall man with rosy cheeks appeared and welcomed us to the “Arctic Loon” cabin. Bjorn was originally from Norway, but has lived in the Arctic for more than thirty years.

He’d been busy getting the wood-fired hot-tub going so we could do the traditional Nordic thing of sitting in the hot-tub, hopping out, rolling in the snow, then quickly hopping back in the tub.

The cabin was completely off-grid so cooking was done on a gas stove, the fridge was gas-powered, light was delivered by a gas lantern plus portable battery lanterns, and the cabin was warmed by a wood-fired stove in the living room and an oil heater in our bedroom. In the kitchen there was a container of water with a hand-pump attached for drinking water, and another for hand-washing. The toilet was a “honey bucket”, separate ones for solid and liquid, although the boys were directed to the verandah out the side for their liquid waste.

After dinner we put our swimmers on, were given a robe and a towel each, then braved the run down the steps and into the very hot tub. Where our hair got wet it instantly froze. The boys took turns jumping out, running off the verandah and throwing themselves in the snow, and, with high-pitched shrieks, making their way as fast as possible back to the tub, trying not to slip on the water that had already frozen on the steps. We thawed out with hot chocolate before turning in for the night, a night which had actually begun at about 3pm and would end at around midday next day.

The dogs needed two hours to digest their breakfast before they could pull us back to the chalet, so to fill the time we strapped on snow-shoes and went out for a walk in the pale light.

A trail led up behind the cabin, which we now saw overlooked a large, frozen lake. The light glowed pastel pink and blue, illuminating the brilliant white of the snow-coated fir trees and the vast, flat lake below. I found the snow-shoeing hard going so soon turned back, reasoning that there was only more snow and trees to see and we’d see that on our way back to the Chalet. With the others gone on I was left in the absolute silence. No birds, no wind, no sound of machinery. I had experienced complete silence in mountainous desert in the rain-shadow of the Himalayas but that silence stretched across the barren landscape, old and timeless. This Arctic silence was a muffling of sound. Anticipation was held within it because it was temporary. Summer would eventually come to thaw this landscape and for a few months life would return to break the silence. I stood still and listened; all I could hear was my breath.

By 3pm we were underway back to the Chalet. It was better to be travelling in the light, but it was much, much colder. At the cabin, the thermometer outside read minus 28. When we sledded down onto the lake the temperature dropped further. The toes on my left foot began to hurt and then they turned numb. At one point I accepted that I might just have to lose them and tried to distract myself by imagining the procedure at the hospital. In the end I raised my hand to signal that I needed help and we stopped and Joe ran up to me. Susan followed.

“Ya know, if you’re really gettin’ frostbite, you need to take off your boots, sit opposite someone and put your feet in their armpits,” Susan said, while Joe, ignoring her, produced more foot-warming sachets and I took off my mukluks and stuck a sachet to my sock. All I wanted was to get back to the Chalet as quickly as possible, not sit on the ice with my bare feet in someone’s armpits.

“Come on we’re wasting time,” she then added.

When the Chalet finally came into view, I could have wept with relief.