Waiting for Winter

This is one of three dog sledding teams that live in Rankin. Like everyone else in this town, they seem to be just waiting around for winter, when they can get out on the ice. Visiting the North in early September, I very much feel like I've arrived in Nunavut during the "off season."

The locals all tell me everything is much more beautiful here when the village's dusty, gravel roads are buried under a blanket of clean, packed snow. I well believe them, but I, for one, am glad to have made my first trip to the far North during an "Indian summer," so to speak.

It has been unseasonably warm this week: about 8 or 9 degrees Celsius during the day and dipping below freezing at night. Except for a couple of days of severe wind (gusts of 50-to-60 km/h), the weather has been pleasant even for this green Southerner. The other day, walking out on the land, it was so warm I had to strip down to a long-sleeved T-shirt.

But in a few weeks I'm told everything will be covered in snow, right up until the end of May or early June. Then this place will really come alive. But I'm glad I won't be here. I have no interest in experiencing daily temperatures of -40 and -50 C, with that wet wind wind howling off the Bay.

However, when I am back home in Edmonton, enjoying a couple more months of fall, I'll be glad to know that these guys will finally be out on the ice, enjoying the "high season."