What a gorgeous evening it was yesterday. The weather cleared in the late afternoon, the wind dropped off, and it eased into a perfect evening. Bird song, Lapland Longspur, Snow Bunting and Horned Lark, rose up and took the place of the patter of rain. Now it feels like spring.
Leah, Travis and I went for a drive last night, out to the First Bridge, the Water lake and Second Bridge. We have about 30 kms of road up here. The only road in Nunavut that connects two communities, although as soon as Nanisivik is finished being demolished (sorry “reclaimed”) we’ll lose that designation. Second bridge is about half way to Nanisivik, and the valley there has got to be one of the prettiest spaces on earth, or I think so anyway. I love the view from about half way up the other side of the valley, looking back to the St George Society cliffs and Admiralty Inlet.
There were lots of Purple Saxifrage by First Bridge,
and Arctic Willow Catkins, and three or four early Arctic Dryads. The Arctic Dryads are my favourite flower here, they are white, with a delicate yellow centre.
Even their seeds are pretty, think dandylion but with in a swirly umbrella shape. There were a couple of bunches of a small yellow saxifrage, whose name I can’t remember right now (and my reference book is packed away along with the bulk of our things in a seacan). The Mountain Sorrel are flowering with their waxy red flower. Mountain Sorrel are very high in vitamin “C” and I love munching on their tart leaves. Inuit make a tea out of the flowers, sort of reminiscent of Hibiscus tea, which they normally drink with copius amounts of sugar.
The river was quite swollen with spring run off and the rain. Travis had a great time throwing rocks into the roaring rapids.
I’m not sure what it is with kids and rocks but they sure like tossing them around. Up here it seems to be the Territorial sport.
At the water lake (its called Marcil Lake in english, the inuktitut name is escaping me right now) the ice is about 10 yards away from the shore, more where the river enters.
A few people were fishing and Travis managed to fill in part of the lake with about a ton of rocks he tossed in. There were more snowbuntings and longspurs singing in the meadow, and a pair of female Old Squaw ducks flew by so close I felt I could have reached out and scratched their bellies as they banked away. Surprisingly I didn’t see any Red-throated Loons at the lake, come to think of it I haven’t heard any this year yet either. Perhaps I’m just spending too much time indoors.
No bumblebees this time at the Second Bridge, but we looked, and when that didn’t work Travis and I chased each other around the truck. That didn’t seem to help either, so we left the bird song and headed back to home, Cheerios and bed.
Bird song should be every life’s soundtrack. I marvel at its ability to relieve me from poor humour, such as I was in yesterday. Just as Robert Frost’s Dusting of Snow it”… has given my heart/a change of mood/and saved some part/of a day I had rued.”