North/South.

Each morning I wake up to the sounds of the ocean—seals slapping their tails on the water, waves crashing, and the whistles of early morning dog walkers. Usually the rising sun wakes me up, though some mornings Alex—one of the two human ecologists that lives with me on the beach—tries to flip me out of my hammock while grinding the morning coffee. By mid morning we are up in the garden harvesting all types of organic vegetables for deliveries to local markets and restaurants and to stock the Wind Whipped Farm's roadside stand. Farming on the coast of Vancouver Island has been a good way to close my time in Canada. The abundance of fresh food from the farm stands as a contrast to the shelves and diets of my friends in the north. The land also provides contrast-though equally as ancient as the weathered krumholtz of the tundra, the trees here stand tall and dark, towering over the beaches.

Tomorrow I head to my first new continent—At noon I fly to Munich, Germany and start my way towards Italy and the Po River.

Below is something I wrote a few days ago while thinking back on my last week up north.


In front of a row of conjoined, prefabricated, aluminum apartments a few blocks off the main street in Inuvik there is an aging red Ford pick up. Inside one of these small, tidy apartment supplies for a week in the bush are assembled—warm clothes for the ride up river, rifles, a new batch of out of date newspapers to read, sugar, coffee, tea, and several chucks of frozen caribou meat.

Soon the supplies are loaded into the bed of the truck. After a few errands around town we are down at the town boat launch. Along the beach many of the boats are tied to one another in a long chain whose only link to shore is our bowline—which is only lightly tied around a small branch driven into the mud. Once loaded and untangled from this nautical knot we head up river. In a few minutes we have passed the limits of Inuvik and its exhaust, engine noise, and human detritus.

The forty kilometer trip takes nearly two hours—during which time we pass only a handful of camps. Some of these were built from old school buses, logs, scrapwood from town, storage trailers, or Hudson Bay Company trading posts.

Once at fish camp we immediately get to work. A fire is lit in the outside oven so Alice can begin to bake her bannock—a type of biscuit she is only willing to bake in the bush since she claims it is impossible to make it in the “machine” back in town—and the never ending pots of coffee and tea begin to brew.

Meanwhile John and I set the net in the river and start at the dozens of camp chore—splitting wood, cleaning rifles and dishes, and going for water. Though the river flows past camp we head upstream through a side creek to a small lake where the river's slit has settled out. This water here is clear and ready to drink—a treat considering that many in town put their tap water through a filter before drinking it to remove the abundant heavy metals that come north with other industrial air pollutants.

On our way back to camp we are followed by a flock of gulls that are as anxious about checking net as we are. Though our first haul of the week is light, John is relived that there are any fish at all. Long ago, he says, this is the time of year (Mid August) when fish runs slow and many would leave camps along the delta for caribou hunting in the mountains.

We bring our fish up to Alice and the three of us begin cutting fillets and dryfish. While we work Alice talks fondly about the times when dozens of families would come to this spot in the summer to amass dryfish stores for the long winter. Now many of the fish we catch will be sold in town, a reality that troubles Alice. She worries that too few people still know how or have the desire to spend suitable time in the bush making dryfish to feed themselves and fuel their dog teams. With each fish being worth as much as $20 in town we constantly guard them from Canadian jays, ravens, and weasels.

When not in camp much of Alice and John's food, like most in Inuvik, comes frozen, canned, processed, over ripe, over priced, and from far to the south--symptoms of the communities remoteness and of the cultural assimilation policies of the not so distant past. Today there are movements afoot to help the residents of Inuvik enjoy a fresh, healthier diet. Nearly ten years ago an indoor community garden, in the town's old hockey rink, opened and provides plots for citizens to take advantage of endless summer days and grow their own produce; while non-profit groups advocate for healthy northern diets through outreach and education.

Our own diet at fish camp is a testament to Inuvik's food culture. At camp we continuously eat fresh whitefish and cony meat and eggs—grilled, baked, boiled,smoked, and fried—plus platefuls of fresh caribou and bannock, but as a special treat my hosts offer me whitebread and canned ham. An irony that is hard for me to understand let alone swallow.

Towards the end of the the week our smokehouse fills with fish Alice begins to talk about the coming weekend's big bingo. We pack up our fish, put out our fires, close up camp, and head back to town.