Nothing is like the North

The bay with blowing snow

The North is notorious for it's harshness- the freezing wind paired with blowing snow and blinding sun reflecting off of every icy surface. There is nothing quite like the feeling of walking straight into Arctic wind at 45 kph; nothing like the moment when you turn away from the wind and your face feels warmer by 10 degrees. When it is so cold, and the portion of your face not covered by your goggles is stinging with each strong gust, but you need a picture of the bay with blowing snow, so you keep walking. The moment you take your hand from your mittens, they burn like you've submerged them in an icy river, and your phone shakes in the wind while you fight to keep your hands from shaking in the cold, but it's so beautiful, with the sun bright in the sky, that you want to stay right there. The land on the other side of the bay is swallowed by blowing snow that looks like a thick fog rising from the water. Snow blows into drifts and hides everything, packing into smooth, round drifts hard as concrete.

I walked up the hill to the Plateau to drop off a meal for a family with a new baby, and as I walked, the wind pushed directly against me. The wind turned a 15 minute walk into a 25 minute walk, and by the end I was freezing on the exposed portion of my face and sweating from everywhere else. You can't unzip your jacket to cool down when it's -30 and you're covered in sweat from walking 20 minutes uphill into the wind; the cold wind will freeze your clothing to your body. So you keep covered and press on. There's no feeling like being so cold that you need to go inside, and yet so warm that you're dreading it.

Realistically, my jacket was probably too warm for this weather, but I can't own a different jacket for every temperature. I have a 4° to -10° jacket and a -10° to -50° jacket. If I live up here another year I'll bring up my old winter jacket for -10° to -20°, and then I'll be better prepared.

Despite the harsh winter, signs of spring are here. The sun is up for noticeably longer than during the heart of winter (it rises around 6:30am and sets around 5:00pm), and yesterday it was only -15 while the sun was up. Before long will be Toonik time, a celebration of the returning of the sun.

My amaryllis! It's thriving despite the winter outside.

Me outside yesterday at -15

- Aliya