Don't step on the momeraths....I've been hearing September is prime berry pickin' time here in Iqaluit, since I stepped off the jet. And after watching the hills slowly explode with colours over the past couple weeks, we went for a little hike and yep, there were berries of all kinds: cranberries, blackberries, big ass blueberries... mmmm... and people everywhere, with gigantic sacks, smiling and picking away.
I ate and ate.
Someone told me -- Kent, I think -- that nothing growing on Nunavut ground can harm you... I believe him (still, I wasn't going to start slamming back mushrooms) and did my best Homer Simpson at the buffet table on the tundra... But I started wondering if, maybe the minute before I'd arrived at the particular bush I was picking my little fruit juice bulbs from, a dog had urinated all over them, and there was me, just shooting them back, grinning obliviously. Is that weird?
Anyhow, yeah, the landscape is quite something to behold. The amount of colour that just kind of showed up, when the tundra was really a dead grass looking green/yellow/brown colour all summer. Now, from afar, it looks as if the hills have rusted over, with the amount of just-darker-than-crimson blackberry bushes creeping out over the moss-covered rock. And when you get up close, hiking around, the tundra is a colourful quilt of reds and oranges and fluorescent greens even... It's bizarre. And so soft too.
And I got the most literal example of scorched Earth I've ever witnessed:
Friction burn
Someone -- or something -- (but most likely, someone) lit a little swath of tundra on fire, and it's just black as coal. Cool contrast to the vibrant colours around it. And it smelled like singed brush.
1 comment:
According to one of our fearless Kivalliq columnists, nothing in Nunavut is poisonous, but "Labrador tea will do you more harm than good." Not that I know what that actually is. But I thought I would try to be helpful.
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