We’re driving to Tuktoyaktuk and I marvel at the
vegetation. I wonder how-even though I attended school in Canada and was
a Social Studies teacher for a couple of decades- did I not know that the far
north was not just tundra? There are
trees all the way up to Inuvik and then some.
They aren’t big trees, but they are definitely trees. The landscape is
not flat either, it’s all rolling hills and small lakes with the odd glimpse of
the Mackenzie. I watch for tundra swans and there are many pairs in the
little lakes left behind by melting ice, some perfectly circular.
My husband, sadly for him, has to concentrate on the road which is built up a good eight meters above the land to protect the permafrost from melting. Maintenance of this gravel road -which opened to traffic in November of 2018- is a fulltime job. Every time it rains, and it rains a lot, the graders come out and smooth out the potholes.
There is one of the many frequent roadside pull-outs up
ahead. There is a camper parked there. “I wonder what those guys are doing?” my
husband says. A whole family is
scattered along the hillside, crouching down in the small shrubs. “Let’s pull over
and check it out.” We pull over and get
out, walking out onto the tundra. It’s
not easy to walk on. In some places it
is wet and sinky with small pools of water here and there. Where it is dry, it is uneven and spongy with
lots of little plants and shrubs and flowers.
But it is an experience just to walk out there in that vast expanse of
land where there are no buildings and no signs of human beings.
We look down and the ground is covered in small coral-coloured
berries. “Cloudberries!” I say. I had read a blog account of them a couple of
days earlier but I didn’t know when they were in season. We taste some. They look a bit like small
orange raspberries but they grow on plants, not canes, and have a weird
texture, so soft. The taste is a bit hard to describe, tangy-sweet, wild and intense.
The closest comparison I can make is something between a high bush cranberry
and a wild raspberry.
I had read the story of someone who had driven to Tuk at 2 am and had stopped to chat with an Inuvialuit couple who
were berry picking. The couple had
invited the blogger to join them in picking the berries so it seemed ok to pick
them so
we stopped and picked a small freezer bag of the berries. When we got back to Inuvik, I put them in a
saucepan with equal amounts of sugar and a bit of water and boiled them -holding
back a cup - stirring constantly until the liquid evaporated and the
whole thing was a bubbling mass. I
poured the jam into a glass container and kept it in the fridge until we got
home.
The cloudberry jam is delicious. We ate it on toast for breakfast and with
cheese and crackers as an appetizer. Back home, we served cloudberry shortcake
with whipped cream and bannock. As for that remaining cup of cloudberries? I dumped it into a mickey of vodka. It is
infusing right now, and later this winter when I am missing the far north, I’ll
take a sip and remember.
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