It’s not every day we pack up a suitcase and move our lives all the way across a continent. It’s also not every day that the place we make our move to is a mere 400km below the Arctic Circle. But that is precisely what I have done just two days ago. And now, here I am in my temporary room, where it’s nearly midnight and the sky is still as bright as can be. Outside my window is Great Slave Lake, a massive body of water home to Northern Pike and gigantic Lake Trout (one was caught from the lake weighing 76 lbs, and was estimated at being over 120 years old!). Bush planes like the de Havilland Twin Otter often cruise by my window and land on the lake. It’s loud, but it’s pretty damn cool!
I’m staying at Arctic Sunwest Charters float base, located in Old Town, Yellowknife. They have hired me on as their newest Aircraft Maintenance Technician, soon to be Aircraft Maintenance Engineer, and I couldn’t be happier. At first, the prospect of moving 6500 kilometers away from my family and my loving girlfriend was daunting and scary. And, for the most part, it still is. I don’t own anything up here; if it couldn’t fit in a suitcase it didn’t come with me. I don’t have wheels to get myself around. I don’t really know anyone too well. Everything is unfamiliar. It’s a weird feeling.
Uncertainty and loneliness aside, my first few days here have been nothing but positive. The first thing I noticed when I stepped off the plane and into the Northwest Territories was how damn clean the air smelled. This place certainly isn’t a big ole’ polluted city. It’s small and quaint, yet big enough to offer everything a person needs to get by. All of the amenities are here. The city itself is very pretty; lakes dot the landscape around the area, and cliffs and trees are abundant. This is a city very in tune with Nature, something I never thought existed.
The biggest change I am still currently adapting to is the “Midnight Sun”. Although the sun ‘sets’ just after midnight, it never truly gets dark. At its darkest, I could still read a book without turning on a light. It really messes with your internal clock. On the other side of the coin, it’s quite nice having all of these daylight hours. Imagine what you could do with 20 hours of daylight! Things that usually have to cease at dark can continue indefinitely, like fishing, or hiking.
The people I have come in contact with here are as friendly as they come. Everyone at least knows someone who is new here, so when it comes to being new in town, people are willing to help because they know what it’s like to be in this situation. Just today, I was walking around Old Town with a fishing rod in my hand, and a very nice woman stepping out of her car asked me if I was looking for a place to cast a line. She pointed me in the right direction, and with a friendly smile, she went into her house and I continued on following her directions. Another older man out minding his business with a very expensive DSLR camera asked me “How’s the fishing today?” “I’m not sure,” I replied. He laughed and returned to taking photos. Then I saw him again about an hour later. “Catch anything yet?” “Nope, not a thing!”
Its friendly interactions like this that start to make a place feel a little more like home. Or, at the very least, a little more comfortable.
Tomorrow marks my last day off before I start the new job at the airport, so I am going to enjoy it as much as I can. There is a nice park by Town Hall that I am going to check out, and maybe I’ll get a little dock fishing done here at the float base too. Regardless, expect my next blog entry on Wednesday, as I write about the new job and adapting to the Northern Life. Cheers for now and thanks for reading
Feel free to email me at c_gatto(at)hotmail(dot)com
No comments:
Post a Comment