Welome to my world...

Another day in the Arctic! My day started with a fire alarm at 06:00 am! I usually only see one 6:00 o'clock a day and that aint it! As a volunteer firefighter you got no choice. Thank God no one was hurt and I spent the rest of the day unloading barge. I am the Manager of the Northern Store in a small Dene community in the Western Arctic. Tulita is about 500 people on the banks of the mighty MacKenzie river in the NWT. We get all of the groceries and much of the furniture on two barges, one in early summer and one in early fall. Then in January the winter road will open to freight and we will receive trucks twice a week for a couple of months. It is a different way of life for sure and I have been at it for 22 years. We work long hours and it is not an easy way of life. There are compensations though, I saw an eagle soaring over the MacKenzie today. Last night I saw three black bears. You don't see that in the city! As much as I love the north I don't think I'll retire here, there are too many social problems, too much politics. The climate is very hard on my arthritis and I am in pain too much of the time. It is only when I go out for holidays and I see the healing my body does in a few short weeks that I realize the toll this life and climate takes on my body. As much as I love this life it is killing me. Some days not too long away I will need to hang up my keys and move someplace less isolated, less expensive and alas less a part of me. I dread the loss of space, the loss of a sense of being part of the world not the master of it. Life is about trading one thing for another. My new life will be less painful and hopefully I will have the time to do more of the things I love, like writing. But I know that I will give up some of the relaxed lifestyle that we live here. The phone rarely rings and usually it is a friend or family, not a telemarketer.
Here you can be someone, you can make a difference. By simply being a good neighbor or a good citizen you can add a lot to such a small town. By being Deputy Fire Chief you can make a difference to the lives of your neighbors. That will change when we move south and vanish into the mist of the masses. Where here you shine there you are lost in the glow of the streetlights. Still I hope that I can find fulfillment in the lifestyle that will allow me more than waking, working, dining and dreaming. It is a weekly grind that leaves you so numb that you lose half the one day you do get off to sheer fatigue. A few hours respite, then back to the waking and working...