Hare Pie

For 8 days in mid-January 2008, the town of Baker Lake, Nunavut was snowed in as the result of its longest blizzard since the 1940s. Baker Lake is considered to be the blizzard capital of Canada. It averages 75 snowy days per year, and my first year in the community, school was cancelled due to blizzard 55 times. So, while snow is not uncommon, it’s unusual for planes to be unable to land for more than a couple days at a time. By the third day of the blizzard, the national CBC was reporting that several towns in Nunavut had begun to run out of food. I knew this only from watching it on the television, because I was—of course--snowed in.

The night the blizzard started, I had gone to friends’ trailer to watch a movie. It was snowing lightly as I left my place. Less than 3 hours later, when I went to leave, I discovered a 5ft high and 4ft deep Arctic concrete snowdrift blocking the doorway. I was trapped.

This wasn’t such a big deal, initially. The two inhabitants of the trailer were a pilot and ground crew employee, and basically my only friends in town. We spent a couple of days eating through the food in the freezer and watching movies; a little giddy about the brief vacation from work we’d been given.

It’s at this point that I should mention that a few short weeks before, I’d been sleeping with the pilot. We'd always had a brother/sister dynamic, but it was Christmastime, we were lonely, and after a night of drinking bootleg Courvoisier while counting dozens of shooting stars under northern lights so low it felt like you could touch them, we fell into bed together. The morning after, we did it again. In the sober light of day, it was suddenly a little awkward. A few hours later, we had to dress up like Santa Claus and the Sugarplum Fairy. We had to hand out 550 presents to local children in 90 minutes. By time that was all over, things had gotten really awkward. But I guess why there's that saying...“fuck santa once, shame on me...". Anyway, that’s another story. We secretly clung to each other for comfort until parting company at the Winnipeg Airport Sheraton on Christmas Eve a few weeks later. It had been fine since returning from break, but as the days passed in captivity, things grew a little tense between us.

By the fourth day, we were basically out of food. I made banana bread for breakfast, and then we used the peels to lure arctic hares to the living room window. While we waited for them, we watched a cannibal movie, because of course that's what you do when you're running out of food and trapped with a couple other people in a confined space. Eventually, two rabbits took the bait, and the pilot shot them with a pellet gun. While he cleaned them, I got the ladder. I leaned it up against the drift in the doorway, and squeezed out through the 2ft space near the top. I walked, completely snowblind, 20 metres to the house next door to borrow flour. I phoned back to the trailer when it was time to return, and the ground crew employee yelled so I could follow his voice back.

We watched a second cannibal movie while the rabbit braised. The pilot and I gave each other the stink eye from across the room.

I made puff pastry from scratch, assembled two hare pies, and we watched the day’s third cannibal movie (I KNOW!) while they baked.

Bedtime came. The pilot and I retired to his room, a tiny, wood-paneled, orange-accented box with two single beds. We laid in silence for ten minutes, and then he came over to my bed. And then we did what sad, lonely people do in the Arctic when shack wacky in a tundra-tied tuna can. And then he went back to his bed. I rolled over to face the wall, and started to cry. A little bit at first. I heard him sigh. And then I cried harder. Ugly cry hard. He shushed me. And then he asked me to stop. And so of course, I couldn’t. In the previous 7 months, I’d left an 8 year relationship, moved to the Arctic, and was barely surviving 50 day runs of 18 hour days by living on off-brand energy drink and beef jerky. I was a little "delicate". And that’s when he shot me in the ass with the pellet gun he’d killed our dinner with. He shot me in the ass to get me to stop crying. I stopped crying, alright. And then I got up, took the gun and got back into my tiny bed. And then I shot him in the leg. And THEN I slept pretty soundly.

You know that moment? That moment when you know you’ve probably slept with someone for the last time? I’m often guilty of being in denial about those moments, but later am inevitably forced to admit that I KNEW. Anyway, the moment he shot me in the ass with a pellet gun at close range, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to sleep with the pilot again.

The next morning, though the 110km/hr winds continued to blow, the snow had largely stopped falling, and a loader was carving the snow away from the entry door of the trailer. The pilot drove me home to the Iglu Hotel, where I was living. As I got out of the truck, I felt relief. I also felt a wave of the premature nostalgia that often befalls me. Reminiscing on moments that are still happening, and so on. And I was so lonely in those days that I already felt utterly alone before I was even out of the truck. So as I stepped out, I felt a little sad. I paused, holding the door open, and tried to imagine maybe sleeping with him again. That’s when, lost in thought, I lost my grip on the door in the 110km/hr winds, and the door crushed my nose. The pilot LAUGHED at me, and then basically drove off. You know that moment when you’re SURE you’ve slept with someone for the last time? That’s when I was SURE I was never going to sleep with the pilot again.

In the years since then, the pilot and I easily mended fences. He's a dear friend. Two nights ago, I accepted a contract working for him for the summer. So, yes. I will be returning to Nunavut for a spell, which should help bankroll some cool things I plan on doing in New York. I'm actually kind of excited. But if the pilot pulls a gun on me again, I will fuck him up. Mark my words.