Travel day

"That sounds cool, but I could never do that."

"You know it's cold up there right? Colder than Edmonton."

"How will you sleep? It never gets dark!"

"How many people even live up there?"

"Oh...why?"

This is just a small sample of the responses I've gotten when I tell people I'm heading to Ndilo for the summer. I guess it's more accurate to say that the very first thing I've heard from everyone is "N-dillo? Where's that?"

It's pronounced 'DEE-low'. Trust me, I made the conscious effort to never say it out loud and risk embarrassing myself until I heard my supervisor say it first.

I hope I can explain my reasoning for heading up to the True North through a blog post or two here. A lot of it is intangible, more of an aura of curiosity and a sort of calling. For a long time, I have been fascinated by small communities in the North, FNMI cultures and a down-to-earth, living-on-the-land way of life. Ever since my first interactions with Aldo Leopold, Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, I knew there was more to interacting with nature than the city life I'm accustomed to. Food culture is an especially challenging subject -- where do our fruits and vegetables grow? Where are meat and dairy sources being raised? Certainly the banana I ate for breakfast isn't from the tree in my backyard. I think it's hilarious that we never interact with the most fundamental part of our culture except for when we make it disappear into our tummies three-plus times a day. But, I digress.

Most of my enthusiasm comes from the fact that I'll do almost anything for the opportunity to chill in a garden five days a week.

Are you asking yourself why this was posted at like 3AM? It's because I'm taking advantage of some wonderful free WiFi, courtesy of YEG. The World Wide Web isn't always guaranteed where I'm staying, so I'm going to take the opportunity to update my slice of it when I can. My flight to Yellowknife is in T-minus four hours and 45 minutes. I can feel the anticipation bubbling up inside of me...or maybe that's just me being MEGA tired. Either way, this trip is becoming increasingly more real as the minutes pass and I can't wait to take my first steps into it.

This is where I'll leave you for now, friends. So much of this internship is still a mystery to me, but I'm happy that I can update you on it as I discover it myself. In the spirit of community, here's a question to spark some discussion: "What do you know about the North?" Of course, it takes up a significant portion of Canadian landmass, but what else? Who are its people? What are its industries? Its ecosystems? I'd love to get an idea of the perceptions that perpetually Southern people have.

Talk to you soon,

Rachel