It's pronounced Tsiigehtchic...

According to our CBC homepage, it stepped foot above 0 yesterday and will do the same tomorrow. Things are melting (ie; the ice and snow) and the mud is arriving. The back of my pant legs carry the evidence.

What a week. The school-aged kids that we have during lunch and after school were on their Spring Break last week, so this week we paid for their lack of sleep. Love them still, but TGIF. I’ve never actually had a TGIF job before. Just random shifts and days.

Tuesday of this week cannot be illustrated with photos since none were taken…BUT, it was a memorable one. Cousin Deanna and Dave had Graham and I over for supper, which was very good along with cake for dessert. We watched the next installment of Planet Earth (amazing), and they were to drive us home in their new vehicle. I won’t embarrass them by telling you that this is their second new vehicle within a month, but the first one they took on the ice road and decided to try a ski-doo jump and the flipped it. Written off with only some slight whiplash for Dave. All is now well and they like their pretty new one better anyway. But really, I won’t get into that ☺.

ANYway, to give us a ride in their new SUV we headed down the Dempster Highway for a ‘short drive’. Inuvik is the end of the Dempster, thus we were heading south toward Whitehorse. By the way, this story doesn’t end in a car accident. By this time it was after 11pm, but still daylight. We passed the sign that said Whitehorse 1220km.

The spindly, stunted trees all around us let us look for wildlife. I learned from experience years ago that you shouldn’t look out the side window too long because it makes you sick. However, seeing that fox with a pure white rabbit in its mouth makes the sickness go away. Planet Earth right there in front of us! Again, no camera, sorry.

We stopped to get out and look a couple of times. Also to listen to nothing, which is what we heard out there. It was an amazing feeling. No cars, no buzzing lights…no growling bears either, which was fun as well.

It did finally get dark, after the second time through the same cd. I may finally know the words to Moondance off by heart. We ‘knew’ that a place called Tsiigehtchic was in that direction, and assumed we should be there at any moment. ‘Just over that next crest’ became the theme of the drive from here on. So after a few dozen crests we saw the huge sign welcoming us to Tsiigehtchic! A village of...a few. At 1:45am, we assumed we’d just drive through and turn around. Actually, Dea thought maybe there’d be a motel…picked on her just a bit for that. We drove across the river on the ice to get there.

Driving through the streets we saw a few lights on and a larger crowd still awake at one house. We all had to use the bathroom so pulled in and sent Dave in to check it out for us. We were quickly waved in and joined the 8 or 9 others that were gathered around the guitar playing. They warmly welcomed us and explained that tomorrow was Gwich’in Day, which gave them the day off.

Dave plays guitar, so took over for a few songs. We sat and visited for a while. Told them to come to Inuvik and look us up at the pool. They were all family, including a 91 year old, the only drunk one out of the lot.

We didn’t stay too long (until about 2:30?) since I had to work at 9 in the morning. The drive back was quiet and much faster. I got into bed by 4:30. A little bug-eyed the next day, but well worth it. Spontaneous road trips are always the best ones.

It was a marvelous night for a moondance.

Jen