There has been a restlessness about town the last few days. Today is the last day of school here and people are rushing around, getting ready to go out on the land. Everywhere you look people are fiddling with snowmobiles, repairing komatiq, hauling equipment down to the ice. There are improbably long lines at the gas station, as people fill their jerry cans and 45 gallon drums, fuel to last them for the next two or three weeks.
Soon people will be filing out of town, most heading south to good fishing and egg gathering, but some have small boats strapped to their komatiq, ready to head north to the floe edge, to the riches of that magical place where ice meets open ocean. It is a restless time of the year, people here yearn to reconnect to the land, to escape the confines of town. Most everyone has a smile on their face.
There is also the restlessness of the children, anxiously watching the clock tick down on the last day of class. There is 24 hour sun to take advantage of, sculpins to fish for, exploring to be done. Schools out. Not forever, but until the middle of August. Its time for them to seek out the rhythm of their own internal clocks. To seek the joy of dragging a homemade wooden skidoo or boat around by a string, street hockey and baseball. Or the perfect joy of escaping gravity briefly off a ramp on a bicycle.
Everyone knows that this, this brief moment, is the perfect time of the year. The time when the anticipation of the brief summer eclipses all else.
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