Thinking About Winter Again

This weekend was the last weekend of Winterlude, a two week celebration of winter. We went to a park in the city where there were giant, that’s GIANT, slides constructed out of snow, enormous snow sculptures, and various, deliciously unhealthy foods. Parents where pulling their small children around in sleds. There was a place to try your hand at ice-fishing and, best of all, there were a group of young Inuit from the north demonstrating Inuit dance, drumming, throat-singing and games. A friend of mine from the States was visiting with his daughter and they were duly mesmerized, as was I. There is something so haunting about throat-singing. It is, for me, the closet human sound to the evocativeness of the loon’s song. Why would it emerge from a culture of the far north? Was there a sound or a process in nature they were imitating? The cry of ice as it breaks-up, the whoop of the Sandhill Crane, the torment of insects driving a caribou mad?

Their games, which required minimal space and, oftentimes, maximum exertion, were many. The most intriguing was the one legged kick, where you jump off both legs and kick one as high as you can to strike a suspended object. They were kicking an object suspended higher than their heads. The world record is 9 feet 6 inches. Unfortunately, the wild applause they deserved was significantly muffled by everyone’s mittened hands. They received a standing ovation of dull thuds.

I came home from that and, coincidentally, sat down with the paper and read a book review of The Geography of Bliss. I haven’t read it, but the guy’s thesis seems to be that the happiest people live in northern countries. Why? Because, in cold climates, people have to support each other more. Who wudda thunk it!