...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR4nufTN3S0&ab_channel=OmarErnestoCaneo

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It is beautiful there -

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Resolute, and dangerous, and broken,

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But beautiful none the less.

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I have memories that're as mundane as any other,

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Memories of classrooms, of a childhood home,

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Of furniture, and television, fear factor and survivor-man.

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But then I have memories that're so vividly outside the norm,

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That it's hard to put them into words.

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Blizzards, whiteouts that'd last for days;

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Tundra cabins and the daunting expanse of the open arctic;

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Sea-ice, owls, foxes, tern;

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Caribou and char;

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Musk oxen and bears;

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Rushing rivers, rifles and

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Christ, the sunsets...

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There aren't really any other sunsets like those.

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I always say that Nunavut rests at the very edge of the world

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And that you feel closer to the heavens 

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In a place that's as flattened out as the horizon line.

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And it's true.

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Aura borealis, the swiveling nightlight of solar flare,

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It can loom so close

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That the Inuit created myths to justify its being there.

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I remember coming back from land trips - 

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You're so crusted up and cold, tundra moss works its way into your boots

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And frost-bite draws these lines about the edges of your goggles -

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But I remember seeing the way that the northern lights

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Used to play against the vertical beams

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Resonating from the headlamps of ski-doos, of bombardier b-7s,

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And the way that they'd all dance upon the silhouette of the town.

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When you're coming back, after four or five days,

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Jesus, there's no other feeling like that - 

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Exhilaration, and relief, as your machine crawls

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Out of land trails, onto open roads

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And the tires rev up and the cold wind blasts about your ears...

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There's nothing else I've ever felt like that feeling,

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Nothing else that can compare.

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And for the last few years, all I've ever done, I've done

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Knowing that it's what I'd be taking with me 

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When I finally get to go back.

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Author's Note

(memoir - non-fiction)