August 13, 2011

ᐊᐅᔭᖅ / Aujaq / Open Water / Summer

I’m sitting on First Air flight #0952, Yellowknife to Edmonton.  I’ve been away from home for seven, going on eight weeks now.  There are tears in my eyes, weight in my chest, and fond memories dancing through my mind.   The whole Arctic tour is playing through my head, bits and pieces flashing in front of my mind’s eye.  I can see my campers in Pang who taught me “Innuk baseball” (a game with the same basic concept as baseball but altered rules to make it way more fun e.g. no three strike policy and you throw the ball at runners to get them out – kids, funny).  I can see my girls in Cambridge Bay on the last day of camp not wanting to leave, hanging around until the last second offering to help clean the camp space so they can linger even just a little longer.  Rankin is fresh in my memory, and I’m so grateful to the bravest kids in world who got up in front of all of the parents and community contacts attending our open house and sang and danced and performed beautiful throat singing, arms locked, eyes fixed, giggles always popping out after three or four rounds.  The phrases “Ever!”, “Expert”, and “Not even” are engrained in my vocabulary and I can’t help saying them out loud – they just want to jump off my tongue in response to anything I’m asked.

Looking down at the land just outside Iqaluit

Iqaluit


These last six weeks spent touring Nunavut were so magical.  Every community has a different feel, while maintaining their common air of reserved welcome and shy pride in their wildly different landscapes and shared culture.  I’ve hung out in sharp mountains, dry tundra, and grey maritime environments.  Temperatures have ranged from six to twenty degrees.  I went four weeks without seeing the sun set once.  I’ve eaten more country food (muktuk, caribou meat, caribou stomach, seal fat, seal meat, muskrat, muskox, char, trout…) in the last month and a half than ever before in my life.  This place is otherworldly in the best possible way.  There are no trees in sight, but I only really noticed this after a weekend in Yellowknife opened my eyes to how many trees are in other areas of the north that lie below the permafrost line.  What the land lacks in trees it makes up for in strides with variation of the landscape’s hues.   A flat tundra, appearing to go on forever and a day, has about a trillion shades of brown and green and grey in it; purple, pink, and yellow flowers litter the mossy earth, giving the eyes a treat (and the taste buds come berry season).  The sky too: blues, oranges, pinks, purples, greens all blend together in waves above you, and I swear the sky actually looks round up here – nothing blocks the view of the true shape of the top of the world. 



Mmmm muktuk and caribou stomach

Flowers in Cambridge Bay

Cambridge Bay

Cambridge Bay
Colourful skies over Cambridge Bay

Blue, purple, orange, yellow, pink: Cambridge Bay

Looking out into the Northwest Passage

Lit up land in Cambridge Bay



Overall, people here live closer to the land than anyone I know down south; the weekends at the cabin, spent hunting and visiting, are the main event.  People go fishing on their lunch break (which, no matter where I went in the entire territory began promptly at noon, town-wide, and ended whenever everyone wandered back from their mid-day meal and visits).  Not much is open and functioning during the lunch hour – don’t try to squeeze in your errands, just chill out and have a meal with your family or friends at home, that’s what lunch time is about.  The kids here are really free.  They can always (read: at all hours of the day and night) be found at the park, riding around town on their bikes, running in and out of the general stores [insert sugar filled treat] in hand, boldly gravitating toward foreigners and blurting out, “What’s your name?  Where you from?” and then, looking you over once more with a cautionary up-down, accepting your answers, and wandering off again to meet up with friends.  The kids I’ve met are both eager students and wise teachers; they love to discover and are more than willing to fill you in on the Inuktitut or Inuinnaqtun translation of anything and the local customs and routines – they know so much and seem older in knowledge and survival strategies than they could possibly be in years.  Every kid knows how to shoot a gun, how to bait a hook, which river to fish in, and what a caribou heart tastes like (I’m sure delicious since my refusal to let the kids eat our specimen during the tuktu dissection that I led one week was met with more than a hint of disappointment and shock).   Their freedom is refreshing, coming from a city where liability and cautionary preventative rules are both necessary and over emphasized, it’s nice to see kids ruling their own domain and taking ownership over their daily routines: when they want to learn and participate they are at the camp door waiting for us in the morning and when they want to be on the land, they take the day off.  They often have an awareness of their mental and spiritual needs that most adults should take notes on. 






Out hiking in Pangnirtung

My buddy in Pang, Buddy

Maxim and Alec getting ready to traipse across the river on our hike

The breathtaking Pangnirtung Fjord


Char drying in Cambridge Bay



Puppy love with the girls in Pang


There are the obvious lifestyle shortcomings in the north: a vegetarian diet is impossible to keep up, but luckily eating local, free-range, organic meat is more possible here than in any major city centre I’ve visited.  The words take on an entirely new meaning when you’re eating caribou shot earlier that afternoon, across the river, by a local man who slung it on the back of his ATV to bring it home to butcher.  There is however a lack of fresh produce and the prices of what is available are sky-high.  Getting between communities is expensive and requires expert cross-land navigation skills fed by years of traditional knowledge, or a salary that can afford airfare.  While the midnight sun, bright as ever, is totally badass, it does make it impossible to sleep without lining your windows with tinfoil; and I can’t imagine the long dark days of winter.  But none of this really seems to matter when you can hop on your Honda and be in absolute wilderness, not a soul around, in about 40 minutes; or track down an elder in town who can teach you how to sew, from caribou hide or seal skin, your very own mittens, coat, or boots – the traditional way that it has been done for thousands of years.  There are lingering social issues that arise in many Aboriginal communities, but there are a lot of locals who are working hard to raise awareness and set up social programs to alleviate the symptoms of past wrongdoings and current rapid cultural change.  These are a people who have gone from, as one woman put it, “igloos to iPods in the last fifty years”.  The elders in town grew up on the land; while the kids are singing Justin Bieber lyrics and imitating hip hop moves from music videos.  This is an ever-changing culture that is wildly resilient – strong yet flexible, because that’s how you’ve got to be in the north: adapt or perish.


Peter cutting up a local, organic, free range seal for the Nunavut Day Feast: Pangnirtung

Lauren and Mike checking out the good leftovers post caribou hunt in Rankin:
stomach (full of nutrients and greens), intestines, and antlers


1:00am in Cambridge Bay

11:00pm in Cambridge Bay

The first real sunset I saw in six weeks: Rankin Inlet

The stragglers from the great caribou migration just north of Rankin Inlet

Mary, a local elder drumming and singing in Cambridge Bay

I feel that I’m leaving a piece of myself in Nunavut, especially with the kids I’ve been working with.  Hopefully they learned as much from me as I did from them.  My eyes have been ever so opened to a part of Canada that so few who proudly sing “the true north strong and free” will ever experience.  This is the true north and it is both proud and free beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, and even though it keeps a part of my spirit, a small price that I feel every traveler must pay, it is a generous land and gives so much for me to take back south to share with anyone who will listen to how much I love this place. 



And now I’m away, on a very full day’s journey, to Fort St. John, BC (via Yellowknife, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver) to re-acclimate myself to traffic and cafes and hustle and bustle – a much needed buffer week of camp in Blueberry River First Nation before heading home.  My heart is beating fast at the prospect of driving myself around the beautiful mountains of northern BC once again, but the tears are still in my eyes.  Thank you to the people of Nunavut for letting me take in so much of your land, food, music, history, and a bit of your wisdom; and to the spirits of Nunavut, always watching, for filling my head with such vivid dreams while I slept in your realm - your presence was felt.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.


February 27, 2011

Makkovik or Bust

I know this blog posting is coming pretty late in the game.  I've been back in Halifax for two weeks now, but I think that delaying the post was a sort of clinging to the traveller's lifestyle - if I don't blog it, it isn't over, maybe?  But, here I am, back at home, back in my regular routine, back at my regular job, undeniably, the trip is over.  Now that I have the photos of Makkovik (our bags didn't make it onto the plane from Goose Bay to Halifax - typical), the post must go on.

I woke up in Postville, feeling refreshed from my own cooking and a good night's sleep after the Hopedale sickness, ready to head on over to our last stop - Makkovik.  Well, guess who greeted us in the hallway of the warehouse/hotel/convenience store - Ben!  The diesel worker who had comforted my on the plane when I was feeling rather projectile.  Mara, Cody, Candy, Ben, and I loaded up all our shit - many hands made light work - and we headed off to the airport, Mara and Cody with Candy and Ben towing our crap in a kumatik and me on the back of his sled.

Ben's Skidoo

The flight to Makkovik is only fifteen minutes from Postville, so the trip seemed like it would be simple enough.  Oh no, this had to be the day when the plane was completely packed.  I mean tail and nose storage units bursting with bags, mail, dry goods, and everything in between, seats full, and that's all the room there is in a Twin Otter.  We played tetris with our workshop bins, the wheelchair, and our luggage for about 15 minutes on the runway, passing various combinations of luggage to the co-pilot, who we could all tell was getting tired of having us on her flights three times a week; she couldn't have been sweeter about it though.  Her thick Quebecoise accent simultaneously cursed our baggage and warmly encouraged our exploration of the region.  Eventually, with the wheelchair upside down, balancing on a box of produce with Mara's duffle and my backpack wedged on either side, and two bags of mail left behind on the Postville runway to make room for our mangled bins, we were off.

Upon arrival in Makkovik, we were not greeted by any skidoo-ing hotel owners ready to tow us into town.  We figured they were running late or our plane had been early - it's common place for planes to run hours ahead or behind schedule on the Nunatsiavut milk-run.  The pilots just get the airport staff to inform all passengers via telephone that they either need to hustle their butts down to the runway or chill out for an extra hour or two.  After hanging out in the "airport" (a standard 4 x 4 metre shed with a bathroom and some baggage scales in it) for a little while, with no sign of transport, we asked the woman working there if she knew whether anyone was heading down to get us.  She phoned up to the hotel owners, who had no idea we were coming, but agreed to come get us anyway.  Up rolls Lori, a beautiful forty something Inuit woman, on skidoo with no hat, goggles, or neck warmer on - badass.  "Well, it's a good thing those boys left yesterday, or you'd all be bunking up at my house tonight."  Apparently the hotel had been full merely yesterday, surveyors and diesel workers are the most common hotel goers in Nunatsiavut winter.  Lori didn't miss a beat, even though we were apparently surprise guests.  She immediately asked us what we wanted for breakfast, showed us to our rooms, told us to get comfy and started getting our delicious meals together.  Homemade bread with homemade partridge and cloud berry jams, eggs, bacon, tea, mmmmmm.  The food at the Adlavik Inn was fantastic!  While we were eating, in came Lori's husband, Randy, a man who looks youthful and well weathered by the elements all at once.  He's pretty quiet, but you can tell he likes to pull pranks on his wife, and is much more comfortable outside in -50 degree weather than in the warm Inn.  "Randy!  You shithead!" Lori screamed from the office.  "That's my cue to leave," Randy responded, with a wide grin on his face and his hat already on, half-way out the door.  "Quit changin my facebook status!", but Randy was already outside on his skidoo.  I like Lori and Randy a lot.  Lori told us all about their cabins, Randy's fishing boat, the hunting and fishing trips that he runs for wealthy "southerners" during the summer months, their kids, their life in Makkovik, and how she has to twist Randy's arm to go down to the Dominican with her - she loves, while he detests the heat.

Mara on the back of Lori's Skidoo

Mara and Cody in the kumatik

Makkovik


We did all of our workshops in the school that afternoon, giving us a free last day in Makkovik.  The teachers in Makkovik were awesome!  We had met Mr. Rideout, the grade 7, 8, 9 science teacher on a flight earlier in the week, and now Cody was teaching his class about DNA extraction.  Mara found two teachers who are really into sewing and one offered to custom make her a pair of slippers.  And I, of course, struck up a conversation on birthing rights and my desire to be a midwife in the north with a teacher, originally from Windsor NS, which perked a bunch of female teachers' ears right up.

Makkovik is gorgeous.  It sits right on the ocean, no barrier between the town and the harsh North Atlantic, and I think that's how the Makkovians like it.  There are a lot more trees in Makkovik than in some of the other communities we visited, I guess because of it's relatively southern location.  The people were friendly and really love their town.  It was bitter cold while we were there; we only narrowly missed school closures and cancellations of our workshops due to weather - the elementary grades are cancelled at -45 degrees and the high school classes are cancelled at -50 degrees, it was -43 when we did our workshops.  Our second day in town was -50 degrees, but it didn't stop us from hopping on Randy's skidoo and taking a tour of the town, meeting the local sled dogs, skidding across the sea ice, and meandering through the small forested areas.  We hung out at Randy and Lori's and had a hot chocolate after the chilly ride, met their dogs, talked about the uranium mine plans in Postville, the Nunatsiavut government, and wildlife.  Before long, it was time to head down to the airport.  Damn.  I really liked Makkovik, and was definitely game to stay longer.  I was secretly hoping for the high winds to ground our plane and force us to stay one or two more nights.  But alas, the Twin Otters aren't afraid of the cold or the winds, and on we pressed to Goose Bay, coming full circle on our tour de Nunatsiavut.


Frozen Dock.


Sunny = Cold



Sled Pups

Timid Guy

Frozen Atlantic



Trees!


I loved north western Labrador.  Yes, the food was different and hard to digest at times, it was cold, and if you're not into hunting, fishing, going to the cabin, crafting, or entertaining yourself at home, there isn't much for you to do, but I like that life.  It'll be interesting to see how the lifestyle changes and adapts in Nunatsiavut in the next twenty-five years with the changing climate, increasing interest in natural resources that will open up as a result, and the increasing traffic that all of this will bring to the area.  I hope it doesn't change too much, I like it just the way it is.                                          

February 10, 2011

Hopedale to Postville

It was really windy the day we flew into Hopedale. Mara was clinging to the seat in front of her, while the man in the next seat was kind enough to offer up some reassuring words: "That's normal" and, "These planes do that all the time" were his responses to major jerking back and forth and steep drops that we all felt deep in our stomachs. No worries, the Twin Otters we've been cabbing around in were designed specifically to be able to land just about anywhere. With lots of open mountain tops surrounding us, I wasn't too worried...most of the time. We touched down safely and helped the co-pilot cast our ever more tiresome load onto the runway. Already I could see differences from Nain in this not so far off community.  Hopedale has roads - real gravel roads, that people were driving trucks on. With hardly any snowfall this year, skidoos are only free to roam on the ice, unless they want to risk damage to the undercarriage and skis. I commented on this to the guy who picked us up and carted us to the hotel.  He raised his eyebrows and solemnly said, "Yup, not much snow this year, unfortunately. Weird, isn't it?".  I imagine so.   In Halifax we're quick to bitch about 5cm falling on the sacred grounds of Spring Garden Rd.  God forbid we should get a "blizzard" that unleashes 10-15cm on us.  Close the schools!  Cry for pity!  Curse the winter, and wish for spring, right?   It's not like we live on the North Atlantic, us poor snowed in fools. Imagine wanting the fluffy white stuff.   Imagine relying on it to get from town to town without flying, or to get out hunting.   It's tough to live off the land when the land is changing so dramatically all around you.  "It's gonna be a tough winter for a lot of folks up here" one woman quipped at us. With no snow or sea ice comes no seal hunting, with warmer temperatures comes less incentive for the caribou to migrate along their traditional routes, which pass by these settlements. Less hunting means people have to buy their food at the Northern Store, which sells the least healthy foods you can think of at exorbitant prices. Hmm, seal meat or Kraft Dinner? Are you so sure you fully understand and are opposed to the "cruel slaughter" of pinnipeds now, Pamela Anderson?

Hopedale.

Hopedale was cold. In Nain we were sheltered in a valley set back from the open North Atlantic. Hopedale is right on the ocean, thrashing Arctic winds in your face everywhere you walk.  A thirty minute stroll around the town to take pictures and buy tape at the general store left all three of us frozen to the bone and happy not to leave the comfort of our hotel rooms for the rest of the day. Hopedale is damn cold.

It would have been nice to see more of the town, but all three of us came down with either food poisoning or a stomach flu that ran rampantly through our systems. The last 10 hours spent in Hopedale were not pretty ones. There was a lot of napping, and then we had to catch our flight. Luckily Mara held the group together since her sicky times ran their courses the night before, but Cody and I were in bad shape.  We dragged our gear to the plane and I rolled into the first seat I saw at the very back of the plane.  The fifteen minute ride to Makkovik couldn't have felt longer, and I almost made it, but just as we swept in for a landing, BLAH!  "Are you OK?" asked Ben, the diesel plant worker sitting beside me, "I'm feeling pretty sick," I weakly replied immediately before expelling all of the contents of my stomach, upper intestines, and I'm convinced even more, into the barfy bag from the seat pocket in front of me.  Ben, who I had just met that day, was nice enough to pat my back - diesel plant workers are more sensitive than I thought.  One stop over to let a few people off in Makkovik and me out to drop off my barf bag, fifteen more minutes of flight landed us in Postville, and I was feeling shockingly better: sweet relief.

Moravian Church.

Wood Pile.

Hopedale School Coordinator of Hospitality.

A woman named Candy picked us up in Postville. She had one skidoo with a sled behind it - a hilarious prospect for all of the crap we're towing around, but we made it work. Four of us, including Candy, got on the skidoo and we strapped my trusty backpack to the wheelchair which was wedged between the bins, and nothing fell off!

Postville at Dusk.

Something in the universe heard our gastro-intestinal woes, because we were blessed with a fully equipped kitchen in our hotel suite (read: pseudo flat in a weird, multi-purpose warehouse).  HALLELUJAH! More napping and oatmeal made us all feel better. We cooked rice, which was a very welcomed change after a week of restaurant meals that almost all fell into the category of "meat + your choice of (insert food) deep fried or mashed potatoes".

Now, I know that I'm spoiled, what with living in a city that has a well supported farmer's market that's open four days a week, where I can buy beautiful locally grown produce, pasture raised meats (now that I'm an occasional carnivore), and delicious breads, but I've grown accustomed to it, and I will not apologize for that. This is a privilege that I hope never to have to give up...unless I move to the Arctic, in which case I'll be paying premium dollar to ship Hutten Family Farm CSA boxes up every second week - Amen.  I'll figure out how to work it into my environmental footprint somehow.  

Postville was a nice little town.  Again I wish I'd been feeling up to seeing more of it, especially now that I've found out there's a proposal for a uranium mine circulating the community.  Most of these north-west shore towns are very anti development, but I fear that the prospect of jobs and money in a land proving ever more difficult to live off of will sway the popular vote.  Not to mention the propaganda the mining company, Aurora Energy, is spreading e.g. "Living next to a uranium mine is no more dangerous than standing in front of your microwave."  Call me a crazy, leftist, privileged environmentalist, but something tells me that standing in front of your microwave all day, every day for as long as the mine is active wouldn't be all that great for you, and something also tells me that the effects of a uranium mine on a remote northern, traditional Inuit lifestyle-based community are far more complicated than this simple analogy.  Fucking bastards.  

Heed the sign.

Once I was feeling less barfy, I did manage to get out and snap a few shots of the town. It made me sad to think that this is the second to last stop of our outreach trip. Makkovik is next, then a night back in Goose before heading home to Halifax. These last few days will truly have to be savoured...like the last few precious weekends in February when kale is still available at the market. Did I miss it while I've been here?





February 6, 2011

Nain is Badass

Thursday morning we hopped on the milk-run up to Nain, Nunatsiavut.  Our two and three-quarter hours flight was absolutely beautiful.  Without the wind that we had on our way into Rigolet (slash the Jungle Jim's "food" that was sitting in my belly that morning from our disgusting dinner the night before), the flight was a lot easier to relax into.  We stopped in all of the towns on the way up, getting a view of what was to come in all of our other stops along the trip - Postville, Hopedale, Makkovik.  The landscape is stark and intimidating, even from the air.  There were less and less trees as we pushed north, and more and more sea-ice - thank god.  Apparently the northern towns, Nain included, only saw sea-ice form three weeks ago after two weeks of bitter cold (-48 degrees before the windchill every day).  The lack of "solid ground" on the ocean made hunting and transportation dangerous or impossible, and life in general, for both the Inuit and Settlers who inhabit the land, worrisome I imagine.  This is where we see the effects that climate change is having on our planet more clearly.  If you have a skeptic aunt, friend, teacher who has been fooled by the information white-washing that the oil corporations are flooding the media with, send them north.  Tell them to talk to these people.  They will be skeptics no more.

Looking out, under the wing, at the sea ice, mountains, and open ocean bellow.


We touched down in Nain, onto the shortest runway in the Arctic - I thought we were heading right into the bay - and were picked up by a man on a ski-doo with a hilarious make-shift sled behind it.  Picture a caroling sled circa 1851, with no railings or ledges to hold onto.  I hopped on the backseat of the snow mobile, leaving Cody and Mara to fend for themselves and our pile of workshop luggage, which includes a wheelchair and three Rubbermaid bins of chemistry glassware, DNA visual aids, stains, occupational therapy tools, playing cards, goggles, playdough, countless rolls of tape, and hundreds of other materials  - whatever, those are the rules of "shot-not" - the strongest claim of non-responsibility I know of.



First impressions of Nain: dogs barking everywhere, puppies yelping and excitedly jumping at passers-by, the distant and nearby rumbles of snow-mobiles on every road, path, and square inch of snow-covered ground.  The mountains, jutting suddenly out of the sea all around you.  The sea, a frozen highway utilized by pedestrians, skaters, ski-dooers, and everyone in between.  The smell of pine rising from the houses of those lucky enough to have gotten out "wooding" recently, mixed with diesel.  Nain is beautiful.




Our hotel was modest, but had a restaurant right in it, with the best cooking we've experienced yet, all home-made by Nancy, who was kind enough to ask us what we wanted for dinner, "Pork chops or Arctic Char?" - no brainer.  Stuffed and baked or pan-fried?  Stuffed, duh.  God, it's good to be out of Goose Bay, and god I love char!

Ali, the old director of SuperNOVA, happened to catch my Nain related facebook status, and happens to have a friend doing research in Nain (sometimes I think I must have a horseshoe stuck up my ass/realize how small the world really is).  Rodd went to Dal for his Undergrad in biology, did his Masters at the University of Manitoba, and wound up doing research for Trent University up here.  He has pretty much the coolest job ever.  He interviews hunters and is looking at recent changes in the environment, animal populations, etc (did I get that right, Rodd?!).  It's always nice to have someone who knows the place to show you around (he took us on a walk through town to the dump, which was awesome - for real), have you over for dinner, introduce you to cool people (he and his roommate, Megan, cooked us a delicious meal), and let you know that you missed the best display of the aurora borealis so far this year.  Yah, you read that correctly.  Blurg.  He did try to get a hold of us, but alas, our lights were out/iPad was off.  I had read on the Auroral activity tracking website I've been obsessing over (Space Weather) that Friday night was due for some 'moderate' activity, which is pretty decent on the scale, so Cody and I headed out around 11:30pm to check things out.  We saw a faint Aurora glow, hung out for a while and headed inside for warmth.  Dammit.  Apparently a couple hours earlier and a couple hours later, the effects of a solar storm were seen lighting up the northern sky with beautiful dancing and pulsing green Aurora.  Rodd got some amazing shots, which you can check out on his website (Rodd Laing Photography - Arctic).  I was full of remorse and self-loathing for not staying out later, but such is life, right?  I do have another week.  Come on solar storm #2!!!!

Looking at Mount Sophie.

Ice Land.





The Original Church.

View from the Dump.

Rodd, Cody, and Mara on the ice.



Dynamic Ice Flow.


I also met a beautiful woman, Jolene, at the craft shop who I ended up buying some amazing slippers from.  Originally from Nain, she moved to northern Quebec (like north of Nain, Quebec), and recently to Montreal with her husband and two kids, Dawson and Massey.  She was back visiting for her cousin's wedding/scoping out the available real estate  - unsurprisingly, she's not a huge fan of city life and wants to come back home to raise her babes.  She was kind enough to cart Mara and I back to her place to check out her handiwork.  She makes beautiful slippers and boots from leather, sealskin, and fur.  I opted for a pair of white leather babies with turquoise, green, and red bead work, sheep's wool liners and rabbit fur cuffs - oh ya.  We hung out for a while and played with the kiddies, while checking out her Mum's unbelievable art collection that included caribou and soapstone carvings, a whale vertebrae with a woman's face carved into it, walrus and muskoxen skulls, beautifully woven baskets, and countless other jems.  Their house was warm and the kids were full of energy.  Life is so similar, even in wildly different settings.

Seal for Lunch.

Everyone got a piece...




Nain is great; I was definitely sad to leave.  It's so expensive to get there, I don't know if I'll ever have the chance to get back on my own dollar, but alas, more outreach calls and on to Hopedale we meander.

So far I think we're proving the Labrador bias to be wrong.  I love the Big Land.     

The Nain Fridge.  Put your perishables on the window sill and close the curtains to keep cold.