there are reasons ATVs are All Terrain vehicles and I experienced that Friday night with a spontaneous invite from a colleague Friday evening to go out to the Diand River about a 15 km ride. As a passenger, was told to bring an old pillow and soon discovered the reasons.

The first part of our ride was dusty crushed gravel roads and other, than getting lost once ending up in the new landfill site instead of taking the turn off near the golf course we did all right. Now if you are imagining a golf course of grass and neatly clipped greens, forget it, in the arctic the green are most likely carpeted and in sand pits. Shortly after this and passing the gravel pit the “ road “ ended and became a myriad of tundra trails over rocks, hills and muddy wet bogs. Decisions had to be made as to which path to take and amazingly we didn’t get stuck in the bottom of any.... trusty ATV made it through.

The weather was just perfect clear blue skies and no wind and yes, a dose of mosquitoes.

When reaching the mouth of the river evidence of campers in white canvas tents, small cabins often painted bright colors with smaller sheds for drying fish and one even had a hoodie on a pole, which I presume was to scare away birds, thus scare crow Nunavut style. Got as close as we could to a rocky out cropping and much to my surprise I was given a fishing rod for casting complete with a red an white lure. Trying not to show my surprise and inexperience I try casting and after a few attempts was told the release is “just in the timing. We got back on the ATV and moved on to another spot, again not catching anything( except in yours truly’s case the bottom of the sand) but it was very peaceful. It was colder as we left to come back about 10 PM and the sun setting after 11 PM but gold and blues of sunset reflected in many calm lakes, and chunks of ice in the tidal flat.

I may not have another opportunity to “ get out on the land” this trip, but thankful for this one memorable experience.