15 for 15 Contest --- Closed

It didn't take long to untie the hides from the frame of the summer house. Kiviuq could do the work in his sleep he'd completed it so many times. It was the last chore his mother bade him do before they were to set out for the settlement. But it wasn't the last thing he wanted to do. Kiviuq wished to place each hide back upon the tent frame, stretching the skins he'd helped hunt for, until their home was ready for the night. But the decision to go had been made.

Turning around to face the center of the summer village, he could see many empty frames. Family after family had left since the mines began offering jobs. The first families to leave had the old and the sick. Healthcare was hard to come by in the summer grounds, and even harder yet in the winter. He understood their longing for health, but there were too many gone. Too many friends, and even worse yet, too many family. Even Kiviuq's best friend, the best hunter in their group by far, had packed up their dogs with everything to be carried, and left for good.

Kiviuq tried to withstand his mother's pleading, convincing her to travel to the their tent after winter, but it was conversation without end. Each night while sitting together for food, Aama, his mother, had talked to him of the chance to stay indoors all year; to work for the great mining company. Wages were fair, she pleaded, and the nurses would treat her cough. Maybe tame the breathless nights with medicine. Kiviuq finally acquiesced after a particularly bad night. One where he almost lost her. He could no longer speak of the call of the water, or the import of hunting their own food when his mother was so sick. So very sick.

So they packed the dogs, and Kiviuq's hands did as much of the work as they could handle, but his heart was in the water, paddling his kayak through the broken hunks of ice in the little inlet where the caribou rested. He could feel the polished bone of his paddle shifting in his hands. First right, then left. Soft, smooth shifts, responding to the twitch of his fingers, answering his quickened pace. He could feel the splash of the water, cold even in the summer, but fresh. Reminiscent of the first snowflakes of winter. Aama said he could kayak on his days off from the mine, but Kiviuq worried. The kayak was not a tool for certain days, it was a tool for the hunt. He doubted caribou would abide a work schedule. But he said nothing. Bit his tongue, and packed up their home.

"Kiviuq," called his Aama, and he could sense the excitement in her voice. She was ready. Kiviuq folded the last skin of the tent, and pushed the water from his mind. It was time to go. To leave his home.





* Kiviuq is a Inuit name that means a wandering adventurer with special powers living a long time.
*Aama is Inuit for mother.
*Prior to the 1940s Inuit people lived mostly isolated from the world. They moved between winter and summer residences, but after WWII, the major world powers felt strategic bases were necessary in the Artic. Settlements were built that housed better health care, education, and jobs. Throughout the 1950s and 60s many Inuit moved to the permanent settlements, leaving behind some of the traditions associated with sustenance living.