A Hike Up Cemetery Hill

Igloolik island is very flat, but there are a few hills here and there. One is Cemetery Hill, which Bob can see from his back porch. (Bob is lucky to be in the last row of houses at one end of town so he looks out onto the tundra instead of another row of houses.) The day wasn't looking too bad, so we took a quick toodle through town before heading up the hill. Here are some highlights of the day. (And if you'd like to know a little bit more about Igloolik in general, here is a good link.)

First stop was "The Mushroom," one of the centres for wildlife research for the Nunavut Government. Bob doesn't work in this building, but does work with the folks who do and often wanders over there for his lunch break. 

Then it was up behind town for the obligatory photos in front of inuksuit (singular, inukshuk). These ones are at the entrance to town, but there are others, much smaller of course, that you can see across the landscape. 

The gang doing their best impressions of an inuksuit. 

From there we started to cross the tundra. As you'll see in the photos, there is very little growth until you get close to the ground. Lots of lovely lichens and some small flowers such as arctic poppy and cottongrass.  The closest you get to a "tree" are the willows (I assume arctic willows?) that are about six inches at the most. We saw evidence of lemmings (burrows) and fox (scat) and bones, lots of bones. There are bones everywhere. Closer to shore, there are walrus, whale and seal bones, and in the tundra there are fox and caribou. 

Caribou jaw (I think?)

Cotton Grass

Bob's photo of Arctic poppies from earlier in the spring. 

Saxifrage sp.

Igloolik Island in its entirety is a national historic site because of its archaeological significance and its lengthy record of habitation. And evidence of this is fairly easy to stumble upon.

Tent ring

As we walked along we kept coming across large sections of carpet with a hole cut in the middle and a plastic cup (chip dip size) below the hole. Often there was a stick with a flag near the hole. At first I thought they must be some sort of pit traps for insects and then we clued in...this was part of the Igloolik Golf Course! (We were a bit slow on the uptake.)

Later, the discovery of the club house and the clubs confirmed it all. 

And, then, of course, there was the cemetery of Cemetery Hill. There seemed to be three sections, we assume for three different religions?, but we weren't entirely sure. From the edge of the cliff we could see over to Baffin Island, so tantalizingly close.