PERMAFROST

        I had  lunch with  a friend today. Rod talks about everything political and environmental. One of the things the conversation ran onto was the ice being lost in the Arctic.

       So that reminded me of my first meeting with permafrost. I was a little prairie boy and very familiar with the outdoors.

       I spent three years in  Inuvik  , NWT. I spent  as  much time outdoors and on the land as I could. I bought  a small cabin with a friend.  The cabin was about 15 miles out of town. It was about `14 ft by 18 ft.

     Now the cabin also came with an outdoor  biffy. I took one look at it and I said this will never do. I haven't forgotten that this is about permafrost.   So prairie boy me said I will just  dig a new hole for the biffy. I rolled up my sleeves, got the shovel and started.  On the surface    there is moss and lichens. I cleared that stuff out of the way in minutes. Then to my astonishment there was  ice. Only ice  below the moss and lichens. The ice was hard as rock  so I had to give up digging a new hole. So my plan was  to come out the next weekend and the ice would be thawed, I thought . Well very little of the ice had thawed. After several weeks of this I had a hole of about one foot deep.

    For being in the Arctic  , I was very naive about  permafrost. Most white guys didn't walk off the sidewalk. I did and it was interesting.

    I would like to go back today and see how much of the permafrost is gone. We know that much of the sea ice is gone.