My colleague, Leslie, and I were beginning to come down with a bit of mutual cabin fever this afternoon, so we took off to see what we could see. Fortunately, the weather was beautiful, sunny though a bit windy, which was quite effective in keeping the mosquitoes at bay.

We came across a few impressive Inuksuit (plural for “Inukshuk”) and while we were busy inspecting and admiring them, a local elder woman stopped to say hello and show us the cloudberries that she and her grandchildren had picked. Being that we are far up in the Arctic, I am always surprised at how much vegetation manages to grow in these cold, inhospitable conditions of the tundra.

Cloudberries are harvested around August, and from what I understand, they are similar to “bakeapples” found in Newfoundland. They are eaten straight, like any other berry, and some people even make cloudberry jam out of them. They are yellow before they ripen to shades of pink and red. I assume that this means they are high in vitamin C, like all other fruits and vegetables that are shades of red or orange.

As Leslie and I continued along, we found our own little patch of cloudberries, and excitedly picked a few to taste them; to our surprise, they were not sweet. In Leslie’s words, “uhh…I’m going to say that this is an acquired taste!”