Tundra and Iqaluit

Today, after reading David Adams Richards 'Mercy Among the Children", I went for a hike to the tundra on Iqaluit's perimeter 'till I found the road that goes nowhere, that is its name. It was the sort of day when you could hear the mosquitoes humming. I stopped for thirty seconds to take a photo and my hands were covered! Fortunately I was wearing a mosquito vest, a one piece jacket that covered my torso and head. The view from one ridge is of valleys and other ridges, there are no trees, but there are few tiny lakes. When you walk down from the ridge the terrain becomes less rocky, rather, the rocks are still there, only underneath a layer of heather, which is similar to a thick, dry moss. Like humus it is soft to walk upon. In the deep of the valley there are of course wet spots and lakes, melted from the winter's snow. To get across you had to jump from dry spot to dry spot. It reminded of hopping a cross a river because alot rocks were revealed at this point.
Later on the hike, on my way home i climbed another ridge which is on the edge of Iqaluit and it seems as it is the highest point around, in fact a group a Christian's claimed it as something important because they have planted a cross on top, much smaller than the one in Montreal. It is kept standing by a pile of rocks. At the top though it seemed likely that there were other ridges slightly higher nearby. It was a good view though, you could see how the development has spread and how it is becoming more dense, in the way of townhomes -ones very similar to the kind you see in halifax with low rooves and wooden siding. In fact, at the visitor's centre, I spoke with a young woman who remembers when Iqaluit was a lot smaller and there were fewer buildings. This is signigicant because she is younger than me and its only been in the last 6 or 7 years that the city has expanded so dramatically. For example,two new buildings in the centre of town include the RCMP headquarters and the First nations Bank (the Inuit have an %18 in the bank). Also there are quite a few townhomes being built. I read a recent city plan which said the key to development in Iqaluit was densification because space is limited.
In other news I started my first housesitting gig.