Oh, it’s quite incredible.
An igloo is a temporary structure, so you’ve probably been travelling all day. You were up about 7:00, which is many hours before the sun will rise at 9:00. As the oldest child, you head outside to get the snowmobiles started and warmed up — it takes 10 minutes just to get the tracks turning.
Finally, you are ready to head out. You travel with two machines, each pulling a komatik, with all the supplies you’ll need for a few days. The kids are perched on top of the sleds, holding on for dear life. It’s hovering around −40°, a typical winter day, and the sun is just beginning to glimmer on the horizon.
You take a quick break at lunch, maybe some tea and canned sardines, and press on.
Suddenly, both machines come to a stop. Dad holds up his hand and makes a “shhh… get down” motion. He reaches down to where the .308 is sitting on the footboard of his snowmobile and in the distance you see a small herd of caribou grazing. A shot rings out and one of the males buckles and drops where he stood, while the rest of the herd keeps grazing. Dad quickly quarters and field-dresses the meat before it freezes solid and lashes it onto the sled behind you.
About 2:00 you pick a place to stop. Not because you are tired, but because it will be getting dark soon. Dad walks around looking for good igloo-building snow, marks out a circle, and starts cutting blocks. Everyone else pitches in.
It’s definitely getting less fun. The sun is going down, you’re tired and hungry, the younger kids are starting to fight and squabble, but you will quite literally die if you don’t get this thing built. You suck it up and keep hauling blocks.
It’s usually pretty late in the day by the time you finish making it. Dad goes in first, and fires up a Coleman lantern for heat and light. You wrestle the box off the sled, pass it in, take a last look around outside, and crawl through the door.
The first thing that hits you is, it’s cozy.
You’re tired, and hungry, and worst of all you are sweaty. If you don’t get your clothes off you are going to get clammy and then you will get damn cold. In the 60 seconds since you passed in the sled box, your mom already has the Coleman stove out and fired up, and she’s scooped some snow into the kettle to make a pot of hot water.
The rest of the kids trickle in, and the last person trims a block against the door opening. By this time, the kettle is whistling and the mugs are broken out. Tea for the adults, hot chocolate for the kids. Dehydration is a constant worry. Even though you’ve drank a lot during the day, the relative humidity is about 3%. Those puffs of water vapour you see when you exhale at −40°? That’s water, and every breath you exhale sucks more water out of your body.
Without missing a beat mom throws another pot of snow on the Coleman stove, and when it melts she adds a couple of packs of dried soup and a hunk of frozen caribou from the male you shot earlier in the day. By this time, the temperature inside has warmed up to about 0°C/32°F. Everyone is in jeans and a hoodie, jammed together on the sleeping platform.
You relax for a bit — it’s an amazingly calming environment. Snow is a natural insulator of heat and sound, and being in an igloo is like being in an anechoic chamber. It is remarkably and noticeably quiet, even with six people inside.
You sort of doze off with your feet jammed down in your sleeping bag, but a few minutes later the soup is ready. You accept a serving in the same cup you used for the hot chocolate, gulp it down, and grab seconds and then thirds. You’ve probably burned 5000 calories today, and you scarf back a half-dozen pieces of shortbread, some bannock with butter and honey, another cup of hot chocolate, and one more piece of shortbread. You let the cook know how much you appreciate her efforts by letting out a nice, long, loud belch.
It’s 7:30 pm and you’re bagged. You can barely keep your eyes open. You get up and take a pee into the pee can — your pee is yellow and very pungent because you are losing most of your water via exhalation. You pull the sleeping bag up over your head, grab your parka as a pillow, and close your eyes. You just notice the Coleman going dark as you doze off.
The next morning you are the first one awake. It’s totally silent, with a very particular odor of cold air, dirty plates, frozen pee in the pee can, caribou skin, and cooking smells. You reach in your jacket pocket and… hurrah! you did leave another piece of shortbread in there. You scarf it down and think about the day ahead. After everybody is up and dressed, you take a quick picture before you get back on the trail.
The movie below was shot almost exactly 30 years before the pictures above, when Inuit were still living in igloos. It is incredible to think that there are people who were alive when this movie was shot, who were living essentially a stone-age life, and just 60 short years later we are using Facebook together:
Edit: Oct 24 2019, added pictures. Every one of these pictures was taken by my father while I was a teenager. See also Scott Welch's answer to What is living in the middle of nowhere like?
Pictures copyright Harold E. Welch 1969–2019. Not for reproduction. All rights reserved.
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