On August 9 the border opened for all vaccinated Americans, many of whom flocked to the border that day after it had been closed for a year and a half. Like so many, I could hardly wait to get into Canada again and on August 16th my daughter Sarah, my granddaughter Regan and I finally arrived. As we crossed, we wanted to jump with the joy. Arriving at our summer home, the air smelled different. Perhaps it was the smell of love, home and family — a smell that had greeted me every time I had been there for the last fifty four years. For me, it was hard to believe that last summer was the only one I had missed in so many years. This was my summer place, the place where I had grown up as a child, the place where I met my husband so many years ago, and the lake in which his ashes are scattered.
I am deluged with so many memories of summers gone by — the smell of petunias that we had on our dock, the sounds of the waves lapping against the dock and the millions of stars we could see on a clear night. I watched my children grow up and then watched my grandchildren grow up as well. It is a place where friends gather each summer and we feel as though we have known each other forever.

The next morning we were up early to shop and parked at the blueberry stand to buy the luscious blueberries that grow wild up here and a treat for all of us who don’t live in Canada.

And suddenly I am reminded of the summers of 1964 and 1965 , two summers that I spent away from my beloved place here. Those were the summers Tiger and I spent in Kivalina, Alaska and as we bought our blueberries, I realized that it was berry picking time in Kivalina now. The berries there grow wild as well and because of the long hours of sunshine, they were plumper and more abundant. Below is an excerpt from my memoir: Journey Through Fire and Ice: We had just taken a family upriver with us. The weather was unusually warm and Tiger promised me we could go upriver by ourselves, the next day and swim. As you can see this didn’t happen.
“Unfortunately, the warm weather doesn’t last and instead of swimming upriver in my underwear, I go berry picking with Mildred Sage and a group of women from the village, traveling in one of the skin boats. One man always comes along to drive the boat. A whole slew of kids come as well.
“Lots of berries to pick,” Mildred says. We both see an abundance of blueberry bushes growing by the lagoon.
“We’re going to have to work fast to pick them all,” I tell her.
I love watching the older children scampering around and picking the berries. Their lips get blue as they pop berries into their mouths. They are adorable, and I decide to ask Tiger to give me a camera for Christmas. I am ready to learn, and I think he could teach me.
We work most of the afternoon, taking only a couple of breaks, and head home at sunset. The days are getting noticeably shorter and our time to work is limited. Occasionally, Tiger and I go berry picking by ourselves, but usually, I go in a skin boat with the women from the village and several of the children. It’s a treat going on these expeditions with the women. With them, I feel as though I am a part of the village life. We take a thermos of coffee along for our breaks, chat for a while, and then go back to picking. Often, the women carry a baby in their parkas, and during the break, they might nurse the child and change its diaper. The infants are content in the parka and sleep most of the time. The women carry toddlers this way also, and sometimes, I see the child peeking out of the hood. I seldom hear a child crying.
The berries we pick on these outings taste just like the wild berries we get back home, although they are larger and plumper. It reminds me of my childhood summers at the lake picking berries. Back then, I could hardly wait until the berries were ripe enough to pick and was always proud when I had a pail full enough for my mother to make a pie. I feel a pang of homesickness as I think about those days. Right now, the berries growing at the end of the point would be ripe and the raspberries that grew near our cottage would be over for the season. Looking around, I realize that here, there are enough berries to last a winter for all of us. At home, we usually only picked enough for a couple of pies.
As I fill my bucket, I look forward to pies and oatmeal covered with the ripe fruit. The women will preserve the berries in seal oil for the winter. Tiger wants me to preserve them in seal oil too, but the thought of mixing oil and berries is not palatable to me. I figure that it won’t be long before the first frost and tell him the berries will keep when it freezes. It will be so much nicer to have frozen berries than ones that are preserved in oil. I decide instead to put them in water and wait until they freeze.
Two weeks later, I’m sorry I didn’t listen to Tiger. We have yet to see frost, and the berries have fermented in the water. If I had put them in the shed where it’s cold, they would have been all right, but I didn’t and now they’re ruined. We have to dump them in the ocean. “

As I look back on those two summers in Kivalina, I realize that it was an experience I will never forget. I remember the midnight sun, walking in the village at all hours during the night and the children who came to our house or our tent just to watch what we were doing. I think of the light when we travelled up river to get water and the way it seemed to shimmer and the magnificent sunsets as the days grew shorter. These unrecorded images will stay in my mind forever, like photographs that never fade and memories that will never be forgotten.