Life In An Arctic Village: Water

The alarm goes off, but the sun has already risen hours ago. Up here, to sleep only when it gets dark would mean months of hibernation followed by months of deprivation. It is spring and the sea ice has broken up completely in the brackish bay that surrounds the village. I step outside and hear the locals talking about how the river ice has come to the shore and I can't wait to see what this looks like.
I bundle up as it is still quite cold despite the return of the sun after months of extended darkness. A brief walk, less than half a mile, brings me to the shoreline of the village where I see families gathered. Where all the sea ice had disappeared from only days before, there was now a bay full of river ice that had broken up out of two rivers and drifted into the bay. It made a most interesting noise as it swirled around waiting to melt or be pushed out to sea. Wherever the chunks bumped against one another, the sound was like glass. Not the shattering, breaking noise, but imagine a billion glass beads rolling over one another. It reminded me of an Aztec rain stick, that soft, rolling noise. It was as if the ice itself was calling for the spring rain that would bring life back to the tundra.
I watched as many of the native families began hauling chunks of the ice up onto shore. They were chipping pieces of it off and the children were running around like they had been given a popsicle. When I asked why everyone was putting it on 4-wheelers or in their cars to bring home, they explained to me that this was one of their original water sources. With 30 foot snow drifts for 9 months a year, there was always water to be melted in the winter, but it gets scarce during the few months of summer. Once it melts, the next source is the river ice. After that, it was a long paddle across the bay, against the currents, to the rivers for fresh water.
I was glad to see that this was still a tradition, despite the integration of a town water system. When I asked how they liked this water compared to the town's, they all laughed and told me it is the best water in the world. They do not like to drink the town water that they feel is polluted by chemicals and I couldn't agree more. Most of them melt snow anyway, rather than drinking chlorine and fluoride, not to mention what the mines nearby leach into the land and ground water.
Despite the use of motor vehicles to gather those ice blocks, tradition is important. So much of it has been lost to these people and it was our invasion of their land that caused them to lose these ways. They were once mostly nomadic and could simply move to an area with water if they had to, but we mapped and named the acres they once roamed on. We put gates up and forced them into these villages where they now pay for utilities they never wanted and taxes for land they have always had. In each short story, I will try to bring you a piece of their tradition so that we may know what we have done and hopefully, help them hold on to what they can.