Forget Magazine. Remember, Remember, Remember.

The woman across the aisle pulls a compact mirror out of her bag, pries it open with a careful creak, holds it up to the light, pauses, and slowly applies her lipstick, unmindful of the fact that I have just moved to Yellowknife. Excuse me miss, can I have your attention for a moment, I don't think you understand the gravity here. This is a moment and I am going to share it with you and all the rest of these people, miss, do you understand? "It's 10:30 mountain time, we're coasting in a few minutes early here folks, hope you enjoyed your flight."

People stretch, yawn, acknowledge the pilot-they fold their newspapers and bring their seats upright. Stewardesses walk up the aisle a final time before we land. They collect garbage and smile. One helps an older man with his seatbelt.

The pilot announces the local temperature. Somebody should really do something to mark this moment-strike up a few brass notes, read a line of poetry, mention that somewhere right now there is a war going on, a famine, a revolution and that everything in our past stretches out behind in a vast swath-because I'm really not sure what I'm doing here.

The puffy down jacket I bought this afternoon in Edmonton at Mountain Equipment Co-op is still a satisfyingly pneumatic bulk under the seat that I nudge again with my foot as the plane descends. I have just moved to Yellowknife.

The ground below is an ice rink, snowdrifts, a black hole, crunchy and beautiful-and look folks, look, I'm new to this, I've never been here or done this and we're landing a plane on the moon here and I'm not sure how cold is cold, I mean, I meant, what I meant to ask was what to wear in this weather, I mean what do you guys consider cold, anyway?

"It's a cold one tonight folks. Minus 37 and the wind is blowing. Mind your step on the way into the terminal folks.

A polar bear on a wobbly ice shelf swipes at a seal that has come up through a round hole for air. A taxidermic wonder. I don't know anybody in Yellowknife. The bear is in the terminal above the luggage carousel and nobody acknowledges it as they pick up their luggage, hug their relatives, get into cabs, go about their lives.

Bruce, my new boss who is to pick me up from the airport, is late. I have never met Bruce. We have not seen a picture of each other. After a long day I'm a seven hour-stopover in Edmonton and a million miles away from when my mom drove me to the airport in Victoria that morning, helped me with my suitcase and said goodbye.

Bruce: "This is my favourite game, spot the new journalist-hi, my name is Bruce, do you have anything warmer to wear than that?"
Me: "I do."
Bruce: "Put it on. It's cold outside."

Now this is a different day a month later and I have made a few observations-firstly, that winter is quiet. The cold is quiet, and things outside move slow and careful as to not slip. To illustrate, let's note that the guys in the suite upstairs shout at sports games and usually turn their Nickelback up too loud. At night these are the only things in a city of 20,000 that I hear other than the fridge hum, or occasionally the sullen whiz of a snowmobile. They drive those things on the street here. They park them in stalls at the grocery store.

Secondly, that this is the most common means that strangers use to start conversations in Yellowknife:
"You're new to town. My name is ______. So why did you come here?
The latter part is not meant to mean "so why would you come here?" as in why would you move here rather than do something else, perhaps more predictable, like move to Toronto to work in an upscale deli, become really good at a certain sport, or go to law school-it comes from sincere curiosity.

Thirdly, that the boots I picked out the same time I bought my big puffy jacket in Edmonton at Mountain Equipment Co-op have a design flaw. The only time I have really been cold I got frostbite, but only on the bottoms of my feet. Once the soles of my boots get cold they stay cold, it seems. It may be a design flaw or it may be that the boots weren't designed with Yellowknife in mind, what with all the frozen lakes, ice roads and the crusty layer of snow that covers everything. I didn't even realize until I got home and pulled my boots off. The bottoms of my feet were an unnatural purple, a Kindergarten colour like I was making footprints in fingerpaint.

Lastly, that the winter sun cuts a parallel path just above the horizon at this latitude like a shallow line drive popped over the first baseman's glove. I have gone on one snowmobile trip into the wilds that surround Yellowknife. Apparently you can hop from lake to lake, over traditional hunting trails, up creeks and rivers for thousands of kilometers. Zipping towards the sun at sunset across the surface of a particularly large lake I wonder how the sky can be so much bigger here. Is that physics or optics? A little geography, maybe, a little perspective, or math, I don't know. The sunsets this time of year are unmatched and the northern lights seem like they should make a noise, a metallic hum, as they gather, then fade in and out and in.

Today it's -15 C. It should stay balmy for a few more days, then drop back down. It's outside weather, jackets open weather, great for the caribou hunters, time to toboggan, to play pickup hockey on the lake.

People talk about the weather here. That's what they say.

Darren Stewart is really really fucking cold.