I was glad to be alone under this rare (at least in southern climes) sun parhelion outside Umingmaktuuq. Although I learned a lot about grace and social conventions in all of the villages that I visited, I had also gone to The North in order to be alone, surrounded by the infinite sky, and doubly receptive to all the manifold sensory imput that such a beautiful landscape had to offer. Usually the circle of moisture around the sun foretold coming storms. In the central Arctic during mid May, I found that weather conditions varied wildly, from 60 to zero degrees in the course of 24 hours. Anywhere else in the U.S., these cold conditions would have been labeled as winter, but in the Arctic, The People embraced the sun's return to their sky as certain proof of spring.