"Arctic?" Sylvia Foster asked her husband, "Will you be cold?"

"Not particularly," George replied. "I'll only be at Colville in the summer, after all. It'll be warmer than it is outside right now. But I will be lonely."

There was a solution for that. "Well, why can't I go along? Would we go broke if I stopped waiting tables for the summer?"

"Not at all. We've been saving up the trust payments for expeditions like this. And, after all, we decide how that money is to be used; it's not like some agency is looking over our shoulders saying 'George is the anthropologist, so only George can go.' Moreover, despite the transport expenses, the cost of living at Colville Lake is fairly low. Of course, that's 'cause we'll be consuming only bare necessities. I just don't want you living like that. Tents, outhouses, and all."

"I'd rather live in a tent with you than in this apartment by myself."

"All right," George said. "I'll ask."

Besides wanting to be with George, Sylvia looked forward to actually seeing what an anthropological expedition was like. There would be a team going, headed by Prof. Vrooman, George's boss. Vrooman warned her that life in the field would be rough and that she needed to wear fairly modest clothes, but raised no other obstacles.

What she didn't tell Vrooman was that she hadn't known how the "Hare Indians" name was spelled until after she'd been accepted. "I thought that they grew lots of hair," she told George.

"They used to dress in clothes made from rabbit skins," he said. "Tribes in that area only have European names. Probably, they only have colonial identities. The people we'll be seeing probably think of themselves as 'The people of Colville Lake.' You know the story of Manhattan Island?"

How could she tell? There were plenty of stories about Manhattan Island. "No."

"The first Dutch explorers found a bunch of Indians there. They bought the entire island from them for a few handfuls of beads. We used to think that the Dutch had pulled a fast one. Closer investigation revealed that those Indians were just visiting for the day to fish. You might buy the Brooklyn Bridge for a couple of hundred dollars in the same neighborhood as legitimately today.

"Anyway," he concluded, "European visitors were often much more certain about the limits of membership in a group, ownership of property, and executive leadership than the people who they were describing."

George bought two matching cassette recorders, with plenty of batteries. She bought a manual portable typewriter. She filled her prescription for pills for four months and packed several boxes of Tampax. The tent, cots, sleeping bags, and a heater were all ordered through the department.

They spent the night of their trip in Fort Good Hope -- Sylvia in a room with the other two women, George with the other three men -- and flew to Colville Lake in the morning. The seven people and their equipment needed three flights.

Colville turned out to be less primitive than she'd imagined. There was a store, and three docks were accessible to float planes. The Indians didn't live in tents: only the anthropologists did. The Indians had fairly sturdy, although small, cabins.

The first day was spent in setting up. As George had said, the air was warm around them. They had a heater for their tent but didn't seem to need it. The outhouse was colder, and they hadn't brought a heater for it.

They had brought a sleeping bag and a folding cot for each of them. For some reason, George had set these up more than a yard apart. She hadn't come north of the Arctic Circle to sleep across the room from her husband. She moved the cots next to each other.

Back in Boston, the sun had risen in the east and set in the west. She'd noticed it being lower at noon in the winter than in the summer, but not any change in where it rose or set. In Regina, the change of rising place and setting place had been noticeable. (Of course, Regina had streets running east and west, which helped.) Now, as the day drew to a close, the sun swung further and further north.

She took a last trip to the outhouse and started to strip when she came back. George went out when she returned. When he came back, he zipped up the door to the tent. Then he moved the cots back apart and turned them on their sides. The sleeping bags spilled to the space between the cots. George sat down to take off his boots.

"Why did you do that?" she asked. He made a shushing motion with his fingers to his lips. Stripped, he took his pajamas into the sleeping bag with him. She got into her bag. It was chilly.

George leaned over so his head was near hers. "Anything you say in a normal tone of voice can be heard," he whispered. "And anyone walking south of the tent can see a shadow of us on the tent walls."

"That's why you dumped the cots?" she whispered back.

He nodded. "Anyway, I don't think one cot would hold two of us comfortably." He kissed her.

"You're devious. We are wearing wedding rings. Don't Hare married couples sleep together?"

"Yup. And with their kids in the same house, which means in the same room. I just want to exercise a little discretion."

Well, that was better than his not wanting her. His hands roamed over her nightie as his kiss got deeper. When she broke to breathe, she pulled the nightie over her head and dropped back into her sleeping bag.

George crawled out of his bag and into hers. When he kissed her again, his hands stroked all of her back. Her front was pressed against him, and she could feel his erection against her leg. He kissed her breast while his hands stroked her pussy.

There really wasn't enough room for petting in the one bag. She helped George fit between her legs. Much more compact that way, and even more compact when he tucked his prick inside her. Well, that was one of the advantages. George kissed her, then leaned up on his elbows so he could get his hands on her boobs.

The palms against her nips and his strokes deep within her pussy excited her. Perversely, so did the need to keep quiet in the tent. She spiraled higher and higher. She grabbed his ass and silenced herself against his shoulder as she came.

Soon, though, the ground was hard beneath her back. When she shoved him, he moved off and to his own sleeping bag. She still felt stiff when she woke in the middle of the night. She put the nightgown back on, slipped into flip-flops, and draped a raincoat over her for her trip to the outhouse. The sun was nearly setting over the lake. Once back, she righted her cot and put the sleeping bag back on it.

Still in the nightgown, she found the sleeping bag cozy almost everywhere as she drifted off to sleep. The exception was the damp spot under her hip.

It was the brightness of full day when she woke up. George was sleeping soundly in his bag in a cot a yard away from hers. Her watch said 6:30.

The cooking stove was outside the tent, which was a little safer and a lot cooler. George had bought some wood the day before, and they had brought some supplies with them on the plane. By the time Sylvia had learned how to cook on a wood stove,it was lunchtime. Dinner was easier. "Want me to get started on the typing?" she asked when they'd eaten.

"Not really. I'm still gathering impressions. The only thing I've put down is a sketch map, and the typewriter can't help that."

"Well, let me see and copy that." She did. George's sketch of the village had names by many of the houses.

That night, they lay in their separate sleeping bags on their separate cots. George stroked her through the nightgown. She fell asleep with his hand on her, but it was removed sometime during the night. The bag was plenty warm without being zipped up, but it was rather stiff under her hip.

There is rather little housework in a tent, and their meals weren't the sort to require much time -- even fixed on a wood- burning stove. Sylvia took her copy of George's map with her while she wandered the village. She surreptitiously wrote down the names of the people she met and the family name of the house where she met them. She soon learned that the latter was little use. People were always in and out of each other's houses, kids even more than adults.

"Cecile, isn't it?" she said to one girl whom she'd already met in two other places.

"Yeah, Cecile." The pronunciation was subtly different. "You're good. I know all these people; but when I go away to school, it takes me the longest time to learn the names of all those strangers."

"It's nothing, I used to teach school as a substitute." Then, not knowing how clear that explanation would be to Cecile. "The regular teacher was sick or something. They'd call me in. I was expected to learn the names of all the children in the room at the beginning of the day. There might be thirty children in the room. Then I might be dealing with thirty different children the next day."

"You a teacher?"

"I have been. Grade school, though, not your age."

"Can you explain something to me? I'm being sent back to boarding school this fall, and there's something in my book I don't understand."

"I'd be glad to."

She was shocked at how little Cecile knew, but she learned that this would be the third year the girl -- who looked sixteen -- would be going to school. Sylvia explained the difficult passage and made an appointment with Cecile to come to her tent the next day. She dug out a Regina newspaper she'd used to pad her dishes.

When Cecile came to the Foster tent, she read the newspaper to Sylvia, who tried to help her with the words she didn't know. Some of them were hard to explain. Cecile was acquainted with airplanes and dog sleds. She'd never seen a railroad, and automobiles were something she associated with the boarding school.

That night, George dumped the cots again. She enjoyed his caresses, but when he tried to join her in her bag, she pushed him back. She shushed his objections with a finger to his lips. Then, she took off her nightgown and moved into his bag. She held herself above him and rubbed his whole body with hers. His hand went between her legs as she kissed him. She didn't need his hands on her breasts; she could provide that friction herself by rubbing against his chest. But one of his hands clasping her ass and the fingers of the other playing with her pussy excited her until she needed more.

Reaching back, she held his prick against her pussy. She had to adjust her motions several times before it went in. Then she was rubbing against him everywhere, inside and out. She moved more rapidly as her excitement spiraled upwards. When she peaked, she couldn't move any more.

George provided the motion by bucking under her. His climax met hers before she collapsed. Some time later, she managed to raise enough energy to move back. George was keeping her front nice and warm, but her back was cold and her ass colder. His spunk poured out of her when she moved. Good! Let the stiff spots be in George's sleeping bag.

The next day, Cecile brought along a younger boy, named Paul, who read with even more difficulty.

She got back to the tent one morning to see two new stacks of wood. One was of fairly large sections of trees, one was made up of sections split into smaller pieces. A few minutes later, a man came along carrying an armload of even smaller pieces of kindling. He set them down separately and bustled away. He returned with another armload a few minutes later.

"Why, thank you," she said. Had George bought this? Had he paid for it? Was she expected to pay for it? If so, how much?

"Nothing," the man said. If he expected pay, he didn't say how much.

She asked George about it over lunch. "I don't know. I didn't buy any wood. The Dene have a favor economy. Rather than paying for things, they do each other favors. They trade with the outside for cash, of course. But they are more likely to do a favor for someone who has done a favor for them. If you're hungry, you can ask for food. Only a really stingy person gets refused, and not always then. On the other hand, if everybody's hungry -- and there have been famines within living memory -- then the only ones whom they share with are those who've shared with them in the past, and not always them. What favors do they expect from you?"

"Well, I've been teaching a couple of kids to read."

"There! You're part of the favor economy. I've no idea what teaching is worth, but you'll get whatever it is."

"Why do you and all the others call them 'Dene'? All I hear from the kids is 'Indian.'"

"There is no good word, really. 'Dene' just means 'people.' But they're used to whites who call them 'Indians' despising them. Sometimes they say 'Indian' with pride; sometimes they say it with self-hatred. We try to avoid it."

Her kids said "Indian" and looked at her a little funny when she said "Dene."

When another man brought her a number of fish, she thanked him for them. "After you've read a bit," she asked Cecile, "could you show me how to cook these?"

Cecile could, though Sylvia had to get her to repeat herself every once in a while to cover something Cecile thought everybody knew.

She started typing up George's notes from his tape recordings. Between cooking, teaching, and typing, her days were full enough of work to escape boredom.

Sylvia had no leverage on her students at all. She'd rather be their friend than get their parents to intervene, and she wasn't sure that the parents would, anyway. So, when the kid tired of the lesson, she might say, "Come on, one more paragraph," pleadingly. But, if that didn't work, they just stopped and went to something else.

When a light rain fell on a morning when she had an appointment with Paul, she straightened up the inside of the tent. He didn't come. After a while, she put on her raincoat and walked to his cabin. "I didn't see you," she said. "Is something wrong?"

"It's the weather."

She'd heard stories of the men of Colville going out in snow, sometimes getting lost in heavy snow. She couldn't believe they would let this much rain stop them. "You don't have a raincoat?" They had so little, especially the children.

"What's that?"

So she showed him her raincoat. He'd never seen one. "What do people do when it rains?"

"It doesn't rain that often," said Paul. "Imagine having a coat for that!" And, indeed, it stopped raining that afternoon. It was the first she'd seen, and it didn't come back. How the land got so soggy she couldn't figure out -- melting snow, probably.

She got one more student, a girl named Cathy. By this time, the children -- even some of the adults she met -- addressed her as 'teacher.' She was getting more fish these days than she and George cared to eat. She took to giving gifts of cooked fish to others in the expedition.

When she was given a pair of rabbits, she waited anxiously for Cecile to show up. Paul came alone. "Where's Cecile?" she asked him.

"She went off with her family," he said.

"I thought she could teach me how to cook these."

"I'll do it." And he did. That she, who knew so much of the strange learning from outside, had to look to a boy to teach her how to cook something as common as rabbit amused him. And, having amused him, it soon amused the entire village.

Sylvia decided to ignore the giggles. And, after all, knowing that they had something to teach her made her students accept the lessons she could teach them more readily.

The physical risks of the cooking were harder to ignore. She caught herself against the hot stove when she stumbled one morning. That night, after she'd slipped into George's bag, she rolled over him. That put all her weight on the palm of her left hand. The pain shot through her, and George noticed even in the dark.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I burned my hand," she said. That didn't make sense. "This morning."

"Which hand?" She lifted the left one. George turned them so that she was lying on her right side. The zipper of the sleeping bag was along his back and across his ass. He took the hand in his two and kissed all over it. He even hit the sore spot once or twice. "Poor girl, and you didn't say anything all day."

"It's not that bad, and the Dene work with much worse. It's just that I had all my weight on it then."

"And it hurt, and that took you right out of the mood."

Well, not entirely out. His mouth was offering to call off sex for that night; his prick, which was against her thigh, clearly disagreed. Her opinion was closer to the prick's. "Maybe," she whispered, "you should be on top, and can we start over?"

"Or," he whispered back, "side by side." He didn't say anything about starting over, nor anything more at all. He did, however, kiss her on the lips. His mouth moved on to her breasts before his hand went to her pussy. He licked her right nipple, stroked the outside of her lower lips, sucked her nip as he was parting her lips. He moved on to her left nip, licking it, blowing on it, finally sucking it. All the while he was stroking between her lips. He kissed back to her right nip before he finally touched her clitoris.

Going back to the beginning was a good thing. He didn't seem to want to go on from the beginning, though. "George," she said in a louder voice than she had intended. Throwing her left leg over his body stuck that foot out in the chill.

"Help me," he whispered. His prick was nuzzling her pussy. She reached back with her left hand to part her lips. Then she pushed his prick between them. As he thrust into her, she pressed forward to contain him. Not getting very deep this way, he had to take shallow strokes. But they could kiss and he could stroke her boob all the while. When she came, he grabbed her ass and covered her mouth with a kiss. Then he, too, was coming.

She fell asleep holding him. When she woke, she needed to be careful of her hand when climbing over him. His ass was exposed to the night air and felt chilly to her touch. She took some toilet paper off the roll and poured the water jar over it. She used that to wipe his spunk off her thigh. Then she retrieved her nightgown from her bag and put the raincoat over it. She put on her flipflops and visited the outhouse. On her way back to the tent, she noticed that she couldn't see the path of her feet clearly.

The sun had set. It was north of her but below the level of the lake. The summer was about over. In a few weeks they'd have to leave to go back to Regina.