Last winter the snowfall in Nuuk was more than locals could remember for decades. It snowed and it snowed. By the time we returned from our Christmas holiday, the stairs leading to our front door were buried thigh-deep. The balcony was already an intimidating snow-clearing task and it only got worse. My husband dug out our stairs, again and again, but eventually gave up on the balcony. The view from the living room windows shrunk slowly toward the ceiling.
“It will melt in the spring,” he said.
The upside was that my husband and son had a particularly cool project in mind that they could now execute. At the back of our house an eight foot wall of snow had accumulated just metres from the kitchen window. Together with a friend, they spent an afternoon digging out a snow cave. It had a narrow, crawl-through entry, which opened into a spacious room that one could sit in comfortably. There was space for two adults to sleep in a lower level, a single-bed bench area, and a shelf alcove.
My husband decked out our new cave in soft underlays covered with Persian carpets, fluffy doonas and sleeping bags, pillows and cushions, with candles burning in the alcove. The icing on the cake was that, being only metres from our house, there was wifi.
The three of us snuggled in together to watch Netflix, before dozing off in the silent winter darkness.
