He arrived one windy Sunday in February. Peering through the white ruff on his green parka, he looked past the boxy airplane hangar into the white arctic desert. I couldn't see his expression, but he hesitated at the door of the Twin Otter, almost unwilling to descend the stepladder to the ground. He looked like any other tunik, a white man bundled up in his Army surplus parka, awkward and out of his environment.

Eventually he stepped down the ladder, testing each rung as if he were afraid it would fall out beneath him. The pilot passed two big green mail bags down to me and my dad, and we dragged them over to our sled. The stranger followed my dad like a fox follows a lemming.

"Uh, excuse me," he said, "uh, can I get a, um, a lift into town?"

Dad turned to him, smiling. "Okay. Where you going?"

"I don't know. Is there a hotel, or somewhere I could stay?"

"A hotel?" said my dad. "No, no hotel. Who would stay in hotel here?"

"Uh, well, is there someplace in town for visitors to stay?"

"With family."

The pilot pulled up the door of the plane. The man looked lost, uncertain what to do. He pulled back his hood to reveal long, light brown hair in a ponytail. His beard flowed several inches from his chin, scruffy and unkempt. "Any suggestions?"

Dad looked him over, then started laughing. The stranger looked like he didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. "I'll take you to the schoolteachers," said my dad. "Maybe they'll know what to do." He picked up the man's bags, lashed them to our sled, and started up the snowmobile.

We took off across the tundra, my dad driving, the man standing on the back of the sled, and me sitting on the mailbags and luggage. "What's your name?" he asked me, after we had been going for a while.

"David," I answered. The sled hit a bump and my rump landed on something hard in his long bag. "Ow," I said, "What's that? A gun?"

"No," said the man. "Those are my skis."

I had never seen skis before, but since he was one of the few tuniks I had seen in my eleven years, I kept my mouth shut. I wondered who he was, and why he was here.

Later, Grandfather would tell me that the Tourist came in search of something he had lost. He said that people leave home when home has no meaning anymore, and that tourists are searching for a place with meaning. I don't think the Tourist found it.