V
Chips of multi-coloured flint, razor sharp, and the cold point of a harpoon head, expertly crafted. Ashes from willow twigs and muskox bone inside a shallow box of shale. A sewing needle last held 4,000 years ago. Rocks outline the boundary—a winter dwelling, a tent.
IV
A circle of green, big enough for a family to crouch out the winter. Flat stones, cut sod, sealskin, whalebones: a house. Orange lichen filigrees across tired bone. Grasses bend at shin height while lemmings and foxes hide. Six feet away, the land turns back to pebbles.
III
Four gravestones rise from the blank shingle. Nothing else. Desolation, you think. But when you pull some rocks into your palm, they speak. Each one is a cup, a sponge, a coral, maybe an anemone, still perfect after 40 million years. Specks of snow blow down your collar. The fossil bed, the beach, tilts into the sea. You read that they buried the men with pick axes—six feet down into solid ice.
II
He roams the tundra with a steady pace. Blue jeans. Today he walks the old road in search of the polar bears that disappeared over the rise. Better to know where they are. Yesterday, he spoke of the narwhal, where they congregate, how to get one. Tomorrow, he might share the language he speaks with his dogs when they travel the winter daylight. If not, he might join in downstairs for some drinks and a song.
I
One hundred ten metres of reinforced steel. Eight decks, eighty-one cabins, four lifeboats. Library, lounge, sauna. People. Everywhere. A small swarm of Zodiacs. Blackflies on the water; head for land.
•
I
I’m never sure what I will step into when I leave the ship. Between landings, the pilot doors close, and I go about my chores—wiping down my rifle; turning in ammunition; putting away flares, flare pistol, GPS, radio, binoculars, camera, float coat, rubber boots and cold-weather gear. When I’m done, it might be time to eat in the crew mess below deck. Then, I might try and squeeze in a nap or at least escape to my shared cabin for twenty minutes. After that, I climb seven flights of stairs to reach the bridge. At least from there I can see the landscape, even though I’m not on it anymore.
The bridge of the Expedition spans the width of the ship’s top deck. From flying bridges port and starboard you can look up and down her 110-metre length, and angled windows provide a 180-degree view. From here, the Arctic Ocean and the mountains and fjords of Baffin Island spread out like a tablecloth set for the enjoyment of this American ship’s 148 expedition-style tourists. The land is very beautiful to look at, and that’s what worries me. It’s not cold on the bridge. There aren’t any flies. No polar bears to watch out for. It’s spectacular, but it’s also surprisingly easy to reduce a complex cultural and biological system into a nice view—even when we are right in the middle of it. Not only can we do it, but we succeed so completely that people start to complain. The walrus aren’t close enough, the polar bears are kind of yellow and what’s with all the fog?
If you step onto the flying bridge deck outside the sliding door, at least you are back out in the weather. The Arctic expands into your other senses. You can get cold out here, and people do. Although many stay inside, there is a core group of 30 or 40 who will freeze their fingers too stiff to take pictures just to breathe the air. Even though they will only be here for ten days, I try to memorize these people, and I look for them at landing time. They are my lifeline.
An hour before our next stop, I begin to run through the preparations in reverse. Along with a dozen other expedition staff, I put on cold-weather gear, rubber boots, float coat, camera, binoculars, radio and GPS. I sign out my flares, flare pistol, ammunition and rifle—requisite for all guides in polar-bear country. The crew’s able seamen open the pilot door, and, five metres above water level, I wait for my six-metre inflatable Zodiac with its 60 horsepower engine to be lowered by crane. When it arrives, I grab its harness and swing in. I lower the engine, turn the key and bring myself up to ship speed before I release the clip from the crane and signal to be let go from the bow line. Now, I am back in the action. I will take people ashore and walk on the tundra.
I used to believe that bringing people out in nature could turn them into conservationists. Now, I’m not so sure. What does it really mean, in the context of a human life, to have walked on this land? Even for my so-called lifeline people, are these two-hour outings, even twice a day, enough to make a lasting impression, and is a lasting impression a step toward action that will, as we say, “make a difference” for the preservation of wilderness? Heck, they probably need an oil well somewhere to fuel this ship.
As I cruise the High Arctic for the first time in my life, I try to let go of some of these questions and trust in the land. I will learn to listen, and I will let the land show me what is possible for change. I will keep gearing up twice a day, waiting for the pilot door to open and let me out.
II
Crowberries snap between my teeth, and I lean back against a stone, careful to turn my rifle in a safe direction. With twenty people, I have climbed up to a high spot, and the ship is now a speck between icebergs. This is when I love the ship the most: when I am not on it and it gets dwarfed by the land. My group of hikers rests in a fold of the tundra, and I breathe deeply, thinking about Arctic summer. Endless light, fruit, caribou and hiking. There are a few bugs now and then, but the landscape is breathtaking and the sun so energizing. I am curious about the winter, but not enough to actually come up here and experience it, at least not yet. I am a little bit afraid of such a long, deep cold, and I think the dark would be difficult to get through.
If it weren’t for Stevie, a local Inuk guide, I would still feel this way about the Arctic seasons. Summer is plentiful; winter is hard. It takes some time to get Stevie talking, but he tells me the most amazing things. I take down some hunting advice:
(1) When you travel on the ice in winter, you need to leave yourself enough time to catch one seal per day for your dogs. Wait at their breathing holes, but don’t shoot them right when they surface. Wait for the inhale. If their lungs are empty when you shoot, they will sink, and you won’t be able to get them out.
(2) If you are hunting narwhal, it is best to take a warning shot when you get close. That way, the frightened animal will dive and stay down for a long time. When it comes up, it will need a deep breath and you should strike then, when its lungs are full. That way, it will surface long enough for you to drive the floats into it, and you can tow it to shore.
Stevie also tells me about winter. We stand outside the bridge in the wind, but Stevie’s just wearing jeans, a company shirt and a windbreaker, the same thing he wears everyday. I’m in an insulated coat, toque, mitts and scarf. Stevie always stands up straight, hands in his pockets, with his chest out slightly. He stands about 5’4’’. He doesn’t look at me much; he just stares across the water from behind his glasses, the wind barely ruffling his grey brush cut. He shares about his dogs, about hunting on the ice, and every now and then he laughs, revealing the wide space where his front teeth should be. Over days of listening to Stevie, the limitations of summer emerge. Like picking up the negative of a photograph, I begin to see what I had overlooked. Summer limits travel. Sleds don’t work; the dogs can’t run over the uneven ground. Skidoos are useless; boats will get you around. Narwhal hunting brings people together, but it’s hard to get seals without the ice. Bugs pester every living thing, and caribou hunting is no good by mid-summer—warble flies make holes in the hides. January is Stevie’s favourite month. “A good month for travel,” he says.
Later in the week, standing between hummocks of cotton grass, I begin to feel trapped. I am craving winter, too. If I wanted to get out, to travel, hunt, visit family, get to the mainland or another island, I would need ice.
We call it the land, but that’s not quite right. It’s the land, the water, the ice. Especially the ice.
It calls out for words.
Aglu: Breathing hole of a sea mammal.
Qimugjuit: Snow formations used in navigation.
Tauvigjuaq: The period of mid-winter darkness.
III
Today, when the door opens, we will visit the only known graves from Sir John Franklin’s famous last expedition to explore the Northwest Passage. We anchor south of Devon Island, just off of Beechey Island, lat. 74° 43’ 28’’N, long. 91° 39’ 15’’W. In the last month, we have photographed the comparatively sub-tropical tundra in Iceland, hiked Greenland’s remote east coast and watched icebergs in the opaque water of Davis Strait, but I have not seen any place as desolate as the beach in front of me this morning. I pull away from the ship, alone in my Zodiac. The temperature hovers just below zero, and enough snow has fallen to make every surface flat and grey. No vegetation. I had heard this before, but it didn’t prepare me. As far as the eye can see, not one single visible plant pushes out between the rocks. The plane of the shingle beach tilts slightly toward the ocean, and half a kilometre inland the landscape inclines towards brown cliffs of sedimentary rock. In front of me, in the middle of the crescent of pebbles, there are four gravestones. Made from wood two inches thick, faded to the colour of the shingle, and standing less than four feet high they stand out like neon signs.
In May of 1845, the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus left England with Franklin and his crew of 128 men. Their mission was to discover the Northwest Passage, but after an encounter with a whaler in the summer of that same year, no European laid eyes on Franklin, his men or his ships again. They chose to spend their first winter in the bay in front of me, now named Erebus and Terror Bay. By spring, three of Franklin’s men had died. (The fourth grave was dug later for a member of a rescue party.) All of this is the facts, from books. The reality must have been something else.
John Torrington, died January 1, 1846, aged 20 years. John Hartnell, died January 4, 1846, aged 25 years. William Braine, died April 3, 1846, aged 32 years.
On Hartnell’s grave, his friends carved the following from Haggai, I, 7: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.”
I scan the beach. Just how lonely, how desperate would a twenty-year-old in a thin woolen overcoat feel as he froze and starved here in the perpetual dark. Was it possible, under their circumstances, to appreciate this alien beauty? When I sit down, I discover that every other pebble is a nearly flawless fossil. On the 40 million year timeline of this beach, European history is too short to measure. Could the men feel this?
When I look back towards the Expedition, the Erebus and the Terror are floating in the bay, barely visible. I know, it sounds impossible; they haven’t been here since the summer of 1846. Everybody knows that.
IV
The bones are losing their places, falling out of a bed of soil and disappearing with each storm. Their stories spill into the sea, and it seems like their owners walked away only a generation ago. Preserved in a polar desert, it’s hard to believe these bones and the house remains a few feet away are six hundred years old.
This morning, I crouch by the ruin of a Thule house. The richness of life supported by its footprint silences me. Centuries ago, this circle was a home for people who built stone tools to hunt caribou, fox, polar bear, seal and whale. Leftover food, ash, tools and waste from this family created an oasis. Now, the green depression filled with grass, moss and lichen stands in stark contrast to the bare rock that extends to the horizon. Sitting down, a whale pelvis that helped support the roof extends over my head. Ribs thicker than my arms scatter inside the circle, along with fox, lemming and caribou droppings. Foxes have transformed this particular spot into a den.
Thule people preceded the Inuit in many Arctic regions, and the cultures are related. In the winter, they lived in small family groups, generally spread between two or three semi-permanent dwellings made from sod, stone, skin and bone. Now, the roofs have fallen in, but every piece of the structures remain. Beside me, just where the land drops away, the sea cuts into a mound of soil. Soil itself is rare enough, and this mound is full of treasure—waste from the families that lived here. Before my eyes, with every wave that climbs high enough, the water claims remnants from their lives.
Bones spread across the boulders. In five minutes, I find the skull of an Arctic fox, a wolf’s leg bone, half of the lower jaw from a polar bear, flakes of whale bone and countless other animal fragments. There are even little carved pieces of wood. Because they will drop into the water very soon, and almost nobody comes here, I decide that I can touch them, just for a minute.
I am thrilled by these people. My life is different for having known them, even briefly. They stretch my vision of what’s possible. It’s possible to hunt polar bears by dog team and take them down with stone spears, drag home a bowhead whale behind a skin kayak, make a warm and sturdy home out of earth and bone. All these stories live in the past, but they impact my present by transforming my understanding of what people can do. It is not the knowledge of these feats of strength and ingenuity that make a difference for me; it is the experience, beyond knowledge, that I could only get by sitting beside these bones and listening to this place, even for a short time. On my knees with a Thule house, my glimmer of hope that experience can spark a new realm of possibility, an action, a change, a stand for the wilderness, flutters back into existence.
V
There are a lot of things that everybody knows. Apparently, everybody who is an archaeologist knows that it is a waste of time to dig around ancient tent rings. The sites were only used by small groups of people for short periods of time, and there isn’t anything of consequence to find there. At least that’s what they told Eigil Knuth, who headed the Danish Pearyland Expedition which ran from 1947 to 1950, but Knuth had no choice; he couldn’t find any evidence of longer term winter houses in Independence Fjord, his area of study, so he dug. It wasn’t much, but what he found sparked a new understanding of the Arctic’s ancient peoples. Knuth discovered spearheads expertly crafted from flint, but they weren’t based on Inuit design principles. He also uncovered remains of firepits containing wood and muskox bone. With these details and a few more years of research, archaeologists began reconstructing a culture that has no living relative. Unlike the Inuit, these people, known as paleo-Eskimos and in some regions as people of the muskox way, were a land-based culture. Thule people hunted large sea mammals from skin boats centuries after paleo-Eskimos simply walked toward their muskox prey, flint spears in hand. Because Thule people burned clean seal-oil lamps, they could live in tightly insulated houses, mostly underground. Without the technology to catch marine prey, paleo-Eskimos gathered dry twigs from tiny willows to heat above-ground, ventilated, skin tents—their only shelter during winter.
When I stood within the ancient territory of the paleo-Eskimos, I didn’t know they existed. My interest in the Arctic’s human history extended to modern Inuit culture, and my reading had focused on Franklin and other European explorers of the North. I had to come home to see where I had been. With what I have learned, I want to go back. I think that it would be different somehow, if I could stand in paleo-Eskimo territory and know that I was doing so. I could create some kind of impact if I brought my new awareness of this ancient culture back to the appropriate landscape. Mostly, I yearn to look down at the ground and understand that a sewing needle, hewn with flint from muskox bone and used to make caribou-skin clothing thousands of years ago, could be lying, intact, at my feet.
