South with the Sun
Page 13
The narwhales were waiting at the floe edge for the ice to break up so they could migrate into Eclipse Sound, Oliver Sound, and the fjords, where they would spend the summer feeding on squid, halibut, shrimp, and redfish.
David explained in his lilting Scottish brogue that at the floe edge, there was a lot of activity. The edge was where polar bears hunted for narwhales and beluga whales and seals, and it was where Inuit hunted for these animals.
David’s tourist group had camped on the sea ice near the floe edge, and they had to be cautious. There were polar bears. David’s brow furrowed when he talked about the bears. On two separate camping trips, a polar bear had come into camp. He said, “Adult males can be from seven to nine feet tall and weigh up to fifteen hundred pounds. They are the world’s largest predator on land. And they are very dangerous.” He paused, and his voice grew more breathy as he recounted, “One large male, seven or eight feet tall, came to within a few hundred yards of our camp, and another time a different bear got near our tents. I carry a rifle for protection. And I hire a local Inuit guide whose job is to be on polar bear watch. He is a pro, but polar bears can be very stealthy. And often you don’t hear their approach.”
“Did you fire your rifle to scare the bear off?” Bob asked.
David shook his head. “No, a shot sounds like ice cracking, so it doesn’t scare the bear. He doesn’t know he should be afraid of the sound. There’s not much that threatens a polar bear.”
“Are there a lot of them around here?” I asked.
“Not usually, but a couple days ago, one came to the edge of town, and the parks people managed to scare him away.”
“Are bears good swimmers?” I asked.
“Yes, they are. They have large front paws that they use like paddles. They swim a sort of dog paddle with their heads above water. They’re suited for the cold water. They have thick fur coats, body fat, and black skin that absorbs the sunlight and warmth. I’ve heard of them swimming hundreds of miles off shore,” he said.
“Will polar bears be something I should be concerned about during my swim?”
David frowned. “Normally, I wouldn’t think so, but that bear that was just here could return. We’ll have to check out the area thoroughly before you swim.”
We discussed the best way to organize the swim. My goal was to swim a mile in the sound, four times farther than in Greenland, but I had one large concern: would the ice break up enough to swim in six days? I wanted to swim on July 9, Nunavut Day—a celebration of the signing of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement in 1993, which led, in 1999, to the region’s recognition as an official Canadian territory, allowing it to have some degree of self-rule and control over its own institutions.
David said that the floe edge was beginning to break up, and that with a few good winds, the sea ice would also begin breaking up. We discussed having David and Bob in a boat, but we couldn’t be sure if there would be enough room for a boat to get through the ice, and the ice could damage a propeller. David said that he could escort me in a kayak. He often kayaked in the sound, and he could carry the rescue rope and clamp it onto my harness if I had a problem and tow me to shore.
This wasn’t the ideal way to do a swim; it would have been better to have David drive the boat and Bob as the support person, but we were doing something different, and it was exciting to think about this in a new way. It would be a challenge to swim through the sea ice and see what my body could do. But I had some concerns.
I wanted to train, to try to acclimate or at least just work out, but the only place where there was open water was the Salmon River on the edge of town, where the current ran too fast to swim without a boat as protection, and we couldn’t get a boat to the river area. There wasn’t a gym, and so Bob hiked with me a couple times a day for two or three hours. We walked around the hamlet, past the government buildings, airport, and hamlet office, and to the outer areas of town. We paused at the cemetery, and wandered along the beach where sled dogs were tied up. We climbed the hills behind the town to see the freshwater pond that fed the hamlet’s water system. We stopped at the ancient dump to look at cars and vehicles, and strolled across the tundra—a fairyland of miniature wildflowers, yellow Arctic poppies and delicate daisies the size of a thumbnail, tiny purple and yellow saxifrage, and fluffy Arctic cotton.
On each hike, we included a view of Eclipse Sound from the bluffs and from the beach, and we studied the surface of the sound, and for the first time, we watched the sky for clouds and hoped for really bad weather with strong winds that would roar across the sound and increase currents under the ice, creating enough force to encourage it to break up.
Between our hikes, we had our meals in the hotel cafeteria and met most of the construction workers, scientists, and engineers who were staying at the hotel. We became friends with Amy Chin, a traveling nurse from Newfoundland, and her friend Karen Nutarak, who was a nurse from Pond Inlet. They worked in the health clinic, but one day took a break to see the visitors’ center at the same time I was there looking at exhibits. Karen gave us an insider’s tour and showed us traditional clothing and equipment that had been made by her family and friends.
She also explained that she and some of the people in Pond Inlet competed in throat singing. It was an Inuit tradition. She had learned from her elders how to sing in the back of her throat and how to imitate the sounds of nature, like the calls of geese, the movement of the wind, and the flight of a mosquito.
Karen said that during a competition one person would sing a throat song, then the other competitor would repeat the song and add a variation. As they competed, the song would grow longer with each repetition and each variation. And the competition continued until someone ran out of breath or started laughing, and then the person who sang the longest without a mistake would become the winner.
Karen demonstrated throat singing. She drew in a very deep breath and sang in the back of her throat. It was not like any human song I had ever heard. She had great focus and amazing control, and she sounded like a goose, then the wind, and she transformed other voices from nature into her own.
Karen’s song was beautiful, exotic, and powerful. She really enjoyed performing for us. She explained that it took a lot of training to keep her voice in shape. And then she offered to sing some ajajaj songs for us. She explained that they were traditional folk songs in the Inuktitut language. They were melodic and beautiful and equally exotic. Karen and Amy had to return to the clinic, and so I walked back to the hotel to have lunch with Bob.
During one lunch, we met Edward Little, who worked with the Geological Survey of Canada in Calgary. Edward had been studying the glaciers on the mountain on Bylot Island across Eclipse Sound. He had observed over the past two years that one glacier in particular was rapidly receding, and he was very concerned.
The hotel usually had people coming and going, but Pond Inlet always looked deserted. During one lunch, David joined us, and he explained that to the Inuit the normal state of water was ice. When it thawed, it became very dangerous, mostly because the majority of the hunters couldn’t swim. It was already too thin for hunting, so many of the people had gone “on the land.” They would camp out with their families in tents for most of the summer and hunt caribou and other game.
In Amundsen’s time, the Inuit were nomadic, following the food source—the herds of caribou, Arctic char, seals, narwhales, and polar bears—but in the 1960s, as a way to secure Canadian sovereignty, the Inuit were moved into government-built communities. For the most part, the people who lived on Baffin Island were still hunters and fishermen, and many of the families also received government assistance. Jobs were scarce, but the Baffinland mining company had recently applied to open an iron-ore mine a hundred miles south of Pond Inlet, a project that would involve the construction of a railway and a deepwater port to transport the ore to Europe. This port hadn’t been considered until recently, when the ice began to thaw and areas that were once inaccessible by ship were opening up.
When the meat was really rotten or, as the Inuit said, very tender, they served it to their family and guests. Richard was at a gathering and was offered the rotten walrus, and he didn’t feel he could refuse or he would be considered ungrateful or rude. Richard looked at us and winced. “So I took a big breath before I put the rotten walrus in my mouth. And I don’t know why, but I made the mistake of breathing just after I swallowed the rotten walrus, and I almost threw it up. My eyes were all tearing up, and I had to take a long drink to get it back down. It’s hard, you want to accept their generosity, but sometimes, it’s really difficult,” he said.
“What about seal? Have you tried that?” Bob asked.
Richard pursed his lips together and nodded. “It’s very oily and rich, and it has the tendency to clean out your system. I’m not a fan.”
“The Arctic char looks good,” I said.
“It is. It tastes just like salmon. It’s delicious.”
“Are there any unusual customs you’ve discovered here?” Bob asked.
Richard hesitated, as if he still couldn’t quite understand, and he said, “The Inuit have open adoption. It seems strange to me, but it may be a way to keep the community alive. If you have a family, and you are expecting another child, and another husband and wife don’t have any children, they may ask you for yours, and often, people give their children to other people in the community. The children grow up knowing who is raising them, and who their biological parents are.”
Bob thought about it for a moment. Raised on a farm in Calloway, Nebraska, he was very practical. He said, “It must encourage a distribution of their resources and ensure the survival of the community.”
It was good that Bob came from Calloway, where life was slower. It was hard for me to gear down to Arctic time, but Bob had no problem. For six days we watched the ice slowly crack. There were small leads, then finally larger ones, where the Salmon River flowed into the sound, but the open water was too far from shore, and we couldn’t get out to the open water safely. Each day we watched a game that locals played to see who could keep a heavy snowmobile or qamutik dogsled on the ice the longest, without it falling through the ice and sinking to the bottom of the sound, and as we watched some snowmobiles start to sink, we realized that this was a signal the ice was melting.
Restlessly, we waited, and I thought of Amundsen in Antarctica on the Belgica waiting for months for the ice to break so he could sail back to Norway. This was nothing compared with his icy internment.
We met people working in the hamlet offices, their city hall, and we were introduced to the mayor and his friend, a former government representative named Paul, who was in his sixties and had traveled extensively throughout Canada and to New York City. When he asked me what I was doing in Pond Inlet, and I told him, he pushed his wire-rimmed glasses back against his face and looked more closely. “Aren’t you afraid of the Greenland shark?”
“Are they a problem here?” Adam had filmed in Canadian waters, too. He hadn’t told me that the Greenland sharks that lived in Canadian waters were different from the ones that lived off Greenland. He didn’t tell me to be more careful.
Paul shook his head and said, “They must be different than the sharks in Greenland. In Canada, they’re very aggressive. I’ve seen them attack boat paddles and each other. They’re cannibalistic. And you have to watch out for stingrays, too. They’re really large and they can really sting you,” he added.
I was trying to figure out if Paul was joking or if he was serious. I glanced at Bob. He was smiling. He thought Paul was just kidding with me. But I wasn’t sure. The following day, I asked David, and he said he had seen some small Greenland sharks six or seven feet long swimming close to shore. He said they didn’t appear to be aggressive. He didn’t think they would be a problem. But he said he never had to consider this before.
By Nunavut Day, sections of the ice had finally broken up. Near the center of Pond Inlet was an area of water about two hundred yards wide that had been created by the flow of the Salmon River. A mile and a half west, more water had opened up at the mouth of a fast-flowing stream. Beyond that, there were five-to-six-foot-high blocks of sea ice.
David Reid attaching the rescue rope and carabiner to the kayak, completely prepared and professional.
David carried his yellow kayak over his head down a steep embankment, past two wary sled dogs, and set it in the water. He was wearing a waterproof jacket and pants, a knit cap, and rubber-sole shoes. He was completely prepared. He looped the rescue rope around his waist, slipped into the cockpit, and covered himself with a spray deck to keep his lower body dry and prevent cold waves of spray from entering the boat; it was also an added safety measure, since if the boat tipped over, he could roll the kayak and right it without being tossed out. Then he paddled out into the sea ice.
David tied the water thermometer onto the kayak and took temperatures throughout the swim. I asked him not to tell me until I completed the swim. But when he held the thermometer up and looked at it, I saw it too. It read 28.8 degrees Fahrenheit, minus 2 degrees Celsius.
After he put the thermometer back into the water, his face became very serious, and he focused directly on me.
We had a plan. My first goal was to swim out to one of the chunks of sea ice beside David. If I managed that, I would follow him through the narrow passages between the ice. The only problem was that from shore we couldn’t see if the channels were open or if there were ice shelves under the water that we might collide with or run aground on. I dragged my feet as I walked slowly into the silver-blue water so I wouldn’t step on any stingrays. A chill ran up from my feet, through my legs and back, and out along my shoulders.
“This is great,” I said, when I reached David. “Let’s go to the right.” The water felt as cold as it had in Greenland, but my breathing was much easier. The training had paid off. I put my face down quickly into the water; my hips rose, my body leveled out, and my swimming was easier. I looked under the white chunks of floating ice. There were no fins, thankfully, only crystal blue water and a small, delicate, white brittle starfish with long thin arms about five feet below me.
Quickly, I lifted my head; the water was too cold to put my face into it for very long. Swimming with my head up, I followed David around a small chunk of sea ice and entered an area where there were larger blocks of ice on either side of me. It was like entering a snowy sculpture garden, one that might have been inspired by Henry Moore—the ice had been rounded and smoothed by the winds and the waves and the tides.
Finally, the wind and water burst the sea ice, and I swim while friends watch from shore and help me gauge the distance yet to swim.
To my right was a ten-foot-long block of ice that looked like a reclining polar bear with glistening white fur. On my left, another resembled a snowy white egret taking flight; another looked like a baby beluga. As I swam through the maze, I became a little afraid. There were ice ledges that extended under the water; David pointed to them with his paddle, but I still misjudged my position due to a current moving through the water and hit one. It hurt dully. I checked my forearm. Fortunately there was no sign of blood.
I caught up with David and gradually put my face back in the water. It was so much easier to swim that way—my hips and legs were not dragging, and I could see clearly below the water’s surface. I checked for sharks. I couldn’t get them out of my mind. But I also looked for narwhales and belugas.
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nbsp; As I followed David into deeper water, the supernatural Arctic sun saturated the sound and made the water resonate with energy waves. The sea became fire blue and searing cold. And where there was sea ice, the floating forms focused the sunlight into sunbeams that illuminated the soft, silty brown seafloor and three tiny brittle starfish. While I was swimming, I was gauging the distance we had traveled, making sure that I had enough energy to get back to shore. And although my outer body was numb and crimson red, my inner core felt warm.
I continued sprinting through the passage, watching David paddle on each breath. The small kayak was an extension of his body, he could move right between the narrowest sections of ice, spin the kayak around, and paddle backward. When I turned and wasn’t paying attention, my right arm got hung up on an underwater ice shelf. David must have heard a change in my stroke rate, and glanced back to check on me before I shouted that I was okay and asked him how long I’d been swimming.
“Twenty minutes,” he said. “One more crossing of the bay?”
Bob was standing near the edge of the shore with friends whom we had met at the hotel. They had come to show their support, as had a group of nurses and friends from the health clinic, people from the city government, and people from the neighborhood.
Bob gave me the thumbs-up sign, and I lifted my foot to signal all was well. Once I finished the loop, I headed into shore and found that I had been in the water for twenty-three minutes. Bob said the water temperature was 28.8 degrees Fahrenheit, and I had reached my goal of swimming a mile, a distance four times longer than in Greenland, in water 4 degrees colder than Antarctica. I was satisfied. Once out of the water I needed to keep moving, to hike back through town, and generate heat through my muscle movement, to see if I recovered more quickly than after the swim in Antarctica. After that swim, I was miserable and exhausted from the intense shivering. If it was possible to keep moving, my body would generate enough heat to compensate for the cooled blood on the exterior part of my body.