Читать книгу An Intimate Wilderness - Norman Hallendy - Страница 14

CONTOURS OF THE LAND

Arctic. The very word conjures an image of a frozen landscape in the grip of an icy sea. A place of icebergs and polar bears, where winter is cloaked in darkness and summer is an endless moment under the midnight sun. The stereotypical image we southerners have of the polar region emerged from early accounts of whalers and the few survivors of doomed expeditions. These words, written in the golden age of Arctic exploration, reflected what many souls endured at that time: “We seem to be dwelling in some haunted house filled with unearthly and mysterious noises,” wrote Charles Edward Smith, the surgeon aboard the icebound whaler Diana in 1886. “We sit like hares, startled and alarmed at the slightest sound dreading and fearing we know not what.”

Woodcuts and copperplate engravings often illustrated a fantastic world in which life and death teetered on the sharp edge of chance. All the while, somewhere out there lived a people who had adapted perfectly to their environment. They beheld their place as nunatsiaq, the beautiful land. To those who lived in favoured locations, it was nunatiavaluk, a very fine land rich in food and beautiful to behold. Nunarrak, the land, sea, and sky, was regarded as great living thing. Upon and within her dwelled the tuurngait, the spirits, and all things were temporarily imbued with inua, the life force.

The Arctic is often described as a cold desert where precipitation, including melting snow, averages a mere 14 to 26 centimetres annually. Imagine a place with so little precipitation, where winter temperatures average -34° Celsius and can plummet to -60° Celsius; where just below its surface, the earth can be frozen solid for hundreds of metres; where whatever soil thaws in summer is poor in nutrients, and anything that can grow must do so within 50 days.

When you stand upon the Arctic landscape for the first time, you are overwhelmed by its vastness, power, and sheer beauty. Whether you are at the foot of a glacier, on the crest of a mountain, or on the great plains of the central Arctic, you are surrounded by evidence of the unimaginable forces that shape mountains, melt glaciers, move oceans, and drive winds as far as the Gulf of Mexico.

No general profile of the Arctic landscape exists. The shape of the land varies from the great delta plain of the Mackenzie in the west to the imposing mountains of Ellesmere and Baffin in the east. Travelling by airplane from Inuvik to Iqaluit, you can appreciate the grandeur of the Canadian North. You begin the journey in the far west, gazing upon the sinuous delta landscape, an endless maze of twisting rivers and lakes — a surrealistic view of the planet where the infinite number of lakes and twisting rivers reflects images of clouds, as if the Earth were a giant perforated leaf floating on a calm, glassy sea.

As you travel eastward, the landscape changes from the water world of the delta to vast lowlands sweeping toward the coast. They pass in sombre tones of grey and brown, stretching to infinity. Here and there, last year’s snowdrifts lie in the protection of shadows, waiting for the arrival of winter. Below, you see the shadow of your plane continually changing shape as you pass over countless eskers, rivers, and lakes.

Flying over the west coast of Hudson Bay, you note the landscape lies flat, shaved by the glacier that scoured this place a mere 9,500 years ago. You are about to be astonished. There it is: You now behold an Arctic shaped by mountains, snowfields, glaciers, and icebergs. This is the Arctic described in heroic accounts, stories, songs, dreams, and nightmares. At first, you are spellbound. Then inwardly, you come face to face with your utter insignificance. You are exposed to the terrible realization of your vulnerability; everything you have ever learned is irrelevant because, unequipped with the knowledge and skill of how to survive on the land, you are likely to die here in a matter of days if left alone.