Читать книгу Arctic Solitaire - Paul Souders - Страница 9

This book had its origins in the journals and notes I kept during four solo boat trips to Canada’s Hudson Bay, in the summers between 2012 and 2015. These northern journeys began as a sort of lark: could I step out my front door and travel overland to the shores of a cold and mysterious sea, then head off by boat to see wild animals and have some adventures? I never thought to ask whether any of this was possible, advisable, or even strictly legal. I went north to photograph polar bears, and at each day’s end, I scribbled down, in long hand, my experiences as a photographer and accident-prone boater. It is, at its heart, a personal recounting of my impressions and memories from travels during which I was often tired and afraid and very much alone. Time and distance have faded memory, but I have done my best to retain the accuracy of events, locations, and conversations.

In the absence of any training in the biology or behavior of wild animals, I relied instead upon my own limited observations, and I make no claim to expert knowledge now. While there were days when I must have tried their patience, I made every attempt to avoid stressing polar bears or other animals that already lived in a challenging environment.

My descriptions of the small Inuit communities along Hudson Bay’s western coast are those of a preoccupied traveler passing through far too quickly. In these pages, I have tried to hold onto the flavor of my brief visits and those first, sometimes gritty or unfair impressions. I arrived unannounced and uninvited in these towns and was greeted, with only rare exception, with kindness and hospitality.

A note on distances: I use American statute miles when describing distances on land. Out on the water, however, I refer to nautical miles: 1 nautical mile is equal to 1.15 statute miles or 1.85 kilometers. It sounds arbitrary, but in fact it makes for an elegant way of seeing the world. You begin by dividing the earth’s globe north to south into the 180 degrees of a semicircle. Each of those degrees of latitude is divided again into 60 minutes, and each of those minutes, ¹/⁶⁰ of a degree, equals one nautical mile, or roughly 6,000 feet.

Confused? That makes two of us. The upshot was that when I looked at the lines of latitude on my nautical charts, I could quickly see that it was 60 nautical miles, or a long day’s travel, to move across one degree of latitude south to north and back again.

Anyone reading these words with a working knowledge of seamanship or boat mechanics will laugh or wince, as I do now, at my foolishness and ineptitude. Think of this not as a how-to manual so much as a cautionary tale.