Conquering the Impossible (14 page)

*   *   *

After camping out for a few days in the four or five remaining houses, my visitors left me to a solitude more intense than before. In all of Nanisivik, besides me, there were only five men in charge of the cleanup. They were cutting off the water supply and the electrical generators. There would be nothing but a minimal infrastructure operating at a low level throughout the winter so that people would be able to come back next summer to finish the renaturalization of the site.

The mine had finally shut down, the
Arctic
was loading the last shipment of zinc, and they shut up the last house—mine.

Now I was homeless, with no roof to protect me from an increasingly biting cold. Luckily, I knew that I could rely upon Claude, who generously offered to let me stay in the tiny cabin where he stores his sealskins and his tools at his home in Arctic Bay.

*   *   *

Corey, one of my new miner buddies, first introduced me to Claude Lavallée. The thirty-two-year-old native of Quebec had come to live in the Arctic when he was thirteen, accompanying his father who was installing phone lines for the mining companies of the Far North on behalf of Bell Canada. As a very young man, Claude began to work with him. But when he was fifteen he met Lily, a young Inuit woman. When Lily became pregnant Claude went to live with her in Arctic Bay, an Inuit village located twenty-two miles south of Nanisivik. They were married, and to earn a living Claude took the bus from Arctic Bay to the mine every day together with his new Inuit “brothers.” It was one of the longest bus routes in the entire Arctic. Lily's father, Johannessy, taught Claude the arts of hunting, fishing, and survival in the Far North, but shortly after the birth of her baby, Lily's parents broke up. Her mother moved not far from Arctic Bay, and her father went much farther south to Igloolik. Thus Claude, at the age of sixteen, found himself the head of a large family, and he supported and raised all of Lily's brothers and sisters by himself by working at the mine.

*   *   *

While the last traces of life were being eradicated for all time in Nanisivik, I set out for Arctic Bay. The village is located well to the north of the Arctic circle but still within the geographical limits I had established for myself when I began the trip. Claude's toolshed had only a tiny wood stove, and it was freezing cold inside. I felt like I was sleeping in my tent out on the ice field. But accommodations were free of charge, I was still completely in contact with nature, and I didn't have to deal with anybody if I didn't want to.

Once the mine was shut down, Claude relied upon the centuries-old strategies of his adopted ancestors for the care and feeding of his little tribe. He fished, hunted on foot or with his sled dogs, and became a skilled mechanic, fixing snowmobiles and various other machinery. He was a master of jury-rigging and improvisation, a MacGyver of the ice field, capable of making anything you can name out of the materials he had on hand. Supplementing his income was the generous monthly subsidy that the Canadian government provides to every Inuit family. However, up there that stipend only went so far, considering the scarcity of supplies and the difficulty of shipping anything.

I shared their family meals, fed the dogs, helped out in the shop, and did whatever I could to make myself useful. While I was a member of the household, Lily made me a pair of sealskin gloves and boots.

*   *   *

At the beginning of November, when my route showed promising signs of becoming passable, Claude helped me reinforce the runners on my sled and bolster the sled's framework. If everything had gone according to plan, I would have traveled only over ice, and my sled, in its current condition, would have been perfectly adequate. But modifications were going to be necessary for travel over the soil, rocks, and mountains, which awaited me on the route from the northern tip of Baffin Island.

Claude gave me GPS positions for fishing holes and liquid obstacles located along my route. He told me everything he knew about the ways and habits of polar bears, their migratory routes, and their gathering spots, which he suggested that I avoid assiduously. He also initiated me in the mysteries of seal hunting. In short, he helped me with the unstinting generosity of a simple, honest man.

We became close friends, but I felt that in his eyes I was just another extreme hiker, like the three adventurers he had helped to prepare for a trek three years before. They set out to travel by foot from Arctic Bay to Igloolik, the last village on the Borden Peninsula, just before Fury and Hecla Strait, but they gave up along the way. Now it was up to me to show him my worth.

After three weeks in Nanisivik and nearly a month in Arctic Bay, I was growing restless, to say the least. But Claude insisted that I should wait just a little longer to be certain that all the conditions were right.

I got to know Lily's grandmother, whom Claude supported just as he did the rest of the tribe. She lived in an igloo-sized wooden cabin lit by an oil lamp, and she sewed with a seal-bone needle. With Lily as an interpreter—the old woman spoke only Inuktitut—I told her about where my expedition would take me next and my planned passage through Cambridge Bay. The old woman told me a story of her parents, who had once spent five years of their lives finding and retrieving a boat—an abandoned schooner—from Cambridge Bay. Back then, the Inuit of the region used these schooners for hunting seals and narwhals, to sell their furs and ivory to the Hudson Bay Company. Lily's great-grandparents set out with their sled, dogs, and children, and they sailed the schooner back on the tiniest patches of navigable water, hauling it over the ice the rest of the time. They all camped out together on the spot in igloos whenever conditions became too harsh.

Then when Lily's great-grandfather finally returned to Arctic Bay five years later with his ship, the result of so much hard work, the village shaman demanded that Lily's great-grandfather give him Lily's great-grandmother. When he refused, the covetous shaman cast a curse on the schooner. Lily's great-grandfather, who believed in enchantments and curses, never set foot in the schooner again.

*   *   *

The day before I was finally planning to set out again, some hunters contacted Claude by radio and informed him that the ice had suddenly melted in the Prince Regent Inlet, which had become a stretch of open water, impossible to cross on foot.

“We're stuck on the other side!” they told him. And I was stuck on this side.

I gnawed on my leash for another week. The temperature dropped to twenty-two degrees below zero, and the ice froze over again, in part. It was mid-November, and by now it was almost perpetual night.

I finally ran out of patience. I decided I had spent enough time waiting, and it was time to move. Forget about Prince Regent Inlet. It was either that or wait for the twelfth of Never. So I decided to abandon the route entirely and go around the Gulf of Boothia to the south—unless I could find a way to cut across it. I'd likely have to go all the way around, which meant heading as far south as Melville Peninsula and then passing through Committee Bay before heading north again to Kugaaruk. It doesn't seem like much when you look at a map, but in reality, this was a 750-mile detour to Cambridge Bay by way of a vast icy wasteland, extremely inhospitable and plunged into the relentless darkness of winter. It would lengthen my expedition by at least four months!

To add insult to injury, I would be traveling directly along the migratory route of the polar bears who pass through Committee Bay on their seasonal migration to their winter seal hunting grounds. The female bears with their newborns are especially ferocious. It all amounted to being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I had no choice.

Dealing with this situation struck me as more than I could handle, and I didn't even really want to consider it for the time being. I would just hold out hope that I could find a shortcut.

*   *   *

Then on November 16, just as I was getting ready to depart again, the ice melted, but this time in Admiralty Inlet, a body of water that had never before had open water at this time of the year.

Admiralty Inlet, which runs north-south between Borden Peninsula and Brodeur Peninsula, was my route south. It was a frozen highway that ran between mountain ranges that were impossible to cross on foot, and I needed to use it to get at least as far as Nyeboe Fjord. By the time I got that far, the ice should be thick and dense enough to allow me to continue to Kugaaruk, on the far shores of the Gulf of Boothia.

But now Admiralty Inlet had become a navigable channel!

I was disappointed but not beaten. I have always believed that things always happen for a reason, even if it sometimes takes a while to figure out what that reason might be. A defeat, for me, is never anything other than one step on the road to victory. I have never thrown in the towel without a very persuasive reason.

*   *   *

So I bided my time until the end of November. The ice had finally frozen over again in Admiralty Inlet, and the thermometer was dropping further. I had green lights all the way.

Claude, who continued to share his invaluable knowledge with me, suggested a number of potential routes and showed me which islands to go around between Arctic Bay and Pelly Bay. No one had ever managed to travel between those two villages on foot in the heart of winter, and so no one knew exactly what I would be facing. There were only three things we knew for sure: it would be terribly difficult, I would be far from help in an area swarming with polar bears, and I could not afford to make even the slightest mistake.

After he had so generously shared with me so much of his time and experience, I was delighted to have an opportunity, in turn, to do something to help Claude. When the engine of his snowmobile locked up because of some poor-quality fuel, which had reportedly been destroying engines all over the Arctic, I helped him buy a new one. He depended on that vehicle for his survival because it was indispensable for the hunting he did to feed his family and his dogs. He would pay me back when he was able. Compared to everything he had done for me, it was a small favor.

Two days before my departure, at the invitation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), I enjoyed a delicious impromptu banquet. I spent the evening in the company of some exceptionally fine people. I could truthfully say the same thing about every member of the community of Arctic Bay, which, in the course of a month, adopted me as if I were one of their own.

When the time came for me to set out once again into the unknown, they all began to worry at the idea of seeing me go, willing prey to the night and the bears. Each member of the community tried to convince me not to go, and I could see the sadness in their eyes when I courteously but firmly refused to heed their advice.

*   *   *

It was two in the afternoon when I departed, but it was so dark that I couldn't see a thing except for the headlights of Claude's new snowmobile. He had come to bid me farewell. Without a word he wrapped me in his arms. In the darkness his eyes were glistening with tears, and he turned his head away to conceal his emotions. Although I may have been just another professional adventurer to him at first, I was now a true friend.

But I felt certain that we would meet again before too very long. If, as I feared, I was going to have to trek all the way around the Gulf of Boothia, I would certainly be needing supplies around Christmas. I already expected to rely on him for that.

*   *   *

I set off, and when I turned around to take one last look, I saw Claude's silhouette, dwarfed by his surroundings, as he waved slowly in the frozen air, as if he were waving the flag of our friendship. Then he was gone, and I had nothing ahead of me but the icy night of that late November of 2002, as I set out to walk along the length of the Borden Peninsula.

It wasn't the first time I had left a place where I had made friends—probably leaving it forever. However, it was the first time that I was leaving the human warmth of an adopted tribe and striking out into the utter darkness of the Arctic night. You can't change your nature, and I am a man of the south and require sunlight. To make things worse, I knew that every step was taking me farther and farther from my intended route because I was being forced to make this huge detour.

For all these reasons, my departure from Arctic Bay remains one of the most heartbreaking that I have ever experienced.

My eyes quickly became accustomed to the half-darkness into which my forehead lamp cast a pitifully small shaft of light. There was no risk of losing my way because I was following a clear course between the two long lines of cliffs that enclose the Admiralty Inlet. I had to get used to being a beast of burden again, an exhausting experience that I had not enjoyed since crossing Greenland two months before. My cargo, which back in Greenland had included just ten bottles of pure benzene, now included thirty bottles and weighed forty-five pounds more.

In order to ease myself back into shape, I covered only a modest distance the first day before pitching my tent for the night (that is, the darkest few hours of the day).

*   *   *

After the first five hours of travel each day, I began to suffer from hypothermia. In that relatively fragile state, I had just seven minutes to pitch my tent. Any longer than that and I would begin to die of cold. If anything delayed me, it meant death. In those temperatures that would be the situation every time I stopped.

*   *   *

Four days after leaving Arctic Bay, I had a great surprise. When I emerged from my tent I found myself nose-to-nose with an Inuit family. They were on their way back from a fishing expedition for Arctic char and had stumbled upon a lunatic camping in the middle of the ice field: me. Guessing that I was on my way somewhere, the man asked me my destination. When I answered, “Alaska,” his almond-shaped eyes grew round with astonishment. He shot back, with the brevity that is so typical of the Anglo-Inuit language: “And plane?” I felt like I was dreaming! He, an Eskimo muffled in his seal and caribou skins, dressed the way his ancestors have for centuries, was pointing out the advantages of flying.