Baffin Island, Part 1
On the Land
Dear Reader,
This essay the first in a series that will cover my recent trip to the Canadian Arctic. Rather than publish them weekly as I normally do, these will go live every couple days until the series is complete. The works are still in progress, so I am unsure exactly how many installments it will contain. Six? Perhaps seven? Maybe eight? There’s so much to write about!
So far, creating this mini-memoir has been nearly as rich as the trip itself. Thanks so much for coming along for the ride!
I love you all.
- Tom
When I reach out to Billy Arnaquq to organize a boat shuttle to the trailhead, the phone just rings and rings. After a half dozen calls that make me wonder if I have the right number, his wife Daisy, the mayor of Qikiqtarjuaq, tells me through a crackling cell connection that, “He’s out on the land.” I am struck by this turn of phrase. I imagine what this must mean in the Canadian Arctic. Surely up there being on the land is a feat of endurance, rich with bitter temperatures and sustained headwinds. And though on the land is a detail of one’s physical placement, I sense that it is also a state of mind. A beingness. To be on the land, I assume, is to think about and move through the world in a certain way.
I spend a lot of time outside. I regularly walk long distances with my entirety of life on my back. I pride myself in various outdoorsy accomplishments—lengthy trails I’ve either completed or sectioned—and I always have my next adventure on deck. I’m well practiced at living under the stars, my body easily conforms to whatever rocks and roots lay beneath my ground cloth. I am happy to eat for sustenance alone, and I quite enjoy going days, weeks even, without a shower. But I don’t, however, believe I’ve ever truly lived on the land. Never has my life been anything but temporarily uncomfortable. All my strife has been fleeting. On the land, in my own recreational context anyhow, generally means, off the land soon.
I can’t know for sure, but for Billy, on the land might mean he is hunting caribou, or walrus, or narwhal, or something else to ensure his family has full bellies this winter. It also could mean he is doing something I know nothing about because I definitely don’t know what it means to be Inuit.
But given Billy’s job as the only boat captain in town who’s licensed to haul people into Auyuittuq National Park, and this month being the summer tourism high season, odds are my calls merely rattled his tucked away cell phone as he navigates a 24-foot double outboard back and forth from Qik to the land, skirting chunks of Greenland’s ice shelf that line the Davis Strait like massive breadcrumbs, past nameless jaw-dropping fjords cupped with green blue water, pointing out polar bears and other Arctic wildlife to clients from down south, and ultimately dropping them off with a final wave from behind the wheel, leaving them suddenly alone in the stark tundra silence where they’ll have to quickly move 5k south, out of range of one of the few animals on this planet who will hunt a human for food. But also, on the land might just mean Billy couldn't come to the phone right then.
In a calm and slow voice—the energetic opposite my get-shit-done affect—Daisy assures me that if Billy previously emailed me a day and time, that we are good. This isn’t necessarily what I want to hear. I want confirmation from Billy himself. But Daisy’s words are enough to ease my hurried compulsion. They also offer a hint to how things roll in the Arctic.
After hanging up, I lean back and look at an image of Baffin Island on my laptop. I trace its edges with a finger. Its coastal crags resemble hungry teeth. A Cambridge University paper from 2017 likens the shape of its ice cap (the Penny Ice Cap) to “a very ruffled cockatoo.” In a few months I’ll be there—following first the Owl and then the Weasel Rivers as I traverse a valley of stunning monuments that rival the most humbling ranges on the planet. For the first time in my life I’ll be in the freaking Arctic, which both exhilarates and terrifies me.
I consider Billy’s awayness and how difficult it has been to make contact with him. Billy’s inaccessibility, his being on the land, exacerbates the distance between us. But the phrase also leaves me with a fresh sort of yearning. One that has me pining for when I might be, for a short time anyhow, on the land, too. On Billy’s and Daisy’s land. Where what I might call adversity is what they call life.
It’s around January of 2023 when my old and dear friend Kent first presents the idea of joining him on a hike on Baffin Island. All of our past travels have started like this—his intrigue to visit an obscure destination led to an invitation to accompany him to see it. I’ve always said yes. Which is how I ended up in places like the Mongolian steppe, the ancient temples of Myanmar, in the thick of Laotian karst, on a smoky train heaving across China, in hidden nooks of Baja, and lost in overgrown southwest canyons to trace the steps of cliff-dwellers. Kent’s partially to blame for my penchant for obscure destinations.
But Kent and I haven’t traveled together in more than a decade, and I’m concerned that our previous travel compatibility has waned. Surely we’ve both changed through the years—might these changes affect our congruence? This worries me. So much so that the best I can offer him is a maybe.
But dang, backpacking on Baffin Island sounds like a real sort of adventure. I know of it—I remember seeing it on our family globe that inspired so many of my childhood captivations. But I have to consult a map to remind myself exactly where it is.
Baffin Island, just about the size of California, is situated in the far northeast corner of Canada. It’s now part of the self-governed Inuit territory of Nunavut. From Baffin Island’s farthest northern reach, near the seasonal settlement of Alert, it’s possible to see the shores of Greenland barely ten miles away across the Nares Strait. Baffin Island, from this same point, is just over 500 miles from earth’s North Pole.
Our hike, however, will happen further south, between the indigenous villages of Qikiqtarjuaq and Pangnirtung, traversing Akshayuk Pass southbound through Auyuittuk National Park. We’ll have to endure a bulky 10-day food haul and rely on satellite communication for any contact with the outside world. We’ll be about as far away from things as I’d ever been and up against lethal weather conditions and precarious animal encounters. Add to all this the mere expense of getting there. It’s easy to get to Canada proper, but far north destinations are costly. Thousands of dollars, in some cases, for a one-hour hopper between Arctic hamlets. Fortunately I have time and money to burn, but still I am reluctant to commit. I didn’t want to be stuck with Kent, or him with me, if our once-resonant vibe has become dissonant.
Kent promptly mails me an informational map of the Akshayuk Pass. The map’s mention of polar bear dangers, lengthy travel delays, countless sketchy river crossings, and regular 100 mile per hour winds surely scare away many potential visitors. I, however, find these details mesmerizing. Never before have I faced such an array of virulent challenges in one place. All possible personal variances with Kent aside, the map’s liner notes leave me with a burning ache to see how I might fare in such a potentially lethal landscape.
I text Kent to thank him for sending the map. He tells me the gift is part of his grand scheme to expedite my commitment. “Well, it worked,” I type back. “I’m all in.”
HEADS UP: Check your inbox on Saturday 9/7 for Part 2!
You’re the only person I seriously considered Tom. The only one who really knew what he was getting into, and who I knew I could count on. I also knew you could be properly manipulated into a hard “yes” with the slightest whiff of adventure. I love it when a (somewhat evil) plan comes together.