Baffin Island, Part 2
Old Dogs
Hello!
This is the 2nd essay of a multi-part series chronicling my visit to the Canadian Arctic. If you haven’t read the first essay, please give it a look.
Thanks so much for reading! Please consider subscribing if you have not done so already.
I’m first to make it to the Airport Hilton in Ottawa. I amuse myself before Kent’s arrival by repacking my backpack a few times. This is standard fare as I prepare for any trip. I memorize the exact location of each and every piece of gear so that I can access it with little to no thought of its whereabouts.
Once that’s accomplished, I adhere to the adage, same place every time. Which means I never store anything in an alternate place, no matter how convenient it might be to do so. I also apply same place every time to other things, too. Like timely eating and drinking, filtering water, and most every other task in my daily routine. I rarely vary my flow unless situation dictates. But I’ll I never, for example, stuff my rain parka into a different pocket out of convenience. Or refrain from backwashing my water filter after tapping a cloudy source. I believe corner-cutting, even when it’s minor, increases chances of creating or exacerbating unforeseen problems down the road.
After months of experimenting with my new pack—a much-heaver-than-I-am-used-to Gregory Baltoro 75l monster of a bag—I’ve got the guts of its 52 lb. starting load on lock. I can name precisely what’s within, where it is, and in some cases, as with Band Aids, exactly how many I’ll begin with. Which, in this case, is eight. Twice as many as usual.
Tonight Kent and I will likely do a gear shakedown to get acquainted with what’s in each other’s packs. So rather than repack my load all neat and tidy, I heap everything into a pile that takes up half my queen bed. I’m mildly bothered by the disorganization, so I go outside to test my Garmin InReach for the millionth time. Strangely, it doesn’t work properly. So I spend the next two hours troubleshooting the issue with a customer service rep. Turns out there’s a system-wide glitch that “should be remedied within the next hour.” When the problem is finally fixed I toss the unit with the rest of my gear and shake off the anxiety caused by all that time on hold.
I lay on the bed for a quick nap, but instead think about seeing my old friend Kent for the first time in ages. I look at the tattoos on my arms and just know he’ll say something about them. Last he knew I was sworn against getting any more. I had only two back then, both of which I got as a knucklehead teenager in the Army. A 33 year old blob of Donald Duck on my left shoulder, and on my right is a design meant to be two people circling a heart, which instead looks like two warped dolphins, or perhaps squirrels, squishing a red, oblong orb. What will I tell him about the wasps on my hands? Or the snail on my forearm? Or the skull and snake and whale tail on my fingers? I’m nervous to catch up. To share the newer bits and pieces of me that, in many cases, contradict who I once was. I look at my watch and hope he’s delayed, but that’s just me avoiding the inevitable. But that won’t happen, because his connector from Newark is on-time and scheduled to land, as planned, in a couple hours.
In the ten years since my and Kent’s last trip I’ve done lots of work to abandon various indecorous behaviors that are deeply ingrained in my being. Behaviors so severely rooted that I’ve needed to upheave all I know about myself, all that is comfortable, in order to reshape myself into the sort of person I hope to become. Simply put—I’ve changed.
The work has been tough—it’s required me to unpack past traumas and dissect a worldview themed in fear, distrust, and self protection. I’ve made peace with the origin of this faulty wiring. I’ve even found ways to love it—or better stated, I’ve learned to love the younger me who did what he felt was necessary to survive. To fit in. But still, those ugly patriarchal, misogyynistic, and generally disrespectful habits of my past remain part of me still. They likely always will be.
My affect today looks and feels different that when Kent and I last spent any significant time together. I’m no longer as angry. Nor as pessimistic. I’m much more willing to collaborate, to show emotion, to communicate, to listen to others while trying to feel their side as well as I hear it. I don’t lash out as much. Or make fun. Or objectify. Or twist things around to make it all about me. The resulting relationships with myself and others are richer than they’ve ever been.
And though I’ve still got plenty more work to do on all fronts, I am proud of my progress. But I worry this new me won’t fit as well into my historically childish friendship dynamic with Kent. One that reveled in locker room humor, cringy comments, and juvenile antics.
I worry I’ve perhaps outgrown our connection. Become too self aware. A fuddy-duddy. I worry I’ve moved beyond a stage in my life where such immaturity played a vital role and Kent was someone with whom I could commiserate. Someone who let me deploy tirades of taboo humor in order to vent frustrations. Someone who let me hide my lack of confidence with indecency.
I worry that I’ll have nothing to offer our modern connection. That our reunion will catapult me back to this callow me and catalyze the erasure of all my personal progressI worry that I’ll become the version of me I loathe—the one I’ve worked so damn hard to acknowledge, forgive, box up, and put on the shelf as an artifact of my past.
Separately, Kent and I are both old dogs now. A couple of fifty-somethings, stubborn and grizzled and set in our goddamned ways. We’re both really good at being alone, traveling alone, and living according to our specific routines. There’s surely some truth to the maxim about our demographic’s endangered ability to learn new tricks. And starting tonight we’ll have four days to remedy that before hitting the most challenging trail trod by either of us. We’re going to need to figure things out, and with a quickness.
My heart stops when I hear a soft rapping on the room’s door. I take a deep breath, check myself in the full length mirror, and turn the knob. Kent steps in, throws his pack on the floor, and we embrace. We then stand with hands on hips and peer at each other. For a moment we drink in the most obvious slight changes. His short-cropped cropped and graying hair, mine’s recession. His thicker neck, my belly. But there’s no mistaking my old friend—his room filling smile assures me it’s him.
It’s late, but there’s no way we’re going to bed yet. So we hit the downstairs bar to cheers the beginning of our Arctic adventure. As we sit across from each other and share stories of our parents’ passings and offer more details of our lives today, my breathing deepens and my anxiety begins to settle. We’re becoming us again, and that feels good.
Our next three flights are scheduled on Canadian North, an airline notorious for delays and cancellations. But these issues are not solely the fault of the carrier, the capricious Arctic weather is also to blame. So thematic are travel holdups that Kent and I built in extra days on the front and back ends to keep our schedule loose.
From Ottawa we travel to Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, where we spend two nights. We fritter away time eating and doing town walkabouts. The waiting grows painful, and whenever we loiter too long in the confines of our overpriced hotel room we butt heads. “Your music is mildly annoying…You snored last night and I could hear you…Are you going to keep on with that tapping?” Kent’s questions irk me, which reminds of something I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older.
Until recently I communicated in the style modeled to me as a child—passively and indirect. I beat around the bush and hoped folks would get the gist of my words. I put faith in elusive breadcrumbs, spoke cryptically, and held grudges when others didn’t meet my expectations or understand my unspoken needs.
These days I try to be more direct with my language. I do my best to clearly express myself and take responsibility for meeting my own needs. I still fall back into my old communicative habits, but I generally catch myself before loading any resulting frustration on others. Still, I occasionally grow irritated when I witness elsewhere what I’m working so hard to fix. And when that happens, as in this case with Kent, it takes me a moment to shake it off.
At some point we go our separate ways for a few hours—him on a stroll outside and me downstairs for a $10 espresso. It a supremely healthy move and the change of scenery helps me clear my mind. My friction fades, and when we reunite we take time to name it. Turns out Kent is as concerned as I am about our new compatibility, and it’s a relief to learn we’re on the same page. But also, of course we are. “All this waiting around is making me nutty,” I say. “I just want to get on the fucking trail.” Him too.
We arrive at Iqaluit airport early for our final flight to Qikiqtarjuaq. Rather than begin the boarding process with the usual, “passengers who need assistance,” the gate agent says, “We’d like to invite our elders to board early.” There is also a separate room, gate adjacent, reserved for these elders to await their departing planes.
For the past year and a half since my dad’s death I’ve been helping my aging mom from afar with her household affairs. I’ve taken a dozen or so trips to see her in upstate New York and, in doing so, for the first time in my life I’ve grown acquainted with her as a human being. Which these days is a person of advanced age with limited mobility resulting from a poorly healed broken hip and minor stroke. More than ever, I strongly consider her basic needs and daily landscape. And if there’s one obvious takeaway from my new perspective, it’s this: The world as my mom knows it rarely recognizes, and often rarely respects, people like her. It’s terribly fucked up.
The small details, gestures, and accommodations at Iqaluit Airport are refreshing, consoling, and even charming. I wonder about the value of minor alterations in language and physical surroundings—which offers a fresh take on how we might better treat our own elders who, given the pervasive lack of quality healthcare and shifting family values, are commonly tucked away and ignored. I also wonder if this airport's choices are a clue to the deeper cultural differences between what I am used to and the ways of the Inuit people, on whose lands I now officially stand.
I board the plane feeling love for the prospect of what could be. For this trip. For my mom. Fort Kent. For my relationships. For all of us.
Great series, Tom.
I’m loving your adjustment to a different flow of time.