Baffin Island, Part 5
Receding
Hi Everyone!
Thanks for following along on my Canadian Arctic adventure! This is the 5th essay in a series of 9 (or perhaps 10…I am still writing them). If this is your first time here, you might want to backtrack a bit to catch up.
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Thanks a bunch!
-tom
Though snow is a possibility in Auyuittuk National Park in late summer months, the lower portions of Akshayuk Pass are mostly clear of it. Still, everywhere you look there’s evidence of cold. Namely with glaciers. Most of the taller peaks hold them in their saddles and flanks. And they hold on for dear life.
Our first few days in the Pass are sunny and clear, a detail we rarely mention aloud for fear of jinxing what seems like an Arctic anomaly. The Penny Ice Cap, a 2300 square mile vestige of the last ice age, pops against crystalline skies while its glacial fingers reach down, gradually change into waterfalls, then creeks, and eventually into tributary branches to fill the Pass’s main lakes and rivers before joining the ocean.
We spend the day calling each other’s attention to the same glacier from a fresh perspective—a different angle, under new light, in a cloud’s shadow. Its resplendent blues, even from thousands of feet away, put us on our knees. The sunkissed sections of pure glacial ice, cobalt luminous, are devoid of all air once trapped within. The resulting glow is a scattering of jewels fissuring down the glacial face. A fallen cape of blue lightning. It’s a peek at eons before. An artifact of between 20,000 and 100,000 years past. Glaciers are an acute reminder of human frailty. Of our utter inconsequentialness.
How quickly are these glaciers retreating? I wonder. It’s not until we are done and speaking with university glaciologists that we learn the alarming truth. The glaciers of Auyuittuk National Park are melting faster than ever—amounting to a loss of approximately fifteen meters per year. It won’t be long before they are gone forever.
To look at a glacier is to concurrently see and feel beauty and gloom. When I return to this trail, and return I will, every one of the glaciers I encounter on this year’s visit will have lessened considerably. Such immediate and visible evidence of eternal loss is a stark reminder of our own imminent vanishings. We are all receding. Running out of time. So take heed—because this evanescence is well worth embracing with abandon.
I reach a small creek and stop. I turn around to see Kent. He’s a speck in the distance. We’ve always walked at different paces, which may very well be an accurate metaphor for our lifestyles. Him, even-paced and steady, perhaps prone to apprehension. Me, reckless yet sure-footed, quick to choose and often alone. We move how we live. We live how we move.
A splash in a small waterway nabs my attention—it’s fish. A small school of large, grey fish, salmon-like, maybe a foot long, with spots running along their dorsal side. Kent arrives just as they start splashing again, spooked by us, then race back to the Owl. “Oh yeah, Arctic Char,” Kent says. “The northernmost fresh water fish on the planet. People come from all around the world to fish for them.” This is our second animal encounter today—the day began with a pair of lemmings. We’d accidentally set up camp atop their burrows. As we broke down our tents, they exited to give us a scolding.
Today, after enduring a morning of demanding tussocks and bogs, endlessly knee-deep in muddy marshes with treacherous ankle breakers, we head to the riverbank hoping to find a harder surface that might offer quicker, or at least somewhat easier miles. We only need to do 15k to keep pace with our schedule. Less, actually. But that distance in this quagmire is strenuous. We don’t want to cut corners, but we also aren’t out here trying to suffer any more than is necessary. Ot the solid edges of the Owl River we start making some actual headway.
A pair of Arctic seagulls takes turns dive bombing me. They swoop in one at a time, wings extended, and come to within maybe a dozen feet before cutting away sharply. When they lose interest and fly back to a rocky stoop, I secretly hope they’ll return. It doesn’t take long to feel intensely alone out here. The gulls offer proof there’s life beyond the repetitive squish of my shoes.
I feel a similar reassurance when I hear wild geese honking. Evidence of them is everywhere—I can’t take a step without seeing feathers or feces or footprints. But I only witness their gaggles from afar and they tend to clear out long before I am close. When they do, their calls fill the valley. They’re probably warning their cousins, Human approaching! Human approaching!, but I am nonetheless comforted by their choruses.
It’s amazing to think that these geese may be the same ones—like the exact same ones—I will see this winter hanging out at a local park back home. The same ones aggressing unsuspecting moms as they push babies in strollers. The same ones nipping and hissing at curious toddlers. Their annual migration is a miraculous feat of endurance. I walk and think of the first few lines of Mary Oliver’s namesake poem, “Wild Geese”:
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
There’s more to it, but this is the bit I’ve committed to memory. And like a call of my own, I move my lips to her lines as I step where wild geese just stepped. I marvel at their three-pronged prints, fresh and abundant in the wet sand. Their downy feathers caught here and there in the bog puddles and stalks of cotton grass.
They fly ahead and away. Southbound and racing, like us, from a gathering army of dark and heavy clouds creeping in from behind.
After only a few days of following a trail of our own making through marshy tundra, I’m already celebrating a few gear choices that are making their debut—waterproof socks and knee-high leg gaiters are keeping my feet bone dry.
A couple weeks before departing, I came across a fellow hiker’s Substack essay detailing a handful of not-to-be-overlooked items when backpacking in the (Alaskan) tundra. I immediately went shopping for waterproof socks and gaiters. The combo prevents me from having to endure the common hiker hassle of removing footwear to put on water shoes for river crossings. The decision to include these in my final inventory was a last minute (and untested) roll of the dice, something I’d generally advise against. But it’s a risk that pays off multiple times each day.
During our orientation in Qikiqtarquaq, I noticed a whiteboard note that commented on the ferocity of the Rundle River. “High levels,” it said. “Tough to cross.” I shrugged it off, knowing that a lot can change in a couple days. But given the recent warmish weather, I assume those concerning levels have only gotten higher. I consult the map and read a similar sentiment, “The Rundle River can be extremely dangerous. Consider crossing the Owl River downstream from the shelter.” It takes us a while to put it behind us, and when we knock it out we reward ourselves with extra snacks on the other side.
Years ago when I walked the Oregon Coast Trail, I foolishly crossed an ocean-bound river when it was chest high. I balanced my overloaded pack atop my head and prayed aloud as curious sea lions circled me. Miraculously, I made it across without incident, but by all rights I should not have.
The experience scarred me. It left me with a lingering trauma response to the feel of rushing water as it grows deeper, encapsulating my legs and hips. There’s a reason why Auyuittuk’s major river crossings all have a cache of extra gear on the opposite shore—because people eat shit all the time and subsequently lose their packs to the unforgiving rapids. As advised, I always undo my waist and chest belts before guinea pigging our crossings. I am ready for the worst. And though each crossing increases my confidence, the process of doing so is my least favorite part of this trip so far.
On day four we reach the trip's halfway point and encounter our first moraine—an accumulation of rock debris left behind by glaciers and ice sheets. The trail hereafter, as we understand it anyhow, is marked. Exactly how it’s marked remains unknown, but I look forward to not having to navigate an unknown landscape of tremendous obstacles. We anxiously await a well-worn single track path, or something like it.
This particular moraine is the mountainous remnant of the Highway Glacier. The map suggests we climb its massive pile of table-sized stones and negotiate its slips and cracks for five kilometers to Glacier Lake. We scout out the map’s dotted line, then blaze our own way along the bottom edge of the moraine, along the Owl’s headwaters. We reach a calf-taxing incline where windy gusts catch our packs like sails and the temperature plummets. Once at the top, we stop to regroup and take in the chilly view of Glacier Lake and beyond. Mount Asgard holds the backdrop. There’s no mistaking its ominous and seemingly unnatural flat top.
I’m sweating from exertion and chilled by the sudden temperature drop. I need more layers, and I dig into my pack to grab some. While doing so I realize my new pair of Bomber sunglasses is missing. “Goddammit!” I shout. I know exactly what happened.
As we crossed the dozen threads of the Owl, I put the sunglasses in my pants pocket rather than zip them in my fanny pack as I had been previously doing. More than anything I am bothered by the fact that I didn’t follow my own mantra, same place every time. Fact is, I had not even put on my sunglasses yet, wearing instead my prescription glasses so I can more fully witness the incredible scenery. But that’s not the point. I negated one of my basic tenets and thus sacrificed a piece of gear. “Motherfucker!” I shout as I berate myself. “You know better than this, Griffen!”
My flub up makes me worry that this is the beginning of more problems. A slippery slope. It’s cold, like really cold, and right now I’m having trouble warming up. The weather behind nears quickly and threatens to drop some serious weather on us. We’ve got a gnarly section ahead, and now I’ve gone and made a stupid decision. “Same place every time, man!” I bark. “You know better!” I have a sinking feeling our good luck is about to turn.
My mistake reminds me of my tendency to seek the easy way out. This terrifies me. I hope to god it doesn’t usher in the Arctic madness I’ve been expecting. But if it does, I suppose I’ll be as ready as I can be. Albeit without sunglasses, which shouldn’t be a big deal.
Seeing Mt. Asgard reminds me of first arriving in NC and mentioning to someone that we were headed for a camping trip to Pilot Mnt. She drew a picture of a mesa on a napkin and said,"That's what it looks like." I thought, "No way." Flat tops are memorable.
You “always undo your waist and chest belts” and then remind me to undo mine, because I never, ever remember!
I’m relying on your essays to remember the details Tom, because I couldn’t be bothered to write anything down myself.
Another lovely essay my friend.