To The Ice Cave!

Nunavut is a place in which the best laid plans can be completely derailed in the blink of an eye. Case in point: Brooke and I were supposed to head out to the floe edge tomorrow for a seal hunt but we just heart that both of the school's guides have taken ill and so our trip is cancelled.

We were also supposed to go to Bylot Island today to see the sand sculptures, but, after some discussion with Brooke's cooperating teacher and our on-the-land driver Anne, we determined that it was too cold for a trip of that length, so that plan went out the window.

However, other plans were afoot and we headed out this afternoon, a party of four snowmobiles and one kamotik, to find a cave in Beloeil Island.

Brooke and I, under the excellent guidance of Pat and Dave, bundled up in many layers. We were instructed to go wait outside before putting on the final layers -- the parkas, scarves, balaclavas, and seal skin mitts. My pre-out-on-the-land outfit (for the day's -34C):

Thanks for the snazzy photo, Kuukuluk! Arctic fashion.

After our crew arrived, zooming up to the beach in their fleet of skidoos, we finished bundling up and headed out. Anne had a kamotik all set up for us, replete with a caribou skin and a musk ox skin (so shaggy!). I may have fallen in rather than gracefully plunking myself in the wooden box, but there you go. True to form.

s

Our crew. We had not one but two rifles in our party. I'm in the green parka with the backpack and Brooke is to the right in the red.

You can see one rifle in the picture and our party had a second as well. And it's a good thing. Although we didn't run into any problems, we did find out, upon our return, that there had been a polar bear at the edge of town the night previously. The teacher who called and let us know had wondered if we'd seen it while on our trip because that would have been the direction the bear was heading in.

It was a funny thing for me to look at those rifles and think, phew, thank heavens, now I feel safe. Guns matter here. So does fur. I was wearing a down-filled parka with a coyote ruff, a rabbit hat, and seal skin mitts (pauluk), and we used the musk ox hide to cover our legs on the way back. These are things that are necessary to survive in the environment. And I was recalling, adorned in all my fur and at least somewhat safeguarded by the guns in our little snowmobile fleet, the last protest I saw before leaving Halifax, a group of folk outside of the Public Gardens decrying Canada Goose as Canadian shame because they use down and real fur trim. And while I agree that fur-for-fashion can be problematic (although I don't believe it's always wrong; traditionally-harvested seal skin, for example, can be sustainable, ethical, and supports continued Inuit hunting practices and cultural knowledge), I would happily invite those who make a blanket statement about the use of animal products to come to the Arctic and see how well synthetic products fare (hint: they result in hypothermia).

Okay. Enough about fur! Here is a closer look at our lovely ride.

Remarkably comfy -- except in the super bumpy bits.

Zoom zoom! That's Brooke on the left and me on the right.

On our way to Beloeil, we decided to face forwards and be wary of our face masks/scarves (guarding against any stray breezes that could lead to frostbite). But the wind meant constant readjustment, even with the windbreak, and that meant constant frost on our glasses and goggles. I was worried that facing backwards would make my stomach very unhappy indeed, but, on the way back, I gave it a try and found the trip to be much more enjoyable that way. Although it was still fun facing forwards!

Our trip there -- what I could see of it -- was entrancing. The mountains rushed by as we zipped across frozen ice and cut through sun and shadow, dwarfed by mountains that loomed impossibly large above us. When we arrived, I got to look at those giants, so often featured in my posts here, up close, to stand at their feet and stare up and up and up, and then out and out and out across the ice and toward the seemingly endless horizon. The mountains stood guard on either side, drawing the eye forward toward the point where the world seemed to drop away.

We could see the wind whipping around out there. Did the bear lurk behind the snowy veil?
(Bonus: Some of the gorgeous seal skin mitt Pat let me borrow to the left of the shot!)

Shadow of giants.

The face of the mountain.

We arrived and made our way to a cave I could not have known was there. We had to shimmy up a little slope and duck through the small mouth into the roughly spherical cave, with an interior that reminded me in shape of an igluvigak. It even had a back wall that was made entirely of ice and a ceiling covered in shards of ice crystals.

The hidden cave. You can see that the snow to the right has been shifted as we crawled up and slid back down. We ducked in just beyond the snowbank.

The way out. The rope never saw use -- easier to crawl awkwardly. Grace is not easy in huge mech-like boots and stiff mitts!

Crystals formed perhaps by all the passerbys who came in with steaming thermoses of tea and coffee?

Structures like this lined the entire ceiling of the space. It was incredibly beautiful -- an crystal cave.

We couldn't stay forever, of course, and after some hot beverages and talk and the quiet of simply taking the magnitude of this place in -- a tiny cave inside a huge mountain lined with minute crystals while the impossibly huge sky stretched out forever beyond the mouth of the cave -- we headed out.

Shannon, Jaclyn, me, and Brooke, against the backdrop of the ice wall. Thanks, Scott, for taking this picture! (Scott is, incidentally, one of the MSVU grads who also did the Nunavut practicum placement and he now works along with his partner Jaclyn at Nasivvik). 

All in all, Brooke and I were fairly pleased with ourselves. The longer we were out, the more comfortable we felt -- our gear worked, we weren't dying, and we were both having fun.

Can't complain!

We went back in the kamotik and zipped around the island and headed back up the coast. And, dear reader, because you have been so patient about reading my blog and looking at all of my photos, I took my hands out of my mitts to shoot you a video and to give you a little sample of what it's like to ride between mountains while being pulled by a snowmobile across sea ice and blanketed in musk ox fur. I promise that I will try my best to upload it soon, but it's a challenge here in the Arctic, where upload speeds are sad indeed. A new challenge for tomorrow!

The whole excursion took about two and a half hours but it seemed like it all happened in a flash. Words absolutely fail to impress the sheer magnificence of this landscape, the exhilaration of flashing by and beneath mountains, the sun lighting up the sky that magnificent blue while we flash across the ice.

We both came back with stupid grins on our faces, and I felt a kind of warm contentment not unlike spending a lazy Sunday afternoon basking in the sun -- except that, instead of being snuggled up on a couch, I'd been out on the land, to an ice cave, and riding in the back of a kamotik, bundled head to toe. The thrill of it, certainly underscored by a healthy respect for the cold, for the land, for the animals that roam it, is heady. It's new. It's humbling.

And, to top it off, the sunset tonight was magnificent.

Even when plans fall through here -- and I think this may be one of those things that I'll be able to carry with me into other areas of my life, one of those things that just matters as a thing you know and understand in your gut -- other things can happen that turn out to be better than what you'd planned. And, while I don't believe in grand plans or in metaphysical machinations, learning to accept what has happened, what reality is, with a shrug and an ayurnamat and being open to what happens instead is, I think, a more profound and more meaningful understanding to carry forward.

So, nope, there's no seal hunt tomorrow and I'm sad to be missing out on that trip to the floe edge, but I had a beautiful experience today -- one that was exhilarating and bright and lovely and problem-free.

Also, now I don't need to worry about peeing in the open Arctic in front of a gaggle of teenage boys. That is an experience I am very much open to not having.

Silver lining, right?