LYUBOV ORLOVA, CUMBERLAND SOUND, NUNAVUT — Resolution Island is a collection of three-billion-year-old rock plunked into the sea just off the coast of Baffin Island. So it’s remote. Going east, the next stop is Greenland. As our ship pulled into Acadia Cove on the island’s southern coast yesterday afternoon, we could just make out some white markings on the granite cliffs. Fred Roots, the all-knowing geologist on board, had spent the morning talking about rock formations, so I was eager to investigate further. As we got nearer, the thin markings began to look more familiar, until they finally took on a clear form: the words “MOON MAN MARTINEZ” carefully printed in foot-high capital letters, possibly the work of some poor soldier in the Canadian military bored out of his skull while stationed at the base nearby. Graffiti in the arctic: a testament to the humankind’s indomitable spirit.
In any case, Martinez the Vandal wasn’t wrong: the place looks like it’s from another world, with sheer rock faces rising out of a grey, soupy sea and none of the obvious signifiers of life familiar to southerners like me. As we made our way further inland three polar bears appeared off the starboard side on rocks in the distance – a mother and two cubs, according to the various wildlife experts onboard. Before we could get close, they took off up the steep face of the rock and disappeared behind a ridge.
Reading adventure stories about of northern exploration, seeing things like polar bears and icebergs, it’s easy to get swept up into a romanticized vision of the arctic – “the arctic sublime”, a barren, undiscovered country both beautiful and terrifying! Aboard the Lyubov Orlova, we’re constantly being prodded not to fall into this way of thinking. Myths always come at the expense of reality, and the north is a real, complex place that faces some serious questions in the coming years.
But, the truth is, the arctic is incredibly remote! It is beautiful and terrifying! There are polar bears everywhere! And it is, in many ways, undiscovered. Throughout the trip, Garry Donaldson, a researcher with the Canadian Wildlife Service, has spent nearly all his time on the bridge, carefully cataloguing the birds that fly through the 300 metre by 300 metre window of sky in front of him. He says that this region has only been surveyed five or six times. The gaps in the most basic research about this country’s north are enormous. Garry’s data is just a tiny part of the mass of research that needs to be done to get beyond arctic myth and towards a better understanding of the reality.
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