Conquering the Impossible (19 page)

When he took off his hood and showed me his face, his eyes buried in wrinkles, I was shocked.

“But … I know you!” he said.

“And I know you,” I replied in astonishment.

Simon was the very same Inuit who, a month before near Bell Bay, had guided me and given me a fish. We hadn't spent more than a few minutes together, but we greeted each other like old friends.

His smile could have melted the polar ice cap. With enthusiastic sign language, he examined my igloo and asked me how long it had taken to build it. I answered proudly, “About six hours!”

“Much too long,” he answered. “Next time die, if not faster.”

Johannessy finally joined us. He and Simon had brought me a new sleeping bag and a heavy caribou-skin parka, which I quickly put on.

By the time I had piled what remained of my supplies on Johannessy's sled, attached my sled to Simon's harness, and climbed up on the seat behind him, we were starting off again for Igloolik.

Stung by the icy wind and battered by clumps of snow in my face, I began to literally freeze as we motored over the ice. Even the two Inuit, seated as they were on the hot engines of their snowmobiles, were forced to stop every two hours and dance around their vehicles to keep from freezing.

They were in no more of a hurry on the way back than they had been on the way out. What with the stops for seal hunting, the stops to fix Johannessy's old, broken-down sled, and the breaks to stock up on iceberg ice, which was the best tea-brewing water available, it was clear that we were going to have to camp a second night before we got back to Igloolik. We spent the night three hours away from the village, in a fishing shack that was abandoned for winter. Simon, who had never stopped observing me since chance had brought us back together, peppered me with questions. His black eyes shone with excitement as I described the various experiences of my long march thus far.

In turn, I learned a bit about Simon. He was about fifty years old and had always lived in the ways of his ancestors, making his living—and filling his belly—by fishing and hunting alone. He was also an artist and craftsman. He sculpted animals in motion out of marble, ivory, and granite. He had even participated in international exhibitions of Inuit art, traveling to Austria, Russia, and elsewhere.

In the time it took to get back to Igloolik, a tiny village of two hundred, Simon and I had become fast friends. When he asked me where I planned to stay and I replied that I had no idea—especially because my papers and my money had all burned up in the fire—I already knew what he was going to say to me.

*   *   *

After I moved my things into Simon's house, he introduced me to his girlfriend and the child that they had adopted. Life here was pretty basic, but the house was heated and we had plenty of caribou and Arctic char to eat thanks to the hunting and fishing prowess of the master of the house.

A few days after my arrival, someone announced on the radio that he had killed three seals and two caribou, which was too much meat for his family alone. Instead of building up a reserve of food, this Inuit did what anyone in the community did whenever he or she had extra food—he invited anyone who wanted to share his bounty to drop by. Simon and his girlfriend brought an Arctic char to the feast. Sitting on the ground in a strange kitchen, in the midst of a group of Inuit whose sparse conversation amounted basically to the sound of chewing, I gobbled down the meat and raw fish and thought once again about how much civilizations can differ.

*   *   *

My stay in Igloolik coincided with the big, traditional Inuit festival held every year in honor of the sun, one week before the first sunrise of the year. To call it a sunrise may be overstating things. When the sun makes its first appearance after three months of darkness, it does nothing more than peep over the horizon for about five seconds. But that mere cameo is quite sufficient to trigger great public celebrations.

During the course of the elaborate ceremony that was held, the Inuit solemnly extinguished the sun of the previous year, symbolized by a seal-oil lamp with a cotton wick that had once been used to heat igloos. Then they lit a flame that represented the sun of the coming season, the sun of renewal.

This second sun also symbolized warmth and life flowing back into the bodies and souls worn down and left depressed by the interminable Arctic night. Those who endured the long winter often became depressed and, under the influence of alcohol, were sometimes rendered violent. Many suicides and killings resulted from cabin fever in the Far North, a violent neurosis triggered by the prolonged lack of sunlight and exacerbated by confinement.

I expelled these morbid thoughts from my mind when watching the spectacle of the traditional dances. The dance I witnessed that night had none of the flavor of the shows staged for tourists. This dance seemed to emerge straight from the mists of time; it was the absolute truth of a people whose spirit continues to burn like the age-old lamps burning in the igloos. The same igloos that the older residents still built and preserved in order to maintain ties to their roots, even if they, like everyone else, lived in prefab houses.

*   *   *

Cathy was supposed to have reached me by now with the supplies, but bad weather had grounded her plane for three days at Iqaluit, on Baffin Island, the administrative capital of Nunavut.

Once again I was stuck, unable to move. Simon, disturbed at the idea of seeing me waste precious time, decided to make the best of things by helping me complete my Arctic education.

“You learn to know bear!” he decreed when we found some tracks with claw marks near the village. He knew bears the way you might know members of your own family. He had killed an enormous bear once, and he often worked as a guide for hunters. In theory, polar bear hunting was illegal, but when the big beasts became too numerous in certain areas, then the local villages were each assigned a specific quota. Once these numbers were assigned, the Inuit had a choice. They could either hunt the bears themselves for their meat, lard, skins, and fur, or else they could sell their quotas—known as “tags”—to lucky hunters who have always dreamed of facing off with the biggest predator on the ice field. These tags often fetched prices equivalent to more than fifty thousand U.S. dollars.

“Look,” Simon commanded, “paw prints far apart, snow comes inside. Bear walk this way.” He started walking forward, swinging his posterior heavily from side to side, Baloo-style.

“Bear well fed,” he said, “not hungry. Fat, big bottom. Not dangerous.” He made a face that looked like the expression of the supposed bear with a contented snout and half-closed eyes, suggesting he was sleepy and ready for a nap. Then Simon changed his gait and his appearance, walking now with his legs rubbing each other and his bottom tucked in tight. Under his tanned leathery face, I could sense the quivering muzzle and the beast's fangs at the ready.

“Paw prints close together, not deep,” he said, “no snow inside. Bear skinny, hungry. Dangerous.” Now he stood on the tips of his toes, hands folded one over the other, depicting the bear's forepaws, muzzle pointing and eyes narrowed. I felt as if I could see the bear right in front of me.

“When bear like that, ears up,” he said, “he looking, sniffing, just curious. Not attack. But when he like this”—he stretched his neck toward me and stared at me, glaring ferociously—“dangerous!” His whole body shook. He snarled and ground his teeth. He cupped his hands to describe the flattened ears of the beast.

“He attack,” he said. “You die!” A shiver went through my body at the realistic performance. Simon leaned over the tracks and scraped carefully at the bottom of the prints.

“Bear pass by two days ago,” he said.

“How can you tell?” He showed me the interior of the paw prints, where the ice was covered with a fine layer of wind-blown snow. The wind had been blowing for exactly two days.

A little farther along we found other tracks, free of snow, showing that a bear had passed by barely an hour before.

If the bear prints follow a zigzag pattern, Simon also taught me, then they belong to a bear looking for food. When a bear is out hunting for food, he often returns along his tracks. Better not camp along his path! It's also best to avoid the shores of any large body of water, which is where bears go to hunt seals.

On the other hand, straight tracks means that the bear, with its exceptional sense of smell, has scented a prey—or perhaps a female bear in heat—as much as forty miles away, sometimes farther! The bear will plunge straight ahead and completely ignore the presence of humans along the way. You can sleep where you find this sort of track because there is little chance that the bear will retrace its steps.

“Female … very bad!” Simon declared. The female bears, he explained to me, give birth only once every three years. Following the birth, they become fat and dig themselves a burrow in the snow, where they take refuge, doing nothing other than suckling their infant. When they finally emerge from their burrows, skinny and ravenous, then they have to battle their male mate who will do his best to kill the cubs so that he can mate with the mother again.

It's fair to say that with all of this conflict and hunger, the females are in a bit of a mood, and it's better not to meet up with one.

All the same, Simon added, such encounters are sometimes unavoidable. When confronted with one, he recommended not to shout, not to slow down, to keep on going, swinging your arms as wide as possible and trying to look as big as you can. If the female bear shifts direction, you should do the same, trying your utmost to wind up face-to-face with her. She will sniff at you, and once she figures out that you aren't edible, she'll let you go by. At least in most cases. If hunger wins out, then she'll kill you for want of prey better suited to her dietary requirements. After all, polar bears are at the top of the food chain, and we humans are much lower down.

In order to give me every tool for avoiding a face-to-face encounter with a bear, Simon also taught me to recognize the tracks of the Arctic fox. When you see those tracks, it means that a bear isn't far away because the foxes can scent the presence of seals on the edges of waterholes, and they feed on the remains abandoned by the polar bears. Ravens find this same banquet equally attractive, so if you see birds of prey circling in the sky, you can be certain that there is a bear nearby.

Last, Simon taught me to examine the stool left by bears. If the excrement contains hair (usually seal hair), it means that the animal has eaten and is therefore not a threat.

As for wolves, Simon went on, they fall into two categories. Solitary wolves with thick pelts have their own territory and their own family. They are only rarely hostile to humans. The wolf pack, on the other hand, can kill and devour anything it encounters and is much to be feared. Even when they are not in the pack, the individual wolves that make up a pack can be identified by their fur, which is usually rubbed away along their flanks because the pack tends to move in a close cluster, and the wolves rub against one other in order to stay warm. The wolf packs have their advance scouts that run ahead to sniff out potential prey. They come ahead of the others, and then the pack will circle around you for a while before rushing in for the kill. There is only one thing to do in this case, Simon warned me. Shoot.

He saved the best for last. The wolverine is the most ferocious animal in the Arctic. This squat, brown-and-yellow carnivore, almost never more than three feet in length, feeds on the carcasses left behind by wolves and bears but will also eat anything it can kill. It is as strong as it is aggressive, and it is considered the pit bull of the ice because it is impossible to get a wolverine to release its grip. It is known to attack elk and reindeer, but it also said that some wolverines have even killed bears.

*   *   *

The second phase of my apprenticeship with Simon was learning to build igloos.

“To survive in worst cold,” Simon explained, “absolutely must finish igloo in twenty minutes. You say nothing, watch.” He walked over to a long pile of snow pushed up by the wind behind a block of ice. That is “igloo snow,” he said. He checked its consistency by probing it with his harpoon. The snow should be uniform, all in one block, and especially not in layers, otherwise the bricks will break when you cut them. When he finally found snow with the ideal level of compactness, he signaled me to draw closer, and he put my hand on his harpoon so that I could feel for myself the delicate balance between softness and strength.

“You see,” he said, “this snow here what you need find.” I could see perfectly. I was as excited as a little boy at this new discovery, which I already knew was going to transform my life—or at least my life in the next few months. I imagined myself building igloos as fast as I could pitch my tent.

With a shovel, Simon dug the beginning of a trench in the snowy ridge. Then, crouching on his knees in the trench, he began to cut out building blocks with a long wood saw, giving them beveled edges for a better grip. He continued cutting as he moved forward. The trench grew longer and wider and curved as the snow inside it was transformed into building blocks about two feet in length but never more than four inches thick. About eight of these blocks together created a platform on the floor where a person could lie down. Simon lined up the large blocks of snow along the edges of the trench as if he were laying bricks. Since the trench was already about three feet deep and the construction rose all around it, it was increasingly protected from the elements. Simon kept making blocks out of compacted snow, taking them from beneath the first line of blocks (that is to say, from the interior of the igloo-to-be). He gave them a trapezoidal shape, so that, once they were laid in place, they would lean toward the center and be pressed together, keeping the structure from collapsing in the middle. He arranged the blocks in a spiral, calculating that the quantity of compacted snow remaining on the interior of the igloo would be enough to complete its construction, and he ran out of snow just as he was laying the last brick.