The Land That Never Melts
THE far North has always fascinated me. Even as a young boy growing up in Gold Beach, Oregon, U.S.A., I used to pore over maps of Canada and dream of one day exploring places with exotic-sounding names, such as Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake. So one day in 1987, my friend Wayne and I began plans to visit Auyuittuq National Park, Canada’s first national park north of the Arctic Circle.
Auyuittuq, in the Inuit language, means “The Land That Never Melts,” and the park was set aside to preserve an Arctic wilderness of jagged mountain peaks, deep valleys, spectacular fjords, and marine coastal wildlife. The park includes the Penny Ice Cap, a vast 2,200-square-mile [5,700 sq km] mantle of ice and snow drained on all sides by glaciers. No wonder Auyuittuq is affectionately referred to as the “Switzerland of the Arctic.”
Baffin Island, about a thousand miles [1,600 km] long, is the fifth largest island in the world. Yet, none of our friends had ever heard of it! In fact, they kept asking, “When are you going to Alaska?” (Baffin Island is some 2,000 miles [3,200 km] east of Alaska but at about the same latitude.) Although Jehovah’s Witnesses from Canada have spearheaded the evangelizing work on Baffin Island, no Witnesses live on the island. In fact, the nearest congregation is 600 miles [1,000 km] away, in Labrador City, Newfoundland.
Auyuittuq has three months of summer and nine months of winter, so we decided to go in August 1988, after the breakup of the ocean ice and after most of the biting black flies are gone. This is also before the September snows begin.
Our Journey to Baffin Island
Finally the time arrived. We traveled by automobile from our home in North Carolina to Montreal, Quebec, where we boarded a Boeing 737 airliner. After an hour in the air, the clouds dissipated, giving us a clear view of the Canadian Shield, a barren-looking rocky area with hundreds of lakes of all shapes and sizes and no trees of any size. Following a quick stop at Kuujjuaq (formerly Fort-Chimo), we began to see snow right down to sea level. Soon we passed over Ungava Bay, which, to our surprise, was choked with innumerable icebergs as far as the eye could see.
After a flight of nearly three hours, we landed at Iqaluit, which means “Place of Fish.” Formerly called Frobisher Bay, Iqaluit is the nerve center of Baffin Island and the largest town, with a population of about 3,000.
With a couple of hours between flights, we decided to explore the town. The first thing we noticed was the abundance of cotton grass, with its puffy white flowers, which the Inuit (formerly called Eskimo) pick and dry and use like cotton balls. As we strolled down to the harbor and right up to the edge of the water, we noticed that the tide was going out rapidly. Within the first two minutes, 20 feet [6 m] of beach was exposed, drained dry!
A short time later, we boarded a small prop-driven plane to fly to Pangnirtung, just below the Arctic Circle. The one-hour flight gave us previews of coming attractions. Through the patchy, dark clouds, we kept getting glimpses of a raw wilderness with great expanses of snow, rocks, and water. Everything looked cold and murky. And the final approach to “Pang” just added to that image. Below the ceiling of dark clouds, the plane circled over a deep fjord surrounded by snow-covered mountain cliffs before touching down on a gravel runway.
Mistaken Ideas
It was raining in “Pang,” so we took shelter under the wing of the plane, waiting for our backpacks with all our food and gear and a suitcase full of Bible literature. When the cargo hold was emptied, there was no sign of our things. Inside the tiny terminal building, we were told that it would probably come on the next plane, due to arrive in two hours. At least we had our tent with us, so we set out on foot to find the campground to pitch our tent. We took refuge from the rain in a small store near the campground and talked to the girl operating the store about the town and its people.
She cleared up some of our mistaken impressions. First, since the town had a population of a thousand, we figured that there ought to be more than 300 homes. In fact, there are only about 180 homes. Most supplies come in by air, right? No. You’ve heard the expression “When my ship comes in”? Well, their ship comes in once a year—four ships, actually. One for the Hudson Bay Company, the general store of the North; one with construction materials; one with oil and gasoline; and one with merchandise for all the other stores, including all the canned food for the year. Of course, perishables come by air.
Night Never Came
After our baggage finally arrived, we made camp and cooked dinner, all in the rain. One backpacking-trip guide told us he had been there for three months and had seen nine sunny days! It turned out to be warmer than expected—about 50 degrees Fahrenheit [10° C.], day and night.
However, night never arrived; daylight reigned the whole time we were there. We found we could take photographs by natural light at one in the morning. But how could we sleep if it was always light? Well, it was cool enough to don wool hats, even to sleep in; so on turning out the lights, we just pulled our hats over our eyes.
One night at three o’clock, I was aroused by a bright light coming from the north. I was puzzled. In the Northern Hemisphere, the sun rises in the east, is south at noon, and sets in the west, but it never appears in the north. Then I realized that we were at the top of the world, and in the summer in the middle of the night, the sun does indeed shine from the north. It took a while to get used to that.
Would the Inuit Welcome Us?
Nearly all the homes in Pangnirtung are tied to the ground with heavy cables for security in the fierce winds. Most families have snowmobiles for transportation in the winter and small three- or four-wheel all-terrain vehicles for the summer. And there are a few automobiles, even though the town has only about two miles [3 km] of roads! Since the town is situated on a little flat area next to the fjord and is surrounded by high mountain cliffs, there is nowhere else to drive.
A major portion of each family’s food is supplied by hunting barren-ground caribou and ring seal, as well as fishing for arctic char. In Iqaluit we got to try caribouburger, musk-oxburger, and even a little muktuk, or whale skin with blubber attached. Unlike beef fat, whale fat does not have a greasy taste, even when cold, and we were told that it contains some protein.
In the entire town, we found only a handful of people who had ever heard of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they were not natives. They had moved in from other areas. Thus, the big question in our minds was, How would these northern people respond to the Kingdom message? It didn’t take long to find out. Almost everyone we met accepted Bible literature. In fact, each day I called on 45 homes, and each day only three persons said, “I’m not interested.”
As we began knocking on doors the first day, a young man dashed past us into the house we were visiting and said: “Don’t knock. Just walk in. That’s what everyone does here.” So we followed the young man’s advice, sheepishly opening the outside door, stepping inside to the second door, which was usually open, and calling out to the people inside. The inhabitants, nearly all Inuit, would at first be suspicious. But by smiling in a friendly way, immediately identifying ourselves, and showing the beautiful illustrations in My Book of Bible Stories, we quickly allayed their fears and aroused their interest. Showing them a picture of a child playing with a lion and speaking of the day when even the polar bears would be tame and peaceable and food would not be so expensive appealed to them.
After calling at all the homes in the village, we spent six days backpacking in Auyuittuq National Park, a wonderland of snow, ice, glaciers, rocky peaks, and waterfalls.
As our plane lifted off from Pangnirtung and circled south out over the fjord, we thanked Jehovah God for the opportunity to visit this isolated territory. Even to this day, our minds race back to those friendly Inuit who were so receptive to Bible truth, in the land that never melts.—Contributed.
[Pictures on page 16, 17]
Cotton grass. Thor Peak, Baffin Island, in the background soars 5,000 feet [1,500 m] above the valley floor
Far right: Firm footing is needed to cross an ice-cold river
Far bottom right: Boats stranded at low tide at Pangnirtung
Right: Inuit girl clutches her precious “Bible Stories” book