In the Arctic, You Are Not Alone

When a herd of stampeding caribou reaches an oil pipeline in the Northwest Territories, the animals balk at the one-foot obstacle. Some run for miles parallel to the pipeline, others stands still, perplexed. Those who refuse to step over the pipeline are easy prey for the wolves; those not fortunate enough to be killed quickly, wither away until they are just carcasses. In the snow.

The Arctic has a peculiar sense of justice. For every storm in the dead of winter, there is a calm; for every predator, a victim. For the six month day, there is the six month night. Syd Justin knew that, but it didn't stop his stomach from fluttering with anticipation when the small notice in the Edmonton Sun caught his attention.

Northern Adventures, it simply read. Guides available for excursions in the Yukon and Northwest Territories.

Normally, Justin would sit and stare at his panoramic view of Edmonton, boomtown, the Houston of the North. Lately, however, he had become restless. He yearned for new vigor. The coat of snow over Edmonton made him listless.

Things like running a corporation should have excited him, but they didn't. Paunch occluded his once-athletic figure, but he always had a reason not to exercise. He remembered with distant fondness his summers in Ontario's north woods. The holiday season seemed a good time to return to nature.

***

"I want only the best guide you have," Justin told Agaguk, head of Northern Adventures Inc. "I'm willing to pay for it."

"We are all good," the Nanook Eskimo replied.

Justin then met Kamik, his guide for the six-day arctic trek.

"He is...he seems...young," Justin said.

Agakuk patiently reassured the "southern" oil executive. "He is a man."

***

On the third day of the week-long journey, which led Justin and his guide Kamik from the settlement of Nanook to the village of Hooka, a typical Christmastime squall blew off MacInnis Bay. Visibility shrunk to zero and the two men could hardly see each other.

Justin and Kamik agreed to stop for the day, and the Eskimo hastily set about building the evening's igloo. Justin opened the food pack, and hungrily chewed on a dried venison steak.

"Sir, we should not eat until later. It is only the afternoon. We will need strength tomorrow," Kamik said in his stilted accent.

The winds danced a frenetic circle around the two lone men, and Kamik had to yell just to be heard a yard away.

Justin was growing accustomed to the tasteless venison after three days in the wilds. In Edmonton he would respond to even the mildest reproach, would defend himself with the precise, piercing elocution that had become his trademark. In the Arctic, blinded by the snow, frozen to the marrow, quivering with hunger, he sheepishly heeded Kamik and stuffed the meat back into the backpack.

***

The next morning, stiff and parched from a night in Kamik's igloo, the two men braced the gelid winds and raging storm, and headed in the direction of Hooka.

Justin plodded forward, each step tortuously sinking into the soft snow. Only two more days, he told himself repeatedly. The communication between the two men was spare. Talking exacerbated the misery: not worth the energy. Energy is a valuable commodity in the Northwest Territories, Justin thought.

Once in a while, Justin wondered why he had embarked on such an impulsive venture. Not like him at all: maybe that was the point.

Justin asked himself why Kamik did this all the time, why he had painstakingly learned English, just to wander from checkpoint to checkpoint in the dismal, cursed Arctic. Probably because it was part of Kamik's Eskimo mentality, Justin decided, but the Edmonton man realized he would never fully understand.

***

The mercurial tempest continued during the fourth day, and the pair of solitary figures on the tundra landscape struggled forward, knees buckling with every step.

Snow seared the eyes, swelling them, making it an effort just to see. The boredom and the weight of every step exhausted him. For a moment, Justin thought he saw the sun. Then he saw sand.

Then he saw three black dots forming a curious triangle. After several strides, however, the dots did not disappear. They resolved themselves into a pair of jet-black eyes and a glistening nose. Polar bear.

Justin stopped dead. Kamik yelled, "It has the curse."

"What is the curse?" Justin muttered, and then in a blur, the statuesque bear hurled itself toward him, intent on the venison Justin carried and Justin noticed the foam spewing from the bear's prognathous jaws.

Then, a calm silence settled over the tundra. The rabid polar bear lay peacefully, harpoon through the throat, its guts coloring the bland snow. Justin kneeled, motionless. Kamik rubbed his arm violently in the snow, wailing in his native Eskimo dialect.

***

The Eskimo carefully extracted his harpoon from the animal's esophagus.

"I must go. The bear had the curse, and it ate my arm," Kamik said.

"But you can't leave me here alone," Justin screamed, his voice carried for miles by air currents.

"I must go," the Eskimo repeated, and turned in the direction of nearby MacInnis Bay, where he climbed aboard an ice floe, drifted off to sea, and rammed his harpoon through his belly.

***

All Justin saw on the horizon was a white-hot, white desert. Stranded, his food ravaged by the rabid bear, left without an igloo, he felt doomed. His fingers no longer functioned, his features were numb from the incessant cold.

Desperately, he pried open the dead animal's ripped skin, and plunged his hands into the bear's steamy entrails. He felt warm.

***

Crawling toward Hooka on Christmas day, Justin no longer wondered why he had ventured to the Arctic. He didn't hallucinate or talk to himself. He maintained an unreasonably rational state of mind. He thought of nothing but sustaining consciousness.

Finally, he could not go on. A good try, he reasoned, but I just can't go on. Oh well, everything works out for the best. The Arctic has a strange sense of justice, he thought.

Prone, his life rode the coattails of the evanescent, capricious winds. He looked up, eyes glazed, but not tearful. He noticed a strangely lantern-like light.

And in one last burst of passion, he picked himself up and sprinted. His legs churned through the thick snow, deliriously. The light blinded him. Out of breath, he collapsed to his knees, like Clark Gable begging forgiveness in San Francisco but not knowing whom to ask.

***

The Northern Adventures representative of the village of Hooka approached semi-conscious Syd Justin. "Are you all right, sir? We were worried about you."

The funeral of the timid caribou is uneventful. Snow blows gently over their carcasses, until they are buried. Such are the icons of the North: forgotten monuments to the time when all caribou will instinctively step over the pipelines.