The Art of the Wild

Cornwallis Island- Canadian Arctic- Latitude 74.42N   Longitude 94.50W

The short polar summer is over. The temperature is in the high twenties, and snow squalls blanket the barren beige desert hillsides with a skim of white frosting. The pack ice has blown in from offshore and large floes fill the harbor. The sky is dark and foreboding, and Resolute is living up to its Inuit name, Qausuittuq, “the place with no dawn.” Above the gravel beach, the whalebone structures of an ancient Thule culture settlement dating back a thousand years add to the sense that we have entered a wrinkle in space-time.

Moreover, whenever I land in Resolute I feel that I have disembarked at the literal end of the earth. And that’s essentially true –only Grise Fiord on Ellesmere Island is a more northerly inhabited place. Resolute, with a population of roughly 230, is a tiny collection of prefabricated buildings and dwellings resting upon the barren gravel of the high polar desert. In many ways Resolute looks more like a lunar outpost than a village. Oh, and it’s also one of the coldest inhabited places on earth, with an average yearly temperature of 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

For a tiny community, Resolute has a fascinating history. Named after HMS Resolute, a British Navy warship that participated in an 1852 expedition to find the lost Franklin Expedition, Resolute was founded in 1947 as a military airfield and weather station during the early years of the Cold War. In August 1953, several Inuit families from Inukjuak in Nunavik (northern Quebec) were moved 1,300 miles north to Resolute where they were promised better living and hunting conditions. The reasons for the relocation have been disputed, however, with the government stating that the families volunteered to move; whereas the Inuit claim the relocation was forced and was motivated by the government’s desire to reinforce Canadian sovereignty in the High Arctic by creating human settlements in the region.

Due to it’s strategic location, Resolute continues to be critical to Canada’s efforts to assert national sovereignty over the High Arctic islands and waterways that we have been traveling through. On August 10, 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the construction of a new army training center at Resolute. A statement issued by the Prime Minister says, “The Training Centre will be a year-round multi-purpose facility supporting Arctic training and operations, accommodating up to 100 personnel. Training equipment and vehicles stationed at the site will also provide an increased capability and faster response time in support of regional military or civilian emergency operations.”

From here the Orlova will retrace our journey as she heads south. I will board a plane here in Resolute and begin the long trip home. As I hop on a vehicle for the short bumpy ride to the airfield, I watch as a mother polar bear and her cub wander over the gravel hills and stroll right into town, where they are eventually chased away by Inuit on four-wheelers. The bears may be a nuisance for the locals, but I appreciate them coming to say goodbye after such an adventurous and eventful journey.

For the last several years, Stephen Gorman has been artist-in-residence for Cruise North Expeditions, an educational and adventure travel company owned and operated by the Inuit of Canada’s Arctic. To learn more please visit http://www.cruisenorthexpeditions.com/

Somerset Island –Canadian Arctic –Latitude 73.15N   Longitude 93.30W

Not for the first time, when we arrive at Fury Beach we find our landing site already occupied, this time by a polar bear jealously guarding a killed seal. Lying atop the carcass, he glares defiantly at our scouting party as we approach in a zodiac, and then he turns his attention back to his meal. We decide to look for another landing spot some distance away up the beach.

Fury Beach is one of those virtually inaccessible historic places that I have read about for years and longed to visit. In 1824 Captain Sir William Edward Parry commanded HMS Fury on his third voyage to find the Northwest Passage. Accompanied by HMS Hecla, Fury sailed into Lancaster Sound, where the ice eventually caught both ships, forcing the crews to spend a horrific winter in the perpetual darkness at 70 below zero. The next summer when the ice broke up, the two ships sailed down Prince Regent Inlet off the east coast of Somerset Island into waters never before navigated by Europeans. Late in July, disaster struck again when Fury was forced up onto a narrow beach by the ice.

Parry ordered Fury to be abandoned. The crew salvaged what they could, caching tons of supplies on newly named Fury Beach before sailing back to England aboard Hecla on August 25, 1825. It was a wise and prescient move on Parry’s part, as we shall see.

In 1829 an expedition led by Captain Sir John Ross stopped at Fury Beach and found the supplies intact. And then, in 1832, when Ross suffered his own disaster and was forced by the ice to abandon his ship, Victory, he and his and crew retreated on foot to Fury Beach where they knew they would find what they needed to make it through the winter. There they survived on Fury’s cached supplies, and they built a shelter they grandly called Somerset House made of wood and sails salvaged from Fury’s wreck. The next year they repaired Fury’s lifeboats and sailed into Lancaster Sound where a passing whaler rescued them. To Ross’ great surprise and delight, the whaling ship, Isabella, had been Ross’ flagship on his first Arctic expedition in 1818.

For the last several years, Stephen Gorman has been artist-in-residence for Cruise North Expeditions, an educational and adventure travel company owned and operated by the Inuit of Canada’s Arctic. To learn more please visit http://www.cruisenorthexpeditions.com/

Passage Between Somerset Island and Boothia Peninsula- Canadian Arctic– Latitude 72.00N Longitude 94.00W

The next challenge of the Northwest Passage lies to the west of Gjoa Haven: the narrow, shallow waterway called Simpson Strait separating King William Island from the Adelaide Peninsula on the North American mainland. It leads from our current position west to Queen Maud Gulf.

The strait is only 40 miles long and a mere two to ten miles wide, and yet, along with the narrow choke points we have already navigated, Simpson Strait is one of the make-or-break sections of the Northwest Passage. The good news is that I can see no ice in that direction. Perhaps we can slip through, the way we did through Franklin Strait and Rae Strait and all of the other narrow slots.

But news comes from the bridge that, although we can see no ice to our front, satellites high overhead can. This is what they see:

Our plan to head west and then return via a circumnavigation of King William Island is foiled. Victoria Strait between King William Island and Victoria Island is impassable due to ice. Should we attempt it, the Orlova would probably suffer the same fate as Sir John Franklin’s ships Erebus and Terror, for it was here that they were finally abandoned and then crushed in the ice.

Also, note how the Parry Channel is completely blocked by ice. Parry Channel through McLure Strait is the much-discussed “commercially viable Northwest Passage,” the sea route across the top of the world that is supposedly now reliably open for business. But as the satellite image shows, there is no commercial shipping route through the Arctic this year.

The captain of the Sir Wilfred Laurier politely suggests that, as the season is advancing and the ice can close in at any time, we might be well advised to accompany him back through Rae Strait and Franklin Strait or risk getting trapped. And so, with our icebreaker friend scouting the route for us, we about-face and start heading back the way we came. But with the change in plan there is a special opportunity waiting for us –the chance to make the passage through historic Bellot Strait, the narrow, steep-sided channel separating Somerset Island to the North and the northernmost point of the North American continent –Murchison Promontory on the Boothia Peninsula.

Captain William Kennedy became the first to sight Bellot Strait in 1852 while searching for the lost Franklin expedition. He named it after his friend and fellow explorer Joseph Rene Bellot, a young Frenchman who accompanied Kennedy on the search for Franklin. The strait was first crossed by the Hudson’s Bay Company ship Aklavik in 1937.

Bellot Strait is a navigational challenge, for the current runs at 8 knots and is funneled between mountainous cliffs rising from 1,500-2,500 feet. To make it even more interesting, small icebergs –growlers and bergy bits—ride down the swift current towards us. Our captain deftly maneuvers the ship to avoid them.

But as if to mark our passage through the 18-mile-long, one-half-mile –wide channel, polar bears appear on the cliffs every few miles. There are lone males and females with cubs. Before we have finished the transit we spot a dozen bears and are certain we missed a few along the way.

For the last several years, Stephen Gorman has been artist-in-residence for Cruise North Expeditions, an educational and adventure travel company owned and operated by the Inuit of Canada’s Arctic. To learn more please visit http://www.cruisenorthexpeditions.com/

King William Island– Canadian Arctic– Latitude 68. 37 N   Longitude 95. 51 W

“I see the finest little harbor in the world!”

Those were the delighted words of Godfred Hansen, one of the six crewmen who accompanied Roald Amundsen on his 1903-1906 transit of the Northwest Passage. Their little ship, the Gjoa, had just come through the perils of Franklin Strait, James Ross Strait, and Rae Strait. On several occasions the expedition had come within a hair’s-breadth of sinking the Gjoa on the treacherous shoals.

The way to the west through Simpson Strait was clear; he could have made the Passage in one season. But Amundsen wanted to build an observatory and conduct scientific studies such as locating the North Magnetic Pole, which was known to be somewhere in the vicinity of King William Island. And so the game but battered Gjoa limped in to the finest little harbor in the world, a place Amundsen called Gjoa Haven. He planned to spend the winter here and resume the Passage the following summer.

When the ice failed to break up the next summer, and then again the summer after that, Amundsen took advantage of his enforced stay by spending as much time as possible with the Inuit inhabitants of the region, the Netsilik. The Gjoa had barely dropped anchor before the Netsilik arrived to marvel at the mysterious strangers, and they quickly established a camp at Gjoa Haven.

The reserved Norwegian and the gregarious Netsilik soon became fast friends, and for the next two years he was their studious pupil. At first he was so clumsy and inept, the Netsilik laughed at him until they cried. But to his credit, Amundsen laughed with them. Swallowing his pride, he rejected Victorian Era notions of European superiority. He knew that the Netsilik could teach him how to thrive in polar environments, and he pressed them for knowledge and skills. The Netsilik rewarded his curiosity with a Doctoral program in Arctic survival. From them he learned how to build igloos, how to paddle a kayak, how to dress warmly with caribou skin garments that warded off the ferocious cold, and how to drive a dog sled.

Just as importantly, the Netsilik taught Amundsen the virtues of patience and humility in the face of the Arctic environment. If a winter storm blew for days and the thermometer hovered at 70 below zero, Amundsen learned to wait it out rather than press on in the European fashion where sacrificing life and limb was considered heroic. The lessons he absorbed from the Netsilik at Gjoa Haven during those eighteen months were the key to his successful expedition to be the first to reach the South Pole, a stunning feat that he accomplished several years later.

The Gjoa sailed on to the west in the summer of 1905, but the Netsilik remained in the area, visiting the Hudson Bay Company post established there in 1925, and then settling more permanently during and after the Second World War.

Today as I visit Gjoa Haven, the Netsilik are as gregarious as ever. Little children run up to greet me; teens and adults smile and wave as they roar past on their four-wheelers; random people stop me in the dusty street and in the Northern store to talk.

Some people tell me stories about hunting polar bear and caribou. One hunter shows me something fascinating. Draped out to dry behind his house is the hide of a full-grown grizzly bear. Here in the High Arctic, well beyond the northernmost part of the North American continent, is the pelt of an animal I associate more with Yellowstone and Glacier National Park, not the polar regions. I wonder if the grizzly is adopting the ice-based seal hunting techniques of the polar bear. Is history repeating itself? The polar bear evolved from the grizzly thousands of years ago.

As with Amundsen, I feel there there is much for me to learn here, and I too wish that I had much more time to spend in the company of the Netsilik.

For the last several years, Stephen Gorman has been artist-in-residence for Cruise North Expeditions, an educational and adventure travel company owned and operated by the Inuit of Canada’s Arctic. To learn more please visit http://www.cruisenorthexpeditions.com/

Off Prince of Wales Island– Canadian Arctic– Latitude 71.12 N   Longitude 97.02 W

“CRUNCH.”

“CRASH.”

“BOOM.”

The concussions are becoming louder and more frequent as the Orlova sails deeper into the ice of Franklin Strait off the west coast of the Boothia Peninsula. Each time we hit a bergy bit or a growler, the entire ship shudders from the impact. Ahead, as far as I can see from the bridge, the ocean is a mass of solid ice. It looks like our progress through the Northwest Passage is coming to an abrupt end.

We wouldn’t be the first to be turned away at this point of the Passage. The vicinity of Peel Sound and Franklin Strait is a notorious ice funnel. Like sheep herded into a pen by a border collie, the ice here is guided into this corner of the Arctic Archipelago by the strong currents and the prevailing winds. Indeed, Leopold M’Clintock, the British officer who discovered so much of the High Arctic in the mid-19^th century, warned that this vicinity was navigable “no more than once in every four or five years.”

Our plan all along has been to follow the route pioneered by the great Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen when he became the first to navigate the Northwest Passage from east to west in 1903-1906. In his little wooden sloop, the Gjoa, he was determined to go where the four-hundred-ton British Navy warships could not –down Peel Sound and Franklin Strait, and then through the narrows on the east and south sides of King William Island. With his little vessel and its 13 horsepower auxiliary engine, he would deftly thread his way through the maze of islands, constricted passageways, and dangerous shoals.

He succeeded. In 1903, Amundsen found open water and smooth sailing where in 2009 we confront impassable ice. So much for a thawing Northwest Passage. Amundsen passed this critical choke point and continued on to the southeast side of King William Island; there in mid-September he found a protected harbor he named Gjoa Haven where he decided to over-winter.

The Orlova is a tough old ship, with a reinforced, ice-hardened hull rated to push through roughly five-tenths ice coverage. What we need now is an icebreaker to open a path for us, and incredibly, we have one. The Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Sir Wilfred Laurier radios our expedition leader, Shoshanna Jacobs, that it is in our vicinity dropping off a scientific research team. The captain says the Laurier will rendezvous with us tonight to guide us through the ice barrier.

Sure enough, at the appointed hour and place, a powerful vessel flying the red maple leaf flag of Canada joins us at the edge of the floes. And then it turns about and proceeds to break a path for us through the tightly packed flows. Talk about your tax dollars at work, I joke with my Canadian friends. Now this is government service! As if to join in the fortuitous event, a mother polar bear and her two cubs follow our progress through the pack from a few hundred yards away.

For the last several years, Stephen Gorman has been artist-in-residence for Cruise North Expeditions, an educational and adventure travel company owned and operated by the Inuit of Canada’s Arctic. To learn more please visit http://www.cruisenorthexpeditions.com/

Barrow Strait– Canadian Arctic– Latitude 74.42 N   Longitude 91.55 W

The sun shines around the clock now, and the night sky is arrayed with delicate pastel shades of purples and blues. The landscape has also changed with our rising latitudes, growing drier by the mile the farther north we go. We have entered the Polar Desert, where the tallest vegetation is the occasional lichen, and where the terraced bluffs, buttes, and mesas look exactly like the American Southwest. One rock formation reminds me of the Kaiparowits Plateau in Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. Sailing right alongside the south coast of Devon Island –the largest uninhabited island on earth– I am continually struck by the landscape’s resemblance to Lake Powell in Arizona, minus the houseboats.

When we exited Navy Board Inlet, the strait separating Bylot Island from northern Baffin Island’s Brodeur Peninsula, we set across Lancaster Sound and Parry Channel. Go ahead and open an atlas, and you’ll see that Parry Channel looks like the obvious route across the top of the world –the clear Northwest Passage– because on the map it appears as a wide-open navigable route across the Arctic from east to west, from Greenland to Alaska. But unfortunately for generations of mariners and merchants, the western portion of Parry Channel is reliably locked in perpetual ice, and it is essentially impassable to ships.

Once we crossed to the north side of Parry Channel we were deep into the High Arctic. Summer is so brief on the northern side that Arctic hares don’t even bother to change their coats from winter white to summer brown –the season is too short to bother with the makeover. And, despite the clear blue skies and brilliant sunshine we have enjoyed the last few days, winter can arrive at any time, as all travelers and explorers here eventually discover.

At the southwest corner of Devon Island, we pass through a narrow entrance guarded by high terraced mesas, and then we enter a beautiful harbor with a sweeping fishhook of a gravel beach, guarded at its eastern end by a polar bear wandering the shoreline about a mile away. This is Erebus Harbor, named for Sir John Franklin’s ship Erebus, and we are at Beechey Island. If the Arctic has a most sacred place, this is it. This is the most storied spot in the history of the Northwest Passage. This is where the mystery begins.

Beechey is the crossroads of the Arctic, the switching yard for the main high Arctic sea routes. From here Parry Channel leads east and west; Wellington Channel north; and both Peel Sound and Prince Regent Inlet to the south. It is also the last known position of the lost Franklin Expedition. Before Franklin set sail, Sir John Ross had urged him to “put a notice in the cairn where you winter, if you do proceed which of the routes you take.” No such notice has ever been found, and for years search parties could only guess which of these labyrinthine routes the explorers took before vanishing.

I check to make sure that the polar bear sentry is staying put, and then I walk up the beach from the water’s edge, right up under the rim of a high rocky cliff, my eyes fixed upon a strange and incongruous sight. Four weathered headstones stand in a row marking four graves mounded with stones. Two more stone mounds not marked by headstones lie in line with the others. Six graves then, each one resting deep in the permafrost buried under the silent desert stones.

With great fanfare, Sir John Franklin set out from London on May 19, 1845 to lead a Royal Navy expedition through the Northwest Passage. He vowed to solve the riddle of the passage once and for all. On July 26, 1845 a whaling vessel passed Franklin’s ships Erebus and Terror in Baffin Bay. They were never seen again.

We know from a note later discovered in a rock cairn on King William Island that in the winter of 1845-46, Franklin froze his ships into the ice of Erebus Bay and wintered here at Beechey Island, where three of his sailors succumbed to scurvy and lead poisoning from the improperly sealed canned food the expedition was experimenting with (the lead solder sealing the tins was placed on the inside where it contaminated the contents. Many of these tins, as well as iron barrel hoops, wooden staves, and many other artifacts from that era remain scattered on the shores of Beechey Island). Another sailor who died on a subsequent search and rescue mission lies in the fourth marked grave. No one knows who occupies the fifth and six unmarked graves.

The bodies of Franklin’s sailors were exhumed and autopsied in the mid-1980s. Literally frozen in time, over the years the sailors were perfectly preserved by the permafrost. The photographs from the autopsies are startling. When you look at them you see British sailors from a century and a half ago staring right back at you. After cause of death was determined, the sailors were re-interred, and there they remain to this day.

For the last several years, Stephen Gorman has been artist-in-residence for Cruise North Expeditions, an educational and adventure travel company owned and operated by the Inuit of Canada’s Arctic. To learn more please visit http://www.cruisenorthexpeditions.com/

Baffin Bay– Canadian Arctic– Latitude 72.37N   Longitude 75.21W

The days grow longer as we head north and west; it’s as if we are running away from the night. At ten, and even eleven, o’clock I am still at the portside rail, watching the glaciated, snowcapped peaks go by.

We see no other ships, but there is plenty of traffic in these waters, and we keep a sharp lookout to avoid collisions. An endless convoy of giant icebergs calved from the western glaciers of the Greenland icecap sail past us on the Canadian Current, headed down to the Labrador Sea.

Imposing and magnificent, they come bearing down upon us like aircraft carriers, demanding the right of way. Some look like mountain ranges, others like castles. I heard someone compare an especially grand iceberg to the Potala Palace in Tibet. And as large as they are, we are seeing merely the tip, for up to nine-tenths of the iceberg is beneath the surface. As we pass abreast, I listen to the surf crash against their sides, and watch the waves wash over their base, carving windows and portholes and caverns in the solid ice.

The icebergs come in several distinct shapes and sizes, each of which is described with an official name. They are “tabular,” “blocky,” “wedged,” “domed,” and “pinnacled.” Some of my favorites are the “dry-docked” icebergs, so called because they have been eroded in such a way that a U-shaped notch, or valley, is formed at the water level, leaving twin pinnacles reaching into the sky. It isn’t uncommon to mistake distant dry-docked icebergs for two-masted sailboats. Often “bergy bits” –smaller chunks of glacial ice measuring up to fifteen feet high and 50 feet long– escort the icebergs. These in turn are often accompanied by “growlers” –pieces of ice the size of a car or even smaller.

Today has been stormy, with dark skies and high seas. Late in the evening around eleven, the storm passes, and the long, low-angled rays of sun pierce through rents in the roiling clouds. As we make the sharp turn to the west into Eclipse Sound –the passage between the Borden Peninsula at the northern tip of Baffin Island and Bylot Island– we take our leave of the southbound ice traffic. But fittingly, as if to bid us goodbye, a beautiful turquoise pinnacled berg is parked at the entrance.

For the last several years, Stephen Gorman has been artist-in-residence for Cruise North Expeditions, an educational and adventure travel company owned and operated by the Inuit of Canada’s Arctic. To learn more please visit http://www.cruisenorthexpeditions.com/

Baffin Island– Canadian Arctic– Latitude 72.37N  Longitude 75.21W

One of the sailors aboard the Orlova complained of pain in the lower right quadrant of his abdomen last night, and sure enough, a doctor on board diagnosed appendicitis. This presented a formidable logistical problem as were about as far from medical help as one can possibly be on this planet. We decided to head directly to the nearest Inuit village –Clyde River, where there is a small gravel airstrip. At full speed we hoped to be there in about 18 hours.

This afternoon, as we enter the bay and approach the village, the plan is for the sailor, Sasha, to be airlifted by bush plane. He’ll go first to Iqaluit, 850 kilometers away by air, and then on to Ottawa –another 2,900 kilometers by air from Iqaluit– for surgery.

Now, with the evacuation completed, we decide to make an impromptu visit to the village. It isn’t often that vessels other than the annual cargo ship stop here, and so the people in Clyde River are curious about us. Fortunately for me, my camera is a great icebreaker, and the kids want to have their picture taken. Soon I’m surrounded by kids eager to mug for the camera and to show me around.

First, Austin and Henry take me to the Northern store. A few years ago the Northwest Company took over all of The Hudson’s Bay Company posts throughout the far north, finally besting their ancient rival after centuries of competition for the Inuit trade. There is a “Northern” in just about every community. You can find all of the necessities in the Northern stores, but the prices are shocking if you aren’t prepared –even a simple box of cereal costs over $10.

Down by the beach, a young girl rides up on her bike and shows me the dyed purple streaks and blonde highlights in her long dark hair. At eleven, she is the clear leader of a little gang of five or six boys and girls on bikes. They ride alongside me as I walk, telling me about their lives, and every now and then she points out places that are “haunted,” and then she describes the ghosts. After a while, it’s clear to me that she’s indicating where people she once knew died of unnatural causes. It’s her way of making sense of the tragic losses these remote communities in transition suffer so often.

Too soon, for this has been a memorable visit, I am back in the Zodiac heading for the ship. Our journey to the Northwest Passage continues. I wave back to the kids watching us from the rocks by the landing.

For the last several years, Stephen Gorman has been artist-in-residence for Cruise North Expeditions, an educational and adventure travel company owned and operated by the Inuit of Canada’s Arctic. To learn more please visit http://www.cruisenorthexpeditions.com/

Gabriel Strait– Canadian Arctic– Latitude 61.51 N   Longitude 65.52 W

I almost didn’t notice the pale shimmering light in the night sky when I went up on deck. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an almost imperceptible blurry motion, and I nearly didn’t bother to look up. But I turned my head and watched as a ghostly apparition took shape beneath the sparkling stars in the jet-black night.

At first it I thought it must be a transient patch of vapor, or the dissipating wisp of a remnant cloud. But as I stood in the cold dark silence I witnessed a miraculous event as the faint shimmer quickly grew into a gossamer curtain of fierce green light stretching across the sky from horizon to horizon. The fabric undulated and unfolded in graceful lateral movements, rippling and waving like a banner in a gentle breeze. Every so often the curtain snapped like a whip, igniting startling red flashes that erupted and vanished.

Although the bottom of the aurora borealis rarely comes closer than 100 miles to the surface of the earth, it seems much closer. At sea, with few reference points, it can seem almost close enough to touch. The aurora can stretch for hundreds of miles across the night sky, and the curtain can tower more than 150 miles high from top to bottom.

“It is impossible to witness such a beautiful phenomenon without a sense of awe,” wrote the British polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott, “and yet this sentiment is not inspired by its brilliancy but rather by its delicacy in light and colour, its transparency, and above all by its tremulous evanescence of form… the appeal is to the imagination by the suggestion of something wholly spiritual.”

I dashed below to fetch my camera and tripod, hoping that the seas in Gabriel Strait might remain placid, for a heaving ship’s deck renders a tripod essentially useless. I set up my camera, and then I focused on infinity, opened the aperture, and set the shutter for ten seconds.

For the last several years, Stephen Gorman has been artist-in-residence for Cruise North Expeditions, an educational and adventure travel company owned and operated by the Inuit of Canada’s Arctic. To learn more please visit http://www.cruisenorthexpeditions.com/

Baffin Island– Canadian Arctic– Latitude 65.43N   Longitude 65.49W

“What’s your name?”

“Steve. What’s yours?”

I was strolling through the small Inuit village of Pangnirtung, at the head of Pangnirtung Fjord on the east coast of Baffin Island, when two small boys about nine years old caught up with me.

“I’m Davis,” one of them said with a big grin. “And this is my friend Tommy.”

Pangnirtung is situated in a spot of almost surreal beauty. The frigid waters of the fjord form a perfect small boat harbor, and in all directions sheer cliff faces reminiscent of Half Dome and El Capitan in Yosemite National Park seem to rocket heavenward from the sea.

Davis and Tommy led me to their favorite place in town, the playground next to the elementary school. There they performed like Olympic gymnasts, flying above the ground, swinging quickly from ring to ring. Soon more kids showed up, and they all clamored for me to take their photograph. I happily obliged.

After a while I left them to their play and continued my exploration of town. I met elders, teens, and community leaders. Eventually I returned to the Orlova by Zodiac as the gentle evening light slowly descended. I eagerly anticipated the next day’s hiking and photographing in the mountains above the fjord.

This section of the coast is home to Auyuittuq National Park, established in 1972 as Canada’s first National Park above the Arctic Circle. Auyuittuq means “the land that never melts” in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit in the eastern Arctic, and Auyuittuq is truly a photographer’s Paradise. A place of overwhelming natural beauty, it is a region of numerous steep-sided fjords receding into an apparently endless collection of towering chiseled peaks draped with hanging glaciers and sparkling snowfields.

Everywhere I looked the next morning, clear mountain streams cascaded brightly down the steep slopes through the lush tundra, leaping and tumbling playfully down to the fjord. Waterfalls plummeted a thousand feet or more from the steeper cliff faces. And then, right at my feet, I discovered two symmetrical circles of stones set into a flat promontory with a broad view overlooking the water –clearly an Inuit hunting camp had once occupied this perfect lookout. These very stones had held down the skin hides that covered their tents. Who knows how long those stones have lain there, completely undisturbed since some long forgotten hands placed them on the tundra. Fifty years? A hundred and fifty?

I hardly knew where to point my lens first, there were so many images that I wanted to create. Should I stay down by the water, or hike a couple of thousand feet up onto the ridge?

I slung on my camera pack and started up.

For the last several years, Stephen Gorman has been artist-in-residence for Cruise North Expeditions, an educational and adventure travel company owned and operated by the Inuit of Canada’s Arctic. To learn more please visit http://www.cruisenorthexpeditions.com/