News

A World of Ice: Experiencing Canada’s Far North

09/25/2012

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When it comes to nature our mantra is celebrate, educate, protect. It’s in the spirit of celebrating our natural world that we invited Nature Canada member Claudette Kohut to share with us her experiences as she travels to northern Canada and Greenland to witness some of the planet’s most breathtaking, and changing, natural environments.

I am on a boat in a western Greenland fjord, the name of which I cannot pronounce, but will endeavor to spell, Evighedsfjorden. Outside, it is 6 degrees Celsius and there is a slight drizzle, with fresh snow on the mountain tops. I am on a trip from Kangerlussuaq, Greenland to St. John’s Newfoundland with Adventure Canada, along with about 100 others and a staff of about the same number. (website below)

I have been told by other travelers that this is not a “cruise”, but an “expedition”. That said, we are well fed, well entertained, by educators, musicians and artists, and we even have our own private bathrooms! So far even the sea has cooperated, although we are tucked safely in this fjord because of low pressure and 8 meter swells in Davis Strait, our intended route.

Outside our little heaven on the water there is another world. This is the world we came to see and although we left Toronto two short days ago; Toronto is a universe away.

Greenland is huge, and except for narrow shoreline strips, completely covered in ice. The ice in the centre is so dense that it has pushed the land down and the outside edges up, forming the towering walls we are traveling through.

At first glance this ancient world is black and white, and lifeless. Cloud shrouded cliffs rise black from the water, and white icy tongues that cut their way between them to reach the grey sea. On closer inspection colours start to emerge. Through the mist and rain the reds and yellows of autumn climb the softer hills as the willow forests of the tundra get ready for winter and the myriad blues of freshly broken glacial walls sparkle in the midst of dirty white.

On an afternoon’s excursion to shore there are other finds which offer a narrow window onto what wildlife can exist here. Broken shells are scattered on the beach, an ochre jellyfish lies splayed on the sand, beautiful, even in death. Someone finds a long wing feather, dropped by an eagle, and another points out the skeletal head of a large fish, its vicious teeth preserved in an evil grin.

There is life here: in the sea, in the air and on the land.

And the ice. The ice is omnipresent, a giant living thing. Everywhere tongues drop into the ocean where their offspring start their southward float. Small pieces, the size of a house, lie stranded on the beach by low tide. While we walk we hear thunderous explosions of sound from somewhere up the ice field. As solid and immutable as it appears at first glance, it is full of holes and crevices, parts melting and parts freezing, never the same from one day to the next.

I am happy.

The rain and cold has not stopped us from venturing ashore and does nothing to dim the beauty and majesty of this place, where our footprints will wash away with the next season and we can understand for ourselves Thoreau’s famous quote, “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, only consequences.”

Thanks for the dispatch Claudette! We’ll post more updates as we receive them!

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