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Copyright 2014 Claim Stake Productions
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Cover illustration by Leon Godwin
Cover image: Gannon and Wyatt are dressed in synthetically insulated coats with faux-fur trim.
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62634-121-0
Ebook Edition
We borrow the earth from our children.
—Inuit Proverb
Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.
—Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams
ENGLISH/GREENLANDIC:
TRANSLATION OF COMMON PHRASES
Hello—Aluu
How are you?—Qanorippit?
I am well—Ajunngilanga
What is your name?—Qanoq ateqarpit?
Yes, please—Qujan
Thank you—Qujanaq
Greenland—Kalaallit Nunaat
Dog—Qimmeq
It is cold—Issippoq
It is very cold—Issi
CONTENTS
PART I
CAN’T JUDGE A PLACE BY ITS NAME
PART II
A LONG JOURNEY OVER ICE
PART III
THE WRATH OF THE HIGH ARCTIC
CAN’T JUDGE A PLACE BY ITS NAME
GANNON
MARCH 30
Greenland? I mean, come on. Has to be one of the most misleading names of any place on the planet.
There’s nothing really green about it as far as I can tell. It’s an island of rock and snow and ice and not a whole lot else. There aren’t any trees, that’s for sure. No bushes even. The landscape is gray and white just about everywhere you look. That’s not to say that Greenland isn’t spectacular. It’s much more than that really.
Wyatt and I are settled for the night in a simple hut on the north side of Nuuk, “the world’s smallest capital city.” Though, I have to say, calling this settlement at the end of the world a “city” is somewhat of a stretch. I mean, this place is so far off the beaten path they don’t even have any security at the airport. When I walked off the plane I asked the flight attendant to point me in the direction of customs and immigration. She just laughed. Turns out there is no customs or immigration. No airport police even. Now, I’ve been to some small and remote places before, but I’ve never seen that anywhere.
Nuuk does have two stoplights. They’re both on the same street and happen to be the only two stoplights in the entire country. So, I guess by Greenlandic standards that qualifies Nuuk as a bustling metropolis. If you add everyone up, about 16,000 people live in the capital, mostly in blocky style apartment buildings and a few picturesque little neighborhoods with colorful homes that gaze out over the icy waters of the Davis Strait.
As I write, the walls of our hut creak and groan under the strain of an angry wind that’s coming off the water like a screaming freight train. Cold air sneaks through a crack in the double-paned window next to my desk, numbing my fingers to the bone. An old, rusty radiator clanks and hisses in the corner, struggling to put off enough heat to keep the room comfortable.
Down along the shoreline, chunks of ice have washed up on the rocky beachhead. Out past the ice is deep water, white-capped by the gale. A lone iceberg floats way off in the distance, a glowing white formation that looks like a pair of angel’s wings rising out of the dark sea. At the far end of the fjord, towering thousands of feet above the water, is a steep granite mountain face with a jagged, shark-fin point on one end.
It’s like I said before, Greenland is more than spectacular!
Wyatt just came back into the hut with his teeth chattering like a jackhammer and said, “It’s f-f-f-f-fourteen degrees outside.”
Not exactly balmy. And since it’s late afternoon already, my guess is that we’ve reached the high temp for the day. I mean, there’s really no way around it, it’s just plain cold. And here’s the thing: We haven’t even crossed the Arctic Circle yet!
Leading up to our trip, my mom suddenly kicked into ‘teacher of the year’ mode and gave us all these reading and writing assignments to do before we left, which I guess is understandable since we’re going to be gone for the better part of two months and all, but I can’t say I was super excited about it. Like most kids my age, I can think of a million things I’d rather be doing than schoolwork, but turns out there was some really great reading material on that list. My favorite was the journal of polar explorer, Knud Rasmussen, who crisscrossed the Arctic by dog sled in the early 1900s.
A plaque honoring Knud Rasmussen
Of course, Wyatt and I have a huge amount of respect for the great explorers of the past, explorers who risked life and limb in search of answers to the unknown. Naturally, reading up on Mr. Rasmussen’s adventures totally inspired me. I even brought a copy along to keep me company when we’re all hunkered down on the ice sheet. Here’s a passage he wrote way back in 1917:
When I was a child I used to hear an old Greenlandic woman tell how, far away North, at the end of the world, there lived a people who dressed in bearskins and ate raw fish. Their country was always shut by ice, and the daylight never reached over the tops of their high fjords. Even before I knew what traveling meant, I determined that one day I would go and find these people.
Well, just like Mr. Rasmussen, I want to find these people of the far North, these descendants of the ancient Eskimos. I want to learn about their traditions and beliefs and rituals. I want to witness with my own eyes their way of life. I mean, this is a culture thousands of years old that over the last century has all but vanished. Basically, by the time we’ve covered our last mile by dogsled, it is my goal to have a real understanding of what it’s like to live as the Greenlanders do.
This business of polar exploration has its risks, no question about that. For instance, there’s the risk of frostbite, or worse, freezing to death. We could fall into a crevasse, get lost in a storm, or go snow blind. We could get sick or swept away by a roaring glacial river, or the dogs could get hurt, stranding us on the ice. Heck, we could stumble across a grumpy old polar bear that doesn’t take kindly to us trespassing on his turf.
Okay, I sure hope this isn’t some kind of omen, but just down the hill from our hut is a big cemetery with all these bright white crosses arranged in perfect rows. There have to be a few hundred of them, and every single one has a set of colorful plastic flowers at the base, quivering in the blue-gray light. Now, I’m trying to keep my thoughts positive and all, but that’s a pretty tall order when you’re staring out the window at a cemetery. To be totally honest, I can’t help wondering how many of the people lying under those little white crosses met their end on an Arctic expedition just like the one we’re about to embark on.
All right. Enough of all that. I’m starting to scare myself stupid. Let’s just hope we’re strong enough to endure whatever the Arctic may throw at us. After all, last thing anyone wants is to end up under one of those little white crosses. But, let’s be honest, any time you go on an expedition like this there is a chance that’s exactly where you’ll end up.
Crosses in the cemetery
; WYATT
MARCH 31, 7:22 AM
NUUK, GREENLAND, 64° 11′ N 51° 44′ W
ELEVATION: 58 FEET
For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by polar exploration. When I was about six or seven, I used to dress up in a fur jacket and run around in the snow with our golden retrievers, pretending to be an explorer on a dangerous Arctic mission. When I got a little older, I started reading the journals of famous polar explorers from the Arctic and Antarctic—Amundsen, Peary, Scott—all incredible tales of bravery and endurance in the most inhospitable environment on earth. These stories really captured my imagination, and so I became determined to one day travel in their footsteps, or to put it more accurately, in their sled tracks. Tomorrow, my brother and I will finally get that chance.
The polar regions of our planet are changing. Temperatures are rising. And in Greenland, temperatures are rising more rapidly than anywhere else. According to the latest scientific data, the average temperature has risen about 2°C (3.6°F) in the Arctic over the last fifty years. That’s more than double the global average. It may not seem like much, but the effect is significant. The sea ice in Greenland is disappearing much earlier in the spring than it used to, impacting how the Greenlanders hunt for food. And sea levels are rising, putting coastal areas around the world at risk.
There are many different theories as to what is causing this rapid change in climate. We do know one thing for sure: Our way of life contributes. The pollution we put into the atmosphere speeds up this change.
To aid the Youth Exploration Society in their research on climate change, I will be measuring temperatures on the Greenlandic ice sheet, taking precipitation totals, determining chemical compositions in the air and water, and reporting on the condition of land and sea ice. Basically, I’ll be doing all the things Gannon refers to as “excruciatingly boring.”
Not for me, though. I love this stuff!
Our parents stayed behind, but they’ll be meeting us at the end of the expedition. My dad is finishing up a gallery show of his latest wildlife paintings and my mom is training all the new flight attendants at World Airlines, so she’s booked, too. It took some convincing, but given that my brother and I have traveled since we were born, never do anything without expert guides, and have proven time and again that we handle ourselves fairly well in sketchy situations, our parents eventually came around to the idea of us making the journey without them. Besides, they visited Greenland years ago and loved it, so they were really excited about our opportunity to experience the Arctic. I can’t say I don’t miss them, but it’s pretty cool to be on our own for once. No offense mom and dad, but there comes a time when boys must become men. Or, in our case, “young” men.
In December, we began training with mushers at the Toklat Dogsled facility in Snowmass, Colorado, not far from our home. The practice we got controlling sleds over a wide variety of terrain should definitely come in handy when we’re on the ice sheet. The entire journey will be just over 800 miles from our starting point east of Ilulissat all the way to Qaanaaq in northern Greenland.
I better wrap up this journal entry. In two hours our flight leaves for Ilulissat, a small town 155 miles (250 kilometers) north of the Arctic Circle. There, we will meet one of our guides, Nuka. A native of Ilulissat, Nuka is seventeen years old and has already participated in several Arctic expeditions. From Ilulissat we’ll travel to the ice sheet where we’ll meet the sled dogs and Nuka’s uncle Unaaq, our lead guide.
How things go once we’re on the ice, be it good or bad, this journal will show.
GANNON
APRIL 1
Aerial View of Greenland’s Ice Sheet
Well, it’s official. I’m talking, officially official. We are in the Arctic! Our feet planted firmly on frozen ground well above the Arctic Circle.
Jeez, I’m so pumped up I don’t even know where to begin! Okay, maybe I’ll start with the fact that I’ve never seen so much ice in all my life! I know, a ridiculously obvious statement given that we’re in the Arctic and all, but there’s really no way to exaggerate just how much ice there is here.
This morning we landed in Ilulissat, a town that’s a good deal smaller and a lot more picturesque than Nuuk, with all these homes nestled on a rocky hillside, like little wooden boxes painted in bright blues and yellows and reds and oranges. Snow is piled high on rooftops and even higher along the sides of the roads. The fjord is half frozen over and choked up with massive icebergs jutting every which way. The sun is shining bright and the air is clear and crisp and cold enough to make my lungs shudder when I take a deep breath.
From everywhere in Ilulissat, you can hear sled dogs howling. Seriously, it sounds like some kind of sled dog symphony. I can hear them right now, wailing away like wild wolves. If I were to guess, I’d say there are probably more doghouses in this town than people houses. I’m not kidding, they’re all over the place! And all around the doghouses are packs of hearty sled dogs, barking and yipping, steam swirling from their mouths as they snap at the sun.
I have to say, this incredibly unique and beautiful scene has stripped the fear right out of me. I actually feel good. Confident. Like I could accomplish anything. Maybe my brain is frozen or something. I don’t know. But whatever it is, I’ve got this real positive feeling about the journey ahead, which is refreshing, given how I’m usually all hung up on worst-case scenarios, potential disasters, and stuff like that.
Earlier, we met one of our guides, Nuka, at a supply store in the center of town. His family has run the store since before he was born and it carries just about everything you could possibly need, from food to clothing to expedition gear. When we walked through the door, wind sent snow dancing across the floor.
“Gannon and Wyatt!” Nuka shouted with a big smile. “Aluu! Qanorippit?”
Now, I never go anywhere without knowing at least a few basic words and phrases in the native language. Nuka spoke fast, but I was pretty sure he’d said, “Hello, how are you?”
Of course, Wyatt didn’t have a clue what he’d said and just stood there like a doofus, so I chimed in.
“Ajunngilanga,” I said. “Ajunngilatit?” Translation: I am well. Are you well?
“Aap!” he said with a laugh, which means “yes.” “Ajunngilanga,” he continued, and then kept right on talking and talking.
“Sorry, Nuka, I lost you after Ajunngilanga. Unfortunately, that’s about all the Greenlandic I know.”
“That’s a lot more than most people know,” a boy slightly older than Nuka said as he entered the room. “I’m Erneq. Nuka’s older brother.”
We all shook hands.
“Welcome to Ilulissat, my friends!” Nuka said.
Nuka and Erneq have dark narrow eyes, thick black hair, and round, happy faces. Both are about my height, probably somewhere close to 5’ 8” and look to be about the same weight. To be honest, Nuka and Erneq actually look more like twins than Wyatt and me. Nuka’s name means “little brother,” which makes sense, well, given that he’s a little brother and all.
“You have no idea how great it is to be here!” I said. “I honestly feel like I’ve landed on the moon or something.”
Nuka and Erneq both laughed.
“Our town definitely has a lunar look to it,” Erneq said.
“Can you guess the meaning of the word Ilulissat?” Nuka asked.
“I’ll go out on a limb and say it has something to do with cold or snow.”
“You are on the right track. In Greenlandic, Ilulissat means iceberg. Appropriate name, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Without a doubt,” Wyatt said.
“I received your messages and understand you have done much training with sled dogs this winter. Do you feel prepared for this journey?”
“As prepared as we’ll ever be,” Wyatt said.
“Excellent. I am sure we’ll all do just fine. Now, let’s get you fitted with the proper clothing. This sled trip will be done the traditional way, just as you requested.”
Erneq was wearing jeans and a down jacket, but Nuka was dressed in the tradition of his ancestors, with a seal skin coat and these big bushy pants and boots made of polar bear fur.
We walked into the back closet and were fitted with clothes the ancient Greenlanders would have been proud to wear. Everything made from the skins and furs of Arctic animals hunted by Nuka’s father and uncle, and hand stitched by his mother.
Traditional Arctic clothing
“My mom would probably burst into tears if she saw all these animal furs,” Wyatt said.
“It is a necessary part of life in the Arctic,” Nuka said. “For thousands of years our people have worn this clothing. We have great respect for the animals because we owe our lives to them. Without their skins and furs our ancestors would not have been able to survive in this climate. There is nothing warmer.”
Our pants are made from polar bear fur and we each have two coats. The first is made of seal skin. That’s the base layer. The second is made of caribou fur and has a warm hood. The mittens are also caribou and look like big bear paws. Our fur boots fit snuggly and are lined with sealskin to keep water out. I’m not going to lie, all of these clothes are about as heavy as a sack of rocks and will definitely take some getting used to, but Nuka swore up and down the extra weight wouldn’t be a bother once we encountered the real Arctic cold.
“So, how do I look?” Wyatt asked, as he waddled out of the closet.
“Like Sasquatch on a bad hair day,” I said.
“Very funny,” Wyatt said.
Wearing all that fur around the shop, I broke into a sweat in about five seconds flat and walked out into the frigid air to cool down. Way out in the bay, I saw a little yellow fishing boat navigating icebergs by way of a thin watery passage. Cars, snowmobiles, and dogsleds moved up and down streets coated in ice. Adults were coming and going from work and kids were just getting out of school and everybody was wrapped snuggly in big, puffy outfits. There was a group of kids sledding down a hill and others playing soccer on the snow, all with big smiles on their faces. A few people waved to me as they passed. One thing’s for sure, the cold and ice doesn’t slow Greenlanders down a bit.
Greenland Page 1