Pond Inlet is a six-and-a-half-hour flight from Ottawa, at 78 degrees north latitude. I’ll make a stop over on the way. It’s outside 2°C. To a girl at the airport, I jokingly ask if it’s spring. She replies: “Indeed, it’s almost bikini again. At the end of February it was still -50°C!”.
Nothing but ice
Baffin Island is more than 500,000 km2 in size and is empty. 20,000 inhabitants living in some enclaves. The capital Iqaluit has 7,000 inhabitants.
My house for a week is a tent on Eclipse Sound, between Baffin and Bylot island. Nothing around me but ice, a strange terrain. Only when one travels north does one have an idea of what expanse is. It’s phenomenal to be here. To enjoy the silence, the view and the ruggedness of nature.
With inuit hunters as guides you will be immersed in the culture of the north. You become a specialist in ‘cracks’ in the ice, and how dangerous they are. Due to the wind, entire ice sheets are sometimes blown away to the open sea, in the direction of Greenland. It’s never going to get dark. For example, our excursions sometimes end at 01H00 at night or even later.
The space, the infinite, it makes you think about everything. I was looking for myself and ran into myself.
