Arctic Dreams

[ecosophia]

About a year ago, I was beginning to sketch out the plot for the sixth Weird of Hali novel, which involves a voyage to Greenland on a tall ship. I've never been to Greenland, or anywhere in the Arctic, so I did what writers generally do and went looking for books on the subject by people who know what they're talking about. That and a large used book store was how I ended up with a battered paperback copy of Barry Lopez' Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape.



It turned out to be much more than a bit of convenient research for an epic fantasy with tentacles. It's brilliantly written; here's a bit from the fifth chapter --

"Those days on Ilingnorak Ridge, where I saw tundra grizzly tearing up the earth looking for ground squirrels, and watched wolves hunting, and horned lark sitting so resolutely on her nest, and caribou crossing the river and shaking off the spray like diamonds before the evening sun, I was satisfied only to watch. This was the great drift and pause of life. These were the arrangements that made the land ring with integrity. Somewhere downriver, I remembered, a scientist named Edward Sable had paused on a trek in 1946 to stare at a Folsom spear point, a perfectly fluted object of black chert resting on a sandstone ledge. People, moving over the land."

-- but it's also a meditation on humanity's relationship to nature, one that avoids the usual platitudes and presuppositions and goes very deep. I've sat up late I don't know how many nights with a glass of halfway decent bourbon and my copy of Arctic Dreams, partly reveling in the use of language, partly staring at space and following out Lopez' ideas to an assortment of unexpected places. When this copy goes to pieces, I'll be looking for a hardback for the shelf of nature books I keep ready to hand.

Comments

The North

[(Anonymous)]

Having spent years in the territory of Nunavut learning about the Inuit from the Inuit I feel I need to comment. I learned a little of the language and the different dialects (and prejudices among the people themselves!); learned about some of the plants that are edible; learned to like raw meats (caribou, walrus (not really, but at least tasted it!), seals, Arctic Char, muktak of whales (whale meat itself is dog food only); learned that Inuit and southern Native Americans did not get along (Inuit feared those southerners); was shown the stone ulus (curved cutting tools women used) and stone "sun shades" that were used before metal and plastic; learned about the "giant people' whose lodges could still be found (and who also were feared); still wear my working and dress kamiks (foot ware made from two types of seal with warm inserts) - never did get a pair of siksik mitts (rodent of the tundra); learned about the Inuit 'games' - one and two leg high kick, knuckle walk, spear throwing, and the "airplane" done by women and girls who were held up at waist level, prone, by three men, arms and legs out level with body, held rigid as long as possible (The younger women could last up to a minute, but the older woman, about 60, lasted about three minutes and only came down because she sensed that the 'boys' who were holding her up were getting tired!!!); learned to be discerning about soap-stone sculptures; learned about child abuse, both girls and boys, that was fairly pervasive; learned about sexual abuse of women by southern "white" hustlers who came for quick bucks and "no one would ever know"; learned that the children of these "relationships" were deemed second-class people by the Inuit; learned that cancer rates were increases due to the fall-out of all the nuclear tests of the 1950's in the southern U.S. landing on this part of the world; learned that several of the lakes and streams where Arctic Char had been plentiful forever were now devoid of them since fishing became an export for currency that in turn would buy $6.00 two-litre milk jugs and $10.00 a dozen eggs; learned that the older generation who spoke no English or French had little in common any more with their grandchildren who lived for chips, pop, and TV, and knew nothing of what their elders knew about survival with and on the land; learned that old people would walk into the snow to die so as not to further burden the family; learned that "school" was for children learning about consumer culture and nothing about what their elders knew; learned to love the land and the people (they were inseparable).
All is not roses, but then we need only look in our cultural mirrors for evidence of that. But mostly I fear for the future of the Inuit (which means "the people") as their culture that was for so long tied to the land and the creatures who gave themselves for the survival of Inuit are coming to an end through climate change and cultural death by education. Placed into "communities" so that they could be 'saved', but also 'counted'; communities surveyed for exclusive lots like we do (though the actual building of houses never really bothered with these silly boundaries!); moved to places where no one lived before (Resolute) so that the country of Canada could claim sovereignty over all the north between Alaska and Greenland; education for lives that could only be lived in the "south", but where racism prevented living such lives.
So much comes to mind now, more than I can include.
Mutna (a recently invented word for "thank you" in one of the Inuit dialects. Like most native North American societies, no words for 'please' and 'thank you' existed in their languages).

Re: The North

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this. That's very much the landscape of human experience that Lopez talks about in his book.