At the Floe Edge

At The Floe Edge

“An unpredictable force can lead to instant danger. Preparedness should always be practised. The only way our environment can protect us, with its abundant resource of wildlife, plants and other sources, is for us to protect it.”

— Mark Kalluak, Arviat, Nunavut

The wind snaps and shakes the bright yellow tent, trying to tear it down and send it hurtling out onto the jumbled ice floes in Baffin Bay in the Canadian High Arctic. Up here off the north coast of Baffin Island on the sea ice some 450 miles above the Arctic Circle, the wind is just one element conspiring to keep me from getting a good night’s rest. Another is the cold. I’m cocooned in layers of fleece and goose down inside my minus 30 sleeping bag. And paradoxically, the intense midnight sun is blinding even at 3 AM, requiring dark eyeshades so I can get to sleep.

Yet another conspirator keeping me awake tonight is the sled dog team - ten big beautiful Inuit dogs howling like a wolf pack. I love the dogs but they are staked right at the edge of camp only about twenty yards away, so I have no difficulty hearing them really well.

I yawn, roll over, and then bolt upright fully awake. There is only one reason the dogs howl like this: there’s a polar bear prowling around camp and the dogs are sounding the alarm. In a series of quick practiced moves I get up, step into my insulated boots, and grab the shotgun lying right beside me.

Unzipping the tent, I peer carefully left and then right. The bears can be anywhere, and you must remember to look around corners before you step out. I see the bear about fifty yards away, striding purposefully towards camp at the floe edge - the place where the shore-fast sea ice on which we are camped meets the loose pack ice. The bear approaches and then stops, standing stock still. I have his full attention, and he gazes right at me. Trying to discern his intentions, I watch him without making eye contact. He would take that as a challenge.

He considers me for a long moment. I wonder what is going through his mind. I jack a solid lead slug into the chamber, my thumb snaps the safety to ‘Off’, and I shoulder the shotgun and take aim. He could cover the ground between us in less than three seconds. Be ready. I read his body language the same way I would read a dog’s: neutral. Alright. After a few more tense moments, the bear makes a decision, pivots, and continues on his way.

I am relieved, and yet I’m grateful for such an intense and memorable encounter.

Polar bears are an almost daily occurrence at the floe edge. They are here miles out to sea, hungry and hunting seals at their breathing holes in the ice. Like us the bears travel the sea ice highway, or they may simply drift in to our camp while riding on wind-driven ice floes. I’ve seen bears stand on shards of ice like surfers, hopping off at the end of the ride. If you pay attention to your surroundings, with a keen eye you can see them coming from a quarter mile away. One day I watched, transfixed, as the biggest bear I’ve ever seen strolled down the floe edge towards me. I called to Sam, an elder Inuit hunter. He looked at the bear with admiration, and then he drew in his breath and said, “Ten footer for sure!”

To live comfortably and safely in the sea ice environment you need a tremendous skill set and a healthy sense of humility. Unlike life in most contemporary communities, your smartphone doesn’t work here, you can’t ask Siri for directions, your compass points West -- not North -- and you really do need to know precisely where you are. There are many objective dangers, such as polar bears, storms, fierce cold, and thin ice that can suddenly collapse beneath you. If you aren’t situationally aware, if you aren’t paying attention to your surroundings, if you don’t understand how everything impacts everything else, you can easily find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There are also many subjective dangers, such as using poor judgment when choosing a campsite; not knowing how to navigate in low visibility; using inappropriate clothing or equipment; not being alert to shifting winds, thin ice, or approaching storms; or not having the physical and mental fortitude to venture out onto the sea ice in the first place. Out here on a floating platform that can disintegrate at any time, where large predators can show up out of nowhere, where visibility can quickly shut down in blinding storms and the temperature can plummet to sixty below zero, you need to invest in and acquire a deep body of cultural knowledge and skills to survive. You need to understand complex, dynamic relationships.

Certainly, most of the places people live today have a wider margin of error than the Arctic floe edge, but that sense of safety is illusory. Extreme weather events and disasters such as catastrophic wildfires and superstorms are happening with increasing frequency in even the most seemingly sheltered realms. Wherever we live, this is our new normal. The U.S. suffered 28 billion-dollar natural disasters in 2023, the highest number ever in a calendar year. The dangers of not understanding safe limits now affect everyone, everywhere, and not understanding dynamic, sytemic relationships can be tragic. It is vital to know who and where you are. Our lives, and the lives of those we care about, depend upon it.

The Arctic sea ice environment may be an extreme example, but it is at the margins that all the clutter disappears, and the important lessons become crystal clear. To thrive in any environment requires intimate knowledge of the place, combined with a respectful, even reverential, attitude towards “the land” -- nature.

Out here — wherever out here is — you need wisdom.