Hazel Borys chronicles an Arctic expedition adventure, rife with environmental insights. If you ever wondered what it felt like in the olden days to receive dispatches from explorers off in distant mysterious lands, maybe it felt something like this.
Borys follows her Circumpolar Region blog with a 12-post travel log of an Arctic expedition to Nunavut and Nunavik in Canada, and along the western coast of Greenland.
“'When we understand the hardship someone has lived through, only then can we hear the beauty of their song of resilience,' Inuit elder Aaju Peters shared. 'This is a huge country. We have experienced starvation here. This is a people that have not only survived, but have done it with humor and laughter. And have formed a new state, without shedding a drop of blood.'”
"Coming to the Arctic by sea has its own special magic. It signals we have more time to listen. More time to look. One man on board celebrated his 75th birthday today, but this isn’t his first trip to the Arctic. He came here at 17 and has returned many times, so often the Inuit have renamed him, 'The One Who Comes Back.' I’m rather certain that most on board aspire to that name, and to deeply understand any community, it may be an essential."
Glaciers and sea ice south of Cumberland Sound. Image credit: Hazel Borys, Creative Commons Sharealike With Attribution License
Read the full story: Heart of the Arctic Series
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