Arctic Summer

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It's a long way from Gainesville, Florida to Inuvik, NWT (see map above). It's even longer from 1963 to where I sit at my desk in the here and now. I'm not the same person, but I'm sure Inuvik is not the same, either. This will be a trip back to the person and the place, as we both were then. Or at least how I remember it was.

Our two tent camp on an island just south of the snow goose nesting islands. The oil drum served as a work bench. Bart Kreps has some beautiful pictures of Inuvik. View from the bluff behind Reindeer Station, looking out over the delta.

As this story unfolds you will hear about Shorty Wilson, the one-armed owner of the only tractor in Aklavik and how he figured into an unlikely scenario involving several bottles of Jack Daniels and my eventual dunking into the Mackenzie River. You will learn of the hazards of pitching camp on an island two feet above sea level and what happens when a storm comes in and the water rises eight feet. We spent 36 hours fighting that storm and were given up for dead for the second time. Along the way we will encounter whales, fish, seals, bears, and many, many birds. There will be descriptions of harsh, yet beautiful delta tundra, violent storms and calm days when I sucked down mosquitoes with every breath. And, yes, I get to fall in the water again, this time under freezing conditions. The sun never set that summer. I did a lot of growing up. Whaling village on Kendall Island