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Greenland Tourism's Project Leif 2000
Author: John Abbott
Lat/Lon: 54 32N 57 112W
Weather: Rainy and windy
Sightings: Hunters, purple vetch 3
We have a lifetime to review our "rich brew of experience"
Date: Saturday, September 12
The engines are revved and the finish line is in sight. Tomorrow
the north winds arrive to again deliver us southward, on to L' Anse Aux Meadows.
How can this be true we wonder, after months of sitting idly at anchorages waiting
out contrary winds and rowing hundreds of miles (yes, we have the calluses to prove
it...)? How can we be sure that our saga is reaching a finale? Only because
this evening, Hodding, the parsimonious voice of food consumption conscience, green-flagged
an extra can of vegetables to accompany our wild rice! John Gardner and I spun up
non-stop meals today, recovery food after our 2 days under sail. Even though we all
assured Hodding we'd have plenty of food should our arrival be delayed, say, until
the 3rd week in November. All we've been reading about Franklin, Melville and the
other sailing giants of English polar exploration convinced Hodding that we should
have preparations for a fine Thanksgiving meal. Replete with pudding, it's good for
crew morale after all...In all seriousness, our thoughts and imaginings are actually turned to the end of our amazing expedition together. While we are at once excited and then wondrous of what our experience together looks like and means, as a crew we are committing to savoring all it has been as we approach our arrival. I feel this will be an ongoing process of integrating the magnificence of where we've traveled with the meaning that the arctic landscapes, waters, wildlife, people and light have given to each of us. As it stands this foggy evening in Dark Water Tickle, Viking Voyage 1000 has become such a rich brew of experience, it is impossible to get my arms around it while still in the moment. Only time, memory and oh, those great storytelling sessions, will help sort it out, as will the context of returning home to all that is familiar.
Evening dew beads on this intrusive glowing screen, water lapping rhythmically against the hull of Snorri and the snoring cacophony of the crew keep me anchored in the here and now. The skeletal remains of native hunting and fishing camps watch from shore, harboring their own secrets of adventures past. Each anchorage we've slipped into, each adventure we've stumbled onto and each smelly sleeping bag will tell a story of its own.
We are at the threshold of Groswater Bay and Rigolet, the initial staging site of the Americans Leonidas Hubbard and Dillon Wallace's ill fated expedition to the Labrador interior in 1903. Dean Plager introduced us to the recounting of this tale in Wallace's "Lure of the Labrador Wild", an incredible account of their attempt to follow the Naskapi River (or so they thought) to its headwater at Lake Michikamau and visit the Naskapi Indians during the fall hunt of the migrating caribou herds (some here still estimated to be in the tens of thousands according to locals we talked with in Nain), before paddling the George R. north to Ungava Bay on the heels of winter. While their goal was to take home a good story, Hubbard and Wallace couldn't have bargained for a greater tale of determination and lessons learned at the hand of their native guide.
We all agree the misfortune that eventually befell them (getting lost and slowly running out of food) was painful and tragic to the extreme. Through our reading (we've all gobbled it up and for a time daily relived episodes), endless conversations and sharing of impressions, we further agree that eating moldy flour, caribou bone marrow soup and raw ptarmigan, while losing your expedition leader to starvation, is a terrible way to go. No need to worry here, Hodding proudly eats more than any of us.
This story of their travels and the awesome skill and passion of their Labradorian Scot/Cree guide George Elson have defined some of my more romantic impressions of the rugged and often harsh beauty of the Labrador interior and the people who love, live and roamed this land earlier this century. Experiencing a modern understanding, firsthand, will have to await my next visit.
Tomorrow we are up early to head downcoast toward the Wonderstrand, a thirty-mile stretch of pristine white sand beach, and onward to Battle Harbor. If we can continue our recent fortunes of NW winds and sail through the night, we may just get there.... Hope from aboard Snorri, where the only place you can predictably arrive each night is in your sleeping bag.
Mine is a-callin'....
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