Conquering the Impossible (24 page)

Pat, who ran a convenience store in town where you could rarely find what you were looking for but where you would always find the most unimaginable items, gave me pounds and pounds of Kit-Kats, Mars bars, and other chocolate candy bars. Someone else gave me a pair of sealskin gloves and a pair of reindeer-hide mittens. Makabi's wife, an Inuit artist, gave me a bearskin key chain and a card.

If I had not been forced to trek around the Gulf of Boothia, I would never have come to Kugaaruk, and I would have missed this very special town. I was happy here, and not only because I was emerging from four months of terrible privations and suffering. The people I met here had offered me everything they owned and had given me even more in human fellowship. I carried these treasures away with me when I left, and I promised myself that I would return to Kugaaruk someday.

*   *   *

One hundred and eighty-five miles from Kugaaruk, on the other side of Pelly Bay and the Boothia Peninsula, there was a little village on King William Island called Gjoa Haven. Like Upernavik in Greenland, the town was legendary because Roald Amundsen lived there for two years, hemmed in by the ice, before becoming the first man to explore the Northwest Passage. The name Gjoa Haven is Norwegian for Gjøa's Harbor, and was named by polar explorer Roald Amundsen after his ship, the
Gjøa.
The year I visited was the hundredth anniversary of Amundsen's expedition. But I must admit that if I was in a hurry to get to Gjoa Haven, it was only because Cathy and my daughters were going to meet me there.

I left Kugaaruk in a blizzard that reduced visibility practically to zero, with squalls and gusts of wind blowing straight into my face. Following my recuperation, it was a brutal reentry into the icy inferno. My nose began to refreeze immediately, and I was soon in the same physical state—without the fatigue—of ten days before.

I was in such a hurry to get to Gjoa Haven that, on the very first day, I froze my pulmonary alveoli by breathing too fast and deeply with the air temperature at fifty degrees below zero. The symptoms of this condition were painful and distressing; it became impossible to completely fill my lungs, thus producing a horrible and constant sensation of being asphyxiated.

In my medical bag I carried a drug specifically for this problem, but it was slow to take effect. The iron fist crushing my lungs was reluctant to release its grip easily. I tried to fight against it by a method I developed: I would take three of the deepest breaths I could manage, and then I would march forward for about ten yards, stand still for a moment, breathe again, march another ten yards, stop, and so on. In this laborious way I managed to cover seven miles in a single day, but I continued to suffer from severe shortness of breath. I would open my mouth, gasping in an effort to capture the smallest amount of oxygen. I felt a bit like a fish flopping on the deck of a trawler. I felt like ripping off my clothes to breathe a little more deeply. I was ready to do anything in order to fill my lungs with air.

When I settled in my tent for the night, the feeling that I was suffocating was made more intense by the onset of a wave of claustrophobia. Still, it never crossed my mind even for a second to turn back.

Three days after leaving Kugaaruk, I arrived at Simpson Lake, whose elongated shape reminded me a little of Saputing Lake, where the pack of wolves had given me a scare. Wedged between two relatively low mountain ranges, Simpson Lake offered me a flat track some twenty miles long, where I could ski comfortably between respiratory breaks. My frostbite was not improving, but the temperature rose to thirty degrees below zero. The wind died down, and the medications finally kicked in, which allowed my lungs to gradually recover their function.

I covered fourteen miles in one day. I went nineteen miles the next day. But the slight warming of the atmosphere also brought with it a snowfall that slowed me down and demanded a greater output of energy for each step I took.

According to Makabi, not far from this place was a valley that constituted the only known passage to Gjoa Haven. No one had traveled through the valley so far in the year, and no one could tell me its location in any detail. I would have to leave Simpson Lake to look for it, but in the darkness and with snow this deep, there was a good chance that I would tire myself out trying to find it. Since I couldn't run that risk, I decided to stay on course and keep going straight ahead, in what I believed was the right direction.

Suddenly I found myself atop a hill, and there stood an
inukchuk,
one of those mysterious rock piles that indicated the direction of the next village—just like the ones that Annika and Jessica had drawn on the backs of my skis. The
inukchuk
pointed toward Gjoa Haven, which meant that I had found the mysterious valley without even having really looked for it!

At the far end of the valley, the slopes grew flatter. I kept on marching forward, head down, stubbornly pushing ahead into a terrain of snow and ice where water and land blended together, where the snow that fell incessantly grew deeper each day, concealing the landmarks that would guide me to my destination. The wind blew straight into my face, and my body temperature began to drop again. The deep snow, my continued breathing troubles, and the frostbite on my face were all outweighing the advantages of the relatively flat topography. In theory it was supposed to be easier to make headway than before, but that was not proving to be the case yet.

Once the snow stopped falling, the wind weakened a bit and veered to the northeast. I got out my kite, which I had not been able to use even once since leaving Arctic Bay. I had only kept one kite with me—the smallest one that harnessed the least amount of wind power. At frigid temperatures I had to be careful of my speed because traveling too fast would have a chilling effect on me that might well prove fatal.

I rejoiced that my kite and I would finally be able to make up some time in this heavy snow. And yet my kite had only been in the air for a moment when a sudden squall battered against it, gusting so hard that all the struts broke. To think that I had lugged this kite all the way from Arctic Bay for a day just like this one, and then the first gust of wind destroyed it, turning it back into deadweight on my sled. I would have it repaired on the next stop I made in civilization.

*   *   *

A slight downhill grade—I could tell because my sled suddenly felt much lighter—helped me to make progress. Soon I set out again on the frozen ocean to the east of King William Island. One day's march later, I could see in the distance the lights of Gjoa Haven, glittering faintly about thirty miles away. If all went well, Cathy and the girls would be landing at the village airport in just three days. But in the meantime, I spotted Jean-Philippe and Raphaël, the filmmaker, riding toward me on snowmobiles. They would accompany me for two days, which would give us a chance to get some more footage of the trip. Then they would leave me and head for Gjoa Haven to tell my wife when I would be arriving.

*   *   *

When I finally landed on King William Island, I climbed a gradual uphill slope about half a mile in length leading to the village. I looked everywhere for my daughters, whom I had not seen in six months. And then I caught sight of them, standing next to their mother by the airport runway. Their silhouettes became clearer as I got closer. I imagined that from the point of view of the little group that surrounded them, jumping up and down to stay warm (it was thirty-two degrees below zero), I was also just a dark spot against the frozen sea and then a shape growing larger as I climbed up the slope of the mainland.

Annika and Jessica hurried down the slope and through the snow in their haste to be the first to throw themselves into my arms. Their mother followed close behind them. The family was back together. My daughters climbed onto my sled—practically empty by the end of the stage—to enjoy a ride to the “finish line” on a sleigh pulled by their father instead of a team of horses.

Surrounded by the locals who had been alerted by the townsfolk of Kugaaruk to the arrival of “the hiker,” I recognized my friend Vincent Borde and a few journalists. There were also two representatives from one of my chief sponsors, the private bank Mirabaud. Every month or two, a lottery was held to choose two bank employees—the entire bank staff was following my progress with enthusiasm—to travel to “cheer on Mike at one of his supply points.” These two must have been this month's happy winners.

I planned to spend five days in Gjoa Haven, and I had plenty to do. I needed to get my equipment back into shape, restock my supplies of benzene and other provisions, and recover my strength before setting off for Cambridge Bay. Since it had taken me eleven days instead of fifteen to get to Gjoa Haven from Kugaaruk, I was ahead of schedule. I would be able to rest up and take advantage of the extra time.

I helped the Mirabaud bankers put together a slide show that they would present to their colleagues when they got back home. Between interviews and photo sessions, I went out on long snowmobile outings with my family. I taught my daughters to build an igloo and took them to visit three old women who still lived in igloos. These Inuit spent their time softening the animal hides from which they made their clothing by chewing on them interminably. My daughters could scarcely believe their eyes. They had played hooky from school to be able to come visit, but cultural encounters like this one were rich experiences that no school could ever have taught them.

“Rich” experiences were required to justify the cost of this visit, since our family's hotel room cost eight hundred dollars a night! The only hotel in Gjoa Haven was run by a married couple—a Canadian woman and an Englishman—who took advantage of their monopoly to charge scandalously high prices for a tiny, bare room with two beds and a television set, where my daughters slept on a mattress on the floor. And looking for hospitality in town was out of the question, since the Inuit were already crowding ten or fifteen people into each room of their tiny houses.

After just five days, our hotel bill had soared to almost twelve thousand dollars for me, my family, and my team! When I asked the owner of the hotel for a discount, she very graciously agreed to deduct the two hundred dollars for the children's meals.

There was clearly no way of avoiding this pendulum that swung wildly from brotherly love to outright swindles, from generosity to extortion, from my hosts in Kugaaruk to the innkeepers of Gjoa Haven.

*   *   *

Just before my family was scheduled to leave, the village organized a drum dance for us, an event that was certainly the most remarkable ceremony that I witnessed in my time in the Arctic. The drum dance was at the same time the Inuit's only form of public entertainment and the demonstrative language of their storytelling ancestors.

We watched in fascination as the men beat on sealskin drums strapped to their bellies, while telling stories in strange guttural chants of the invasion of the village by a bear, a famine during which their shaman demanded the expulsion of one of the tribe in order to remove a curse and bring back the caribou, and many other legends as well. Then they turned to me, asking me to tell the story of the journey that had taken me all the way from Arctic Bay to this town. With the drum on my hip, I walked around the town square, beating away and chanting into the night. Variously walking bent over or upright, legs spread wide or standing as tall as I could, I imitated the loping gait of the caribou, mimed the menacing silhouette of a bear rearing up on its haunches and the pack of wolves that were following close at my heels. I recounted how I had climbed over mountain passes and crossed lakes. I let loose the performer and child within me, and I had a fantastic time. The Inuit applauded, shouting with joy. I was a hit!

*   *   *

The warm enthusiasm of the inhabitants of Gjoa Haven helped me forget about the greed of its hoteliers. When I moved on I would take with me not only the friendship of the people of this village but also the memory of the wonderful moments I was able to spend with Annika and Jessica. When you spend only five days every six months with your children, every minute needs to be extraordinary. And every minute was.

When I put Cathy and my daughters on the airplane home, I had a very atypical bout of depression. The accumulation of fatigue, no doubt, had something to do with it, but the main reason was the harsh awareness that I wouldn't be seeing my family again until I reached Point Hope, Alaska, more than twelve hundred miles from here, a distance twice as far as the direct path to Russia across the North Pole. I was gripped with terrible longing to return home with them. Then I thought again of the incredible moments when, after months of separation, they ran toward me to leap into my arms. Moments like that, days like the ones we had just spent together, were worth all the sacrifices. I just needed to hang on, and there would be another reunion to reward me for my trouble. My case of the blues vanished as quickly as it had arrived.

*   *   *

After my family left, I became friends with Ron, an Australian teacher, and Sari, a nurse from New Zealand, who invited me stay with them even though they had barely enough room for the two of them. In any case, I planned to stay only a couple of days, but on the day before my scheduled departure, I suddenly fell ill, which almost never happens to me—my bout of the blues might very well have been a warning sign. The illness put me completely out of commission with a throbbing headache and waves of nausea, and it was as if my batteries had been drained to zero. Could this have been a belated side effect of my frozen lungs? At the town clinic where Sari worked, I met Roger, a physician from Cambridge Bay who served all the villages of the region. After getting me back on my feet, Roger also offered to act as my “post office box” in Cambridge Bay. I could stay with him when I arrived, and Cathy could send my provisions for the next stage of my journey to his address. I accepted with pleasure.