I
paddled a half mile off the beach, where the water was free of
ice and rock hazards. The bottom was clearly visible and rocky,
with a sparse covering of kelp streaming in the tidal current.
Paddling for miles along such a monotonous and low-lying shore,
I was never precisely certain where I was. After three hours
of paddling, however, when the land turned westward into a deep
inlet, I knew I had arrived at Nugsanarsuk. A beacon tower allowed
me to establish my position exactly. I rolled the kayak up the
beach on my foam noodles and made lunch. From the top of the
highest beach terrace, looking north, I could see the Ooglit
Islands for the first time. Since they could not be seen from
the water, the bearing back to the beacon would become my only
reference point.
As I paddled out, the horizon seemed to curl up and away from the boat, as if
reversing the earth's curve. Pieces of ice scattered around seemed strangely
suspended from the sky, giving the impression I was paddling inside a smooth
blue sphere of water that curved seamlessly into the sky above. The light was
beginning to play tricks on me, so I kept my eye on the deck compass. Sixty degrees.
About an hour into the crossing, for the first time since leaving shore, I spotted
the islands, but they were lifted up, as though they were merely a mirage above
the sea. I could see the shadows in the rocky headlands contrasting with some
patches of white ice still attached to the shore. Then the mirage dissolved and
the Ooglits were gone. I had to keep reminding myself: sixty degrees. I kept
turning to check Nugsanarsuk Point behind me. Was I drifting off the bearing?
I didn't want to miss the islands and paddle out to sea! Another hour of paddling
and the Ooglit Islands "mirage" made a gradual transition into the real thing.
Still, they played a game of disappearing, only to reemerge in a different shape.
My confidence began to falter. Patches of fog rose up and drifted past the islands,
hiding them once more from view and adding to my confusion. Sixty degrees. Another
half hour and I knew the Ooglits were ahead of me. As I neared the shore, currents
twirled chunks of ice, big as boxcars, past me. At last, I beached the kayak
on a falling tide on a sandy shore between two rocky headlands of dark pink granite.
Screaming terns and Sabine's gulls swirled overhead as I set up my tent at the
top of the beach. My thirty-year absence was over. I couldn't wait to begin exploring.
I climbed one of the granite headlands to get a look at the layout of the Ooglit
Islands. I was on the largest island, North Ooglit Island, the only one with
any obvious signs of past human occupation. The others were just gravel strips
a few feet in elevation above the sea, visited only by birds. From the headland,
the half-mile-wide band of bare, treeless land stretched two miles northward.
Bays and tidal inlets cut deeply into the sides of the island, some completely
emptied of water at low tide, with reversing tidal streams where the seawater
flowed in and out twice a day. There were more gravel beaches, sedge meadows
and shallow tundra pools. Granite bedrock jutted out in clumps here and there.
About halfway down the length of the island, silhouetted against the evening
sky, I could see five house ruins and some other strange structures.
Supper would be late. I clambered up the coarse, sandy beach and out of the little
bay, the arctic terns and Sabine's gulls squawking again in full fury. Walking
north, I skirted rocky outcrops and shallow pools of clear water, teeming with
aquatic insect life. The ground was pocked with hundreds of 2-inch holes in the
ground-tunnels made by lemmings leading to their burrows-and round, shallow indentations,
the empty nests of summering birds. Farther along, where an inlet cut halfway
into the island, I found scores of stone tent rings, placed as if waiting for
their owners to reappear and set up camp. The stones were the size of five-gallon
gas cans-big enough to hold up a skin tent in the strong arctic winds. Behind
the dozens of tent rings rose a gravel ridge with the remains of five Thule-culture
houses. Each house was built of a circle of large boulders packed with moss and
turf. Inside, flat stones were used for flooring, walls and the built-up sleeping
platforms opposite the entrance. More stone was used to line the underground
passageway leading outside. The roof was now open to the sky, but the presence
of large whale rib bones suggested that they had once been the supports for a
seal- or caribou-skin roof covering.
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