The Arctic Tundra, Canada

First off, I want you to imagine a picture of just snow, with a white sky. That's what all my pictures from the deeply, truely north look like. Of course, I might just be saying that because when I went north I had only the most basic grasp of photography and my SLR was fairly low quality... and I don't want to scan the pictures. What I'm saying is: I don't have a photo to accompany this story.

So, imagine snow. Lots of it. Only, it's not normal snow, the kind that you see in winters all over the place in the world. It isn't happyfunsnow, the wet kind that you can make balls and forts and angels out of, or the fluffy snow that boarders love for skiing downhill. It isn't the disgusting wet slush that comes with lousy smarch weather, when the snow is part frozen water, part dirt and all pain in the ass. It isn't the light dusting snow that happily alights on Christmas trees, bringing joy and happiness to all the world.

Oh no. This snow is different.

This snow is evil, old and twisted.

Try to think about this for a moment, if you can. Some of the snow, this simple piece of tiny little ice, this thing made up of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen (the oxygen is where the evil comes from), some of this snow has been there since before people. Not just the people who were alive today, but all people, everywhere. It's been there so long, that it may as well have always been there. It is ancient, hungry, dark and twisted. It's well nigh immortal, except for where you tred and kill it. It has about as much in common with the fat, lazy, transient snowflakes of the south as men have with gods. In fact, these are the snowflake gods - endless and eternal and so far removed from your average snowflake that they are as mythic and strange as... well, gods.

Okay, got that? That's what the snow is like.

Now picture the sky. Normally, the sky is blue, but often includes warm reds, bright white fluffy clouds, etc. At night, it's black, with those pinholes of light that are the stars. The sun and moon, ever popular denizens of the sky, are huge globes that hang warmly in the night.

Not so up north. The moon is an interloper that does not belong, but when she does appear, she's cold and distant. The sun is like a constant burning eye in the sky (no... really. It is), looking down all the fucking time. It doesn't go away. The sky itself is a steel grey, forbidding, terrible, frightening. The place is like death.

And that's just my introduction...

So we're up north and we're trekking across the tundra (note: I'm not sure if we were techinically in the tundra anymore. I mean, where does tundra end and just fucking snow everywhere begin? It's a fine line and I don't know. I think I'll refer to it as "JFSE" from now on) and it's just the two of us, me and the girlfriend. I'm not sure what possessed us to do this - we're adventure freaks, I guess. I'm carrying enough dry food in my pack for two months (I'm built like a cross between a brick shithouse and a bull elephant) and probably enough equipment to create a small house (which turned out to be fortuitous), despite the fact that we were going to be away from our camp for a period of about 36 hours. TG had decided that while we were "out backcountry" we should really experience the North.

George, the Innu in charge of outfitting people, told us that if we got cold, we could just radio for help and he'd come get us. I don't know what coming to get us would accomplish, though; it had been ass-chappingly cold the entire two weeks we'd been in camp. The way I figured it, we'd be just as well off wherever we were. George laughed and told us that was probably true, then continued packing for us. At one point he looked at me and asked me how much I could carry comfortably. I'm convinced that he weighed the packs and added 20 pounds to what I quoted him.

Regardless, off we set into the pitiless, evil snow.

We walked for a while through the white, and then we walked some more. After that it was a bit more walking, and then, just to change it up, we walked. I'll spare you the real details. No wait, I've lied - these are as many details as exist. There wasn't really any conversation, what with me carrying nine thousand tons of stuff and TG doing the navigating. To give her full credit, she tried really hard with the navigating. Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, day gave way to, uh, day. The sun didn't really move, it just hovered there. We would have applied sunscreen if we had had any exposed flesh. As it was, I'm quite thankful for my snow goggles that are completely UV resistant. They're awesome. We walked for quite a while.

Now, if you're going to head north, take my advice and purchase 3 top of the line things.

First thing: A watch. It's hard to figure out what time it is by looking at the sun at the best of times, but at least you get general ideas. Like, when you're at work and the sun goes down, even though it's the middle of summer - you know that's not good. You realize that you've overstayed. Or when you're supposed to catch a flight at 5 in the morning, and it's sunny outside when you wake up - that's bad. You don't have to look at a timepiece to get an idea of what the time is. That's not really how it works in the north. That time piece tells you when to go to sleep, when to eat, how far you've walked, what you're doing... it's everything. Buy something that's digital and not clockwork, and make sure it's resistant (to everything).

Second thing: A compass. Buy a compass that costs at least a hundred bucks. Don't take the $5 compass that you knicked off your brother from when he was a boy scout.

Third thing: A flare gun.

So, we walked and then we stopped because it was time to stop. The watch said so. It had to be true. We stopped, and I put the pack down and we made a fire (okay, we lit a Coleman. Same dif), and she brought out the map and showed us where we were. She'd marked it off in red. It was cute.

We decided to make an igloo, eat, have sex and then go to sleep.

George was a marvelous man, and one of the things that he'd managed to teach us (although we were not good at it) was to make an igloo. It's not really all that hard, but there is a methodology to it. Mostly, the skill is in molding the evil snow to your will using a very large knife. The snow, as I've mentioned, isn't like snow here. It's more like flaky ice. You can cut out big pieces of it from the, for want of a better word, ground and then use that to your advantage. The other trick is to dig a hole and build your igloo over that. It gives you more room. You don't want it too big, though, or you won't get as warm.

So TG dug a whole and I started carving up blocks of ice. It was a good system, since she's a perfectionist and would try to get the blocks to be perfectly even (the hole that she dug? perfectly round. She used a peg and rope to make it so. I'm not joking). We ended up with a structure that was 7 parts snowfort, 2 parts igloo, and one part sex palace.

You remember how, when you were a kid, you would see nature shows, and those shows would say how igloos are actually warm, and that you can live in an igloo in comfort? That's bullshit. I mean, think about it. An igloo is built out of ice. What temperature is ice? That's right, it's fucking frozen What happens to ice if it becomes unfrozen? Oh yes! It melts! What do we call a melted igloo? A puddle. Igloos aren't warm; they're warmer than being just outside an igloo.

Thus, the sexxx palace part of the igloo didn't involve a lot of dishabille; it was mostly touchy feely over the clothes, with brief exposures of naughty bits and lots of nose rubbing (it's cliche, but it's also warming). All in all, it's something you should try at least once. Although, I don't think you need to go as far north as we did to enjoy the experience. Just go outside in the winter and make a snowfort. It's definitely an experience.

So, we finished, ate, slept, woke, made love again, donned our packs, and started walking again.

Now, this part will be hard to believe. I claim temporary insanity from all the sex and cold. We did not, and I'll repeat that, not walk straight back over our tracks. They were pretty easy to see, (although mostly gone, there was still a line, because there was much less wind than normal) and it was decided that we would walk back a different route to see more of the area.

I did talk about the bleakness and the lack of things to see at some point, I think. Yes? I'll tell you what we saw going this other direction. Snow. A fucking ton of it.

So we walked, and we saw snow, and altogether, I have to admit that it was kind of fun. Great fun, really, until an unknown time later (minutes? days? a month? Who know, because the sun never moves!) TG stopped and looked at the map in a puzzled fashion. She looked around, then at her compass, then at her map. Then she looked puzzled again, and said those six little words that you never, ever, EVER want to hear your navigator say.

"I think I made a mistake."

I made a noncomittal grunt, and shrugged out of my pack. I sat and told her to come over to me. She brought me the map and I had a look. She had plotted the second half of our route in blue. According to her, we had arrived at the camp. I looked around.

Um. How 'bout fucking no?

Yeah, we weren't at camp. I asked her if she was sure. She replied that, yes, she was fucking sure, and said that they must have moved. I asked if her compass was working. She asked if my brain was working. Three sentences and we'd gone from lovey-dovey sweethearts to lost explorers on the brink of madness, willing to eat one of our own if it meant we got out alive. Okay, that's a bit melodramatic; we were just pissed off.

I asked her to hand me the compass. She gave it to me, looking disgusted.

The compass was pointing directly to my left. That meant I was facing east-ish. I turned 90 degrees to face south.

The compass continued to point to the left.

I turned in a circle. At every point, the compass pointed to the left.

I showed TG this phenomenon. She told me that it certainly hadn't been doing that when she was using it.

I nodded, went to my pack, and got out the radio and the flare gun.

It took George about an hour to get to us and during that time no words passed between us. We were a good 10 km from the place that TG thought we were.

The remaining three days before our prop plane arrive to take us out were spent in an ice that was metaphorical as well as physical. TG was ever so pissed, and I guess I walked around with a big grin on my face... until George asked me why I hadn't noticed where we were heading based on the sun's position. He also said that my igloo looked like it had had a stroke.



When it came time for the next trip, we went to Cuba. You know what Cuba has? Absolutely fucking zero snow. It's bloody brilliant.