Apr 04 2011 Read a preview of the new book by Javier Reverte

• Arctic

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  "In wild seas. A trip to the Arctic", the anticipated new travel book writer Javier Reverte, is already in bookstores starting next Friday. Open Mouth, VOD offers an exclusive chapter in the new master work of travel literature.

• The author in the room Resolute Airport, on Cornwallis Island, ArticoOK

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  "In wild seas. A trip to the Arctic", the anticipated new travel book writer Javier Reverte, is already in bookstores starting next Friday. Open Mouth, VOD offers an exclusive chapter in the new master work of travel literature.

On the island of Resolute, Debbie ran the Inns North Qausuittuq, in the room I had booked through internet. With no public transport in the locality, Debbie had done what was expected of any professional worth his salt: stand on its 4×4 at the airport, write my name on a sign and wait for the room peep baggage. The only plane that arrived that day at Resolute was mine and only sixteen passengers traveling on board, so that no possible misplacement, as, besides that, I was the only tourist. In a small house with two counters for ticket office, a coffee machine, other soft drinks and a baggage claim, a stuffed white bear, put in a glass, passengers received snarling. I present to Debbie. And while we waited the arrival of my bag, I took a photo next to the beast, rugiéndonos each other.

The road between the airport and the town of Resolute, drawn on gravel, is almost straight and, besides being the only one in the island of Cornwallis, not much more than five or six miles. There was a thick fog that morning and Debbie drove with extreme care, slowly, with low beams and fog lamps lit. The snow around us and the track was covered by a thin layer of ice.

-The road is bad, he said, but you have to walk with animal eye: can suddenly cross a caribou or a bear and a blow against those beasts rolled a car. It's been more than once.

Debbie Fredericks was a woman of about seventy, thin and agile, with dyed blonde hair strong, his face smeared with lipstick and lip shine in a furious crimson. He spoke with affection and a certain vulgarity in a leisurely English; but such was his gentleness was even pedantry in it naturally. Three years earlier had come from the province of Nova Scotia, south of Canada, for the hotel regentar.

-My husband and I were already retired, he explained. But there was a good deal to take over the hotel and no one wanted the job. So I suggested to Bob to take the job and he encouraged me to come. We threw the bag over his shoulder and here we are, in the heart of the Arctic. I am responsible, but he helps me. We will stay one more year, until next summer, and then retire to Mahone Bay, Halifax beside, about the children and grandchildren, for a life rested the rest of our days.

-Were you born there?.

-Same Halifax, the most beautiful city in Canada. But I'm not Akkadian, o sea: I have no French blood. My origin is Scottish. I like to make it clear.

-Scottish-Canadian, as.

-In a way so, if I think about my grandparents; but I prefer to say I'm Canadian-Scottish.

-And your husband?.

-Bob is Norwegian.

-¿Norwegian-Canadian or Canadian-Norwegian?.

-Norwegian-Norwegian. What can be with a name like yours ..?, ¡Torzón!. He was born in Oslo and came to Canada at a young age. Still has much accent when speaking English. I know you now, is in the hotel.

Crossed by the beach on the bay. Resolute and looming before us, at the foot of two high hills covered with snow. By the sea, a crackling bonfire where they burned garbage. The strong odor of burned debris blew in through the vent pipes of the car.

-Luckily burn garbage every day, 'said Debbie said the stake-. Did you know that was what most impressed when I came to the Arctic?. Waste!. I expected a clean landscape, target, uncontaminated. And there's garbage everywhere.

***************

Resolute is located in the south of the small island of Cornwallis, against Griffith, language and its name "inuktiut" is Quaasuittuq, something dramatic nickname dyes, it means "the place where there is no dawn". Several hundred years ago was populated, is believed that for several decades, by nomadic hunter families "Inuit". In the following centuries, until 1947 settled there a weather station and an airport, the island remained uninhabited.

Between 1953 and 1955, the Canadian government moved to place, necessarily, a handful of families "Inuit" in the region of Quebec, in an attempt to colonize the area against the pressure of the former Soviet Union to seize the sovereignty of the Polar regions. Today, Resolute has a population of just over two hundred people, mostly "Inuit", has two hotels, a school where classes are taught from kindergarten to high school, a small sports, barracks of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with two agents, a supermarket, a church that was closed the whole time of my stay in the village, the municipal government building and a post season. Resolute is one of the coolest people in the world, with an average temperature of 16,4 degrees below zero. The record for cold in the locality was set on 7 January 1966, when the thermometer fell to the 52,2 degrees below zero. Its north latitude is set to 74 º 41 '51 ".

The name of the place is a very curious because, if it is certain that there are numerous boats baptized as cities and towns, very few, not to say that almost no, populations owe their name to a ship. And that is the case of Resolute.

And 1850, the Royal Navy purchased a merchant called "Ptarmigan", the 424 tons and 35 meters, enlisted him as a warship and renamed the "Resolute" (Resolved). That same year he left London, with five other ships, in search of Sir John Franklin, lost in the Arctic waters in 1847 while seeking the Northwest Passage. The fleet could not pass the entrance of Lancaster Sound, due to the ice, and returned to England. Five years later, the "Resolute", with three other ships, left again after Franklin. The fleet was divided and the "Resolute", along with the "Intrepid", delved into the Lancaster Canal to the shores of Melville Island, where the two ships had to stop and shelter for the winter. Tracing continued the following summer, with two new ships coupled with raids, and everyone had to winter in the Arctic again, in southeastern Bathurst Island, neighboring Cornwallis Island, after trying in vain through the ice that blocked the way to the Atlantic in Lancaster Sound. By the summer of 1854, and Commander Edward Belcher, Expedition leader, decided to leave Beechey Island in four of the ships, including the "Resolute", and with the crew on board a sailboat single, el “North Star”, headed back to England. The commander of the "Resolute", Henry Kellet, tried to save his ship, pero Belcher se mostró inflexible. The 263 men of the expedition reached the English port in early September. Belcher was accused of cowardice by the naval authorities and point of service.

One year later, in 1855, Ballenero an American, el "George Henry", found the "Resolute" drifting, become a sort of ghost ship, in the Davis Strait, 1.100 miles east of where it had been abandoned. Towed to the port of New London, in Connecticut, the United States government bought, repaired it and returned to England. And there, on the docks of Chatham, was docked to its dismantling in the year 1879.

And here there was a curious story. At the end of the scrapping, Queen Victoria ordered to be built with superb teak timber table. And it gave the President of the United States, Rutherford then B. Hayes. And 1961, President John Kennedy decided that the elegant furniture was moved to the Oval Office of the White House and that's the table below which little John John appears in a famous picture during the tenure of his father. Later withdrawn by one of Kennedy's successors, Barak Obama has picked up again for release.

And 1947, to settle in the present location of Resolute weather station and the airport, was christened the place with the name of the historic boat.

***************

The Inns North hotel Quassuituq was collected in a corner of the south end of town, facing the bay and, from the window, could see an extended horizon, almost completely cleared of buildings and covered by snow. First, a few meters from your doorstep, a pole held several arrow-shaped beams pointing in miles the distance from the rest of the world: "Moscow, 6.331; Japan, 8.330; Las Vegas, 2.792; Polo Sur, 11.368; North Pole, “¡you are here!”.

Further back, several stacks of prefabricated materials for new buildings, formed a kind of parapet. And further, a stretch of gravel road running west, to skirt the beach and then continue north, toward the airport.

In the gloomy sky swirled, under the dim lights of the afternoon and evening, dark clouds that provided a gloomy aspect. Often, among the filthy rags of mist, Round face sun was cloudy and devitalized. Across the bay grew a mountain-shaped white whale that closed the horizon, if it were the fearsome Moby Dick.

Between the road and the sea, tended the esplanade more than a mile, dotted with wooden sleds apparently abandoned, a few "quad", snowmobiles, trailers, bicycles, maquinaria different, some small huts of fishermen and, near the beach, several motor boats. Almost never had human presence in space and that wide, only very occasionally, crossing a vehicle 4×4 or a "quad" on the road.

But, the square was bustling with life. More than two dozen sled dogs permanently inhabited, during daylight hours and night, each subject by a string tied to the neck and pinned firmly on the ground. The dogs, separated from each other by several meters, barked all the time and, usually in the evening, singing a sad song with their howling that was heard around Resolute as the lament of a chorus tune rushing the last of their songs, the agony of.

I asked him later to Bob, Debbie's husband, on dogs.

-During the summer months, 'he explained, when there is not enough snow yet for "Inuit" use their sleds, dogs remain outdoors and feeds them only one day per week. Therefore, they are hard and resistant. But it should not come

to them if one is not the owner: hunger makes them beasts.

-Did not die of cold?

-By cold, in: are strong. But sometimes, de improviso, a bear appears on the esplanade, kills one, it shatters and brings it before the landlord time to arrive with a rifle.

***************

I ate a juicy beef burger amizclero in the hotel restaurant, a spacious and bright, full of tables covered with plastic tablecloths and two large windows overlooking the bay. Debbie said with an air of sadness that he could not offer beer or wine because the people were banned alcohol. "I'll explain the reasons", I said.

Then he introduced me to Fred, that was the only guest at the hotel apart from me, together and take a few cups of weak coffee. At that time, lunch in the dining room a young couple "Inuit" with three young children.

Debbie, Bob and Fred had things to do, so that I entertained me and I went for a walk to visit the town. The outside thermometer read a temperature of 5 degrees below zero.

The number of buildings in Resolute would not reach the hundred, without exception all manufactured with a metal and several of them painted in bright colors. There were no streets marked as such and what could be considered the main route was just a bit steep a slope, lined with houses, rising from the hotel to the post office, a building with air and shaped hangar lair, built under the two high hills, capped and isolated, Resolute who watched from above. A half foot of the mountain, could see a huge tank of diesel for the supply of vehicles and heating of the population.

During the nearly three days I spent in Resolute, I repeated the same walk so many times that today still, I write this book more than one year later, I can almost do an accurate depiction of the town by referring only to my memory. Ascending from the hotel, crossing near the church, closed and barred, supermarket building and the "Co-Op". And before you get to the post, reached the police station, small school and sports. They were always the same snowmobile, "Quads" and vehicles 4×4 on doors of homes and, often, I passed the car responsible for refuse collection, a "pick-up" painted bright yellow. Walking through that kind of street needed some caution, because of the thin layer of frozen snow covering the floor of gravel.

Just find people in my small town walks. But that first evening, to enter the supermarket "Co-Op" to buy a bottle of shampoo, in anticipation that there were in my cabin boat, I understood the reason. Nobody likes the cold and loneliness of the Arctic, even those who were born there, and the supermarket, well heated, was the meeting place for residents of the city during much of the hour. The store was not more than three hundred square meters, fractionated in hallways lined shelves where canned food, meat and frozen fish, drinks and fruit and vegetables brought on the plane in the morning; and cooking pots, Tools, cleaning supplies and cleaning products, clothing and some electronics. There was also a telephone booth where you could call anywhere in the world with low-cost cards. And the people, buying something or other, often more a pretext than as necessary, formed groups to chat lively animation: in corridors, next to the two collection boxes, in the entrance hall, next to the coffee machine ... Everyone participated, employees and customers, men and women, "Inuit" and white, in the general chatter, unhurried, uncompromising, relaxed.

The same role as a meeting, almost like the Plaza Mayor of Mediterranean cities, played by the "Co-Op" Resolute, Volvi to describe it,, repeated exactly, in other Arctic locations I visited in the days following, while sailing through the Northwest Passage.

***************

I walked to the top of town. From time to time, crossed with me the odd "quad" led by a man or a woman "Inuit", swaddled with sealskin parkas. It was a mild and cold air. Entire width of the sky was covered with a muddy color thrush wing. On the roof of the sports center had landed a small flock of crows. The mountain had seen in European and African deserts, but I never find them in places as cold. It is interesting to note the enormous capacity to adapt to the life of a bird to man so associated with the idea of ​​death. Later, reading about civilization "Inuit", I knew that the raven is a species of animal sacred to them, a being who is credited demiurgic sometimes reincarnation as shaman.

As he climbed, I saw my left, refuge in the vestibule of a low gray house, a man who seemed engaged in some sort of craft work. I went over and, in effect, was an old "Inuit" which, help of a thick lime, the figure of a polished stone bear.

I prepared my camera. And then, the man looked up and beckoned me to conminándome not retratase. Then, I showed her clothes: a dirty and tattered overalls.

Insisted moving my camera and smiling. The man then told me in a good English:

-I am not photographing, please. Do not see the clothes I wear?

-I am not a professional photographer.

-Do not want to appear later in a calendar dressed like this.

-It is just a memory. I'm not a journalist or anything.

-All Whites Are the Same. My parents came here in the 53, brought into force by whites, and I came with them as a child. We suffered a lot. And all for now we pay a measly dollars to finish out the calendar. Do not make the picture or call my son. And it is very strong, I assure.

-I do not know what happened in the 53. And, I'm Spanish.

He got.

-So inform yourself and leave me alone. A target is always a target, no matter the place where he was born.

He turned and entered the house.

Me informé, course.

***************

A civilization "Inuit" would define a particular geographical circumstances, that sits where trees no longer grow. Namely: has flourished there where forests give way to grasslands tundra is home to just, summer, to a thin layer of vegetation; where stand of mountain glaciers; and solid waste land of stone and gravel. Canada, historically occupied by these populations, "Inuit", often nomadic, extend, by western, around the MacKenzie River delta and the continental part of what is today the province of the Northwest Territories; through the center, in the franja septentrional of the province of Manitota; and east, in northern Quebec and Labrador provinces and throughout the province of Nunavut. Besides, There are places in some arctic islands.

Is yours a hostile habitat and often cruel, in which, for nine months, the seas, rivers and lakes remain frozen, an ice desert where it rains just. Northern also canandiense, the "Inuit" also inhabit, by western, Strip Arctic Alaska, Aleutian Islands and eastern Siberia, while, by this, come to the big island of Greenland. Until relatively recently were known as "Eskimos", term is created from an old dialect and means "raw meat eaters". Today it is politically correct to call them "Inuit". Their language is the "Inuktitut", Eskimo-aleutianio source, a kind of lingua franca that speak virtually all Inuit of this, central and west, although there are some dialects that emerged from the primary language, as the "Yupik" Siberia and "Inuit-inuoiaq" Western Alaska. Their diet have traditionally constituted the caribou, Bears, whales and seals. And much more limited hunting of these species in the Canadian Arctic regions, population density is much lower in this area.

A strong will, ingenuity and expertise, civilization of "Inuit" survived almost a thousand years before contact with white men. For this, devised many hunting and fishing gear, as spears, harpoons and hooks, made with bones and with the few metals left by the Vikings or extracted from meteorites; light boats built with wood and leather, los "kayaks", the best boats to move around the lakes and seas between the ice sheets; prepared animal skins clothes more appropriate for the cold than those used by Europeans traveling to the Arctic; invented the "igloo", a type of housing that could take advantage of the miracle of ice to build a warm shelter; manufactured sleds, pulled by dogs, covering great distances over ice and snow without much effort for man; and found that some foods, seal as liver, served to prevent scurvy. Many of his findings were neglected until very recently by Europeans who visited the regions "Inuit", considered as the tools and habits worthy of primitive peoples and completely useless for civilized people. However, as later found, if Europeans had accepted and used in his travels, from the beginning, some of the habits, Useful tools and culture "Inuit", would have saved a number of conditions and lives.

Aside from the occasional contacts, and often battles, with white explorers between the sixteenth and nineteenth, the "Inuit" were isolated in northern Canada well into the twentieth century. It was in the 50 when the Canadian government became interested in the northern regions of the country and changed its policy of "passive sovereignty" by an active control of the area. This was due not a little that, World War II ended and plunged the world into the Cold War, the Soviet Union to begin to move to the Arctic to extend its area of ​​influence and sovereignty.

The consequences of the political situation irreversibly transformed into the world "Inuit". The Canadian government promoted the establishment of permanent communities around administrative centers, such as Iqaluit and Inuvik in the east to the west, Today the two main cities of the Canadian Arctic. Thanks to this, health programs reached, clinics and hospitals, schools, shelters for the elderly, Hotels, police stations, phone, mail, aircraft and, course, shopping centers. But with them came new diseases, as tuberculosis, sparking extremely high levels of mortality, in addition to diabetes, alcohol and drugs.

Temporary hunting camps were abandoned by the "Inuit" and disappeared completely nomadic. Many forms of traditional culture and also forgot, en only the decades, the world "Inuit" evolved a thousand times more deeply than had turned around the millennium.

The Arctic landscape also underwent some changes. The Americans, Canadian allies, established military bases as a deterrent to Soviet expansionist ambitions. And besides that, built a line of 31 radar stations for detecting long-distance missiles, between Alaska and the east coast of Greenland, most of them in the Arctic canandiense. The chain was christened protective Distant Early Warning Line, DEW LINE. At the conclusion of the Cold War, stations were abandoned and its destruction and waste materials today remember the holocaust scenarios devised by Hollywood.

And as a result of the postwar political situation, the human drama was referred to the old craftsman "Inuit" which refused to be photographed that evening in Resolute. Was as follows:

Faced with the threat of Soviet expansion, the Canadian government decided to establish urgently, in the year 1953, human settlements in remote regions of the Arctic that give witness to his presence and sovereignty. And who could survive better than the "Inuit", in those areas remote, climates so hard and so difficult living conditions?. The government then selected two sites to accommodate new communities: Grise Fjord today, on Ellesmere Island, today the northernmost population across Canada, y Resolute. The two places had taken early human settlements "Inuit" some five hundred years before, but since then remained uninhabited.

In August of that 1953, eight families from Inukjuak, a town in northern Quebec was then known as Port Harrison, were divided between Grise Fjord and Resolute by the patrol boat "Howe". A few weeks later, the same patrol took both places three other families, "Inuit", this time moved from Pond Inlet, in northern Baffin Island, to teach the "Inuit" quebequeños survival techniques in the Canadian High Arctic. All were promised houses and were assured that there was plenty of hunting and fishing in the new regions. We also ensured that they could return home after two years if he wished.

It was all a hoax. The land was barren, hunting and fishing scarce, there was no housing and the government agreed to return to their places of origin within two years. To leave them in their new territories, authorities did not allow them sufficient supplies and tools, or caribou skins, no tents to shelter the. Even more: the "Inuit of Quebec were only informed that they would be divided into two separate institutions when they were on board the" Howe ", bound to a territory more than two thousand kilometers from their places of origin. Those "Inuit", who had traveled north with the aim of early pioneers, they found that, actually, deportees were.

But, perversely, almost all survived: rehabilitated as housing the caves that the ancient "Inuit" lived five hundred years ago, learn the migration routes of beluga whales to catch them and extended their hunting grounds in an area of ​​over hundreds of square kilometers.

In the years 80 the last century, survivors and their descendants began legal action against the Canadian government, who defended the move saying that was not forced, but agreed, and that the ultimate purpose of the project was to relocate to new areas to families living in harsh conditions in Quebec.

However, in 1987, offset government 10 million Canadian dollars to the "Inuit" for the damages they caused his transfer to Resolute and Grise Fjord in 1953. And two years later, agreed to fund the return of "Inuit" who wished to their places of origin. But, only 40 of them decided to return. The remaining, on all young people born or grown in the new territories, opted to stay, proud of the struggle that their parents had been held by the terrible living conditions they had to face in his exile. However, stood firm on the view that the central government should apologize for what happened 34 years before.

And 1994, Commission on Aboriginal Peoples of Canada called for moral compensation for families treated in a "cruel and inhuman" and used by the government as "flagpoles" to ensure the country's sovereignty in the High Arctic. But the government responded with new arguments for his innocence.

The book "The Long Exile", published in the 2006 by Melanie McGrath's, and a report-report published in "The New York Times" in April 2008, by American Elizabeth Royte, , entitled "The Path of Tears, gave new impetus to allegations of "Inuit". At last, few months before my arrival in Resolute, the Canadian government made a formal statement of apology.

Not always the world needs more Canadas, against what they proclaimed the slogan I read in the window of a bookstore in Ottawa.

It is quite true, as I suggested the artisan "Inuit", should be informed of how things are in the country where you move before throwing a picture of a native. Especially if you wear a white man on your back, you like or dislike you, whether or not you responsible for them, sins that correspond to the color of your skin, which are certainly few and rarely venial.

***************

The summer night in Resolute supposed, simply, a faint light, without ever reaching full darkness, as if the heavens decide to lie on the shoulders, for a few hours, a light gray veil. Me senté a cenar con Debbie, Bob y Fred, the other hotel guest. The menu is made up a pasta dish and a beluga whale filet.

-The hunted two days ago told me Debbie, the animal's remains are still on the beach. I should have seen: a herd of over thirty entered the Bay belugas, their backs out of the water white and cream scoops. The "Inuit" killed six.

-Is whaling is free?.

-There is a quota of parts for the "Inuit", just for them, "he explained Bob. That comes from agreements 1993 with government, that returned to the "Inuit" land rights, minerals, hunting and fishing in almost 350.000 square kilometers in the province of Nunavut.

-I guess that made them rich.

-In theory, one. In fact, with the laws of recent years can be said that the "Inuit", at least those of Nunavut, are again the masters of their destiny, with all the advantages of civilization is also in matters of education, health and quality of life. But many problems remain ...

Debbie interrupted:

-The big problem is the speed with which the "Inuit" has jumped from primitive to modern life. In just three decades, have gone their traditional ways of life. And like a good majority of them live on state benefits, Inventiveness not need to eat or to live comfortably. And the problems are compounded further in places like Resolute, these remote islands left by the hand of God in the arms of the Devil

-Have surplus money and time, said Bob. Young people are offered scholarships to study anywhere in Canada, but most prefer to do nothing, is difficult to find kids who are raised to do something in the future. And the path of alcohol and drugs is the easiest for them. Hence, to depression and suicide, There is only one step.

-So alcohol is illegal in Resolute-sentenced Debbie- and therefore I can not offer a single beer or glass of wine.

-And how can you have alcohol if alcohol is not?, Fred asked point-blank.

Bob laughed heartily before replying:

-Do you know any human community where no trade in the prohibited? Do not ask me how because I do not know; but alcohol and drugs come in Resolute in abundance.

Then we chatted a while about polar bears, one of my favorite songs. Debbie promised me it would take me the next day with his 4×4 to look for people around.

-Often come up here, to look in rubbish. We also take you to see the place where you installed the "Inuit" forcibly taken to Resolute in the year 1953.