I May Be Some Time...

My sister Meaghan gave me a brilliant book for Christmas: Pierre Berton’s “Prisoners of the North.” I sort of sneered at the title, assuming she was making a jab at my present working conditions, but that soon vanished when I started to read it.
Mr. Berton focuses on some southern individuals who truly went to heroic and, some would say, foolhardy attempts to explore this part of Canada. I think some of them were certifiably unwell, but whatever their motivations and reasoning, as I look north across a vast expanse of blue-white sea ice , my hat goes off to them. If the weather up here is inclement, I sit in my heated, furnished, well-stocked little house and whine if my espresso supply gets low. My worst hardship is having to boil my drinking water. The men in the book endured, by eating pelts, and, you guessed it, each other.
The argument has always been that people, if they want to survive up here, need to imitate and heed the Inuit. I believe this credo to be true. But even the Inuit died of starvation, and fell through the ice, and froze to death. That they continue to thrive against constant hardship makes them the real heroes.