Last leg: from Tuktoyaktuk to Inuvik: Yann
Last leg: from Tuktoyaktuk to Inuvik
I am writing aboard while we are sailing up the beautiful and quiet Mackenzie river to our last stop: Inuvik where the boat will winter. The landscape has drastically changed since Cambridge Bay or even the stopped we had on the way to Tuktoyaktuk. Tuktoyaktuk, still on the marine coast but at the mouth of the river, still across the Arctic Circle yet not polar any more, still an Inuit town but very southern Canadian in many ways. The language is gone and a road comes here. Now there is a night and a morning everyday, here there are trees, cumulonimbus and the weather resembles what we call a winter.
It looks like a nice place to end an Arctic journey, the North-West Passage is technically completed and the vegatation desolation and cities isolation are behind us.
Of course there is still much ahead. The Inuit populations and culture continues in various and certainly interesting ways in Alaska and Russia. Other native or migrated population are to be visited. I would definitely like to meet these people striving or thriving such extreme environments, I would like to experience all these Arctic natures, the North Slope of Alaska, its steep mountains, the improbable Diomede Islands lying at the verge of everything, the fierce Chukchi sea as well as the perfect geometry of the volcanic Aleutian Islands. And then, then is Japan, Siberia, or the western coast of America. We also heard along way of the beauty of the rivers, many of which so little visited, especially in Russia. Then is the rest of world. Later.
Now is fall coming, some parts of the boat and the crew are tired. Good mental and physical exhaustion aboard. It has been 3 months of sailing, a few thousands kilometres, many degrees both on the map and the thermometer, many calories left at sea but also many encounters many cultural experiences, many discoveries and as many departures. Now is the time to winter, to get back home and spend time with people, to soak with our experience and shape the dreams for the coming ones.
Yann
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