The geese are calling. We sense the changing of the seasons. Summer fades into terra cotta richness in the tundra. It is as if the warm colours of fall attempt to extend summer temperatures just a little longer. The days too are becoming shorter. The sun still crawls into the sky at sunrise but at a much more civilized hour on the clock, just as it exits slowly at an earlier hour.
Glimmering in the sunshine, flocks of snow geese and Canada geese winged their way overhead, moving in a classic V-formation. Tracks of caribou mingled with many more of their kind and blended with the tread of a bear and the scampering of small fox feet. Flocks of pipits called as they gathered to begin their migration south.
Incised into the east side of the Boothia Peninsula, Eclipse Harbour had a linear pattern. Ancient rocky ridges were scoured and grooved by glaciers. Icebergs marched into a flooded valley. Inland lakes and rivers rested where golden vegetation swept from on high to rest in reflective pools on the tundra. Conflicting desires arouse within our souls. Perched high, we could sit and watch a ground squirrel prepare for winter or a herd of caribou calmly grazing, and yet there was a tug to wander further, on and on into the vast unknown here at the most northerly land of the continent.
Excitement came and went in pulses throughout the afternoon. Ice floes were scattered randomly. Between them a polar bear swam and a bowhead whale exhaled, its blow a rainbow of diamonds. An island of ice was circumnavigated, its upper surface eroded into terrestrial-style hills and river valleys. As daylight fades we are once again united with a sea of ice where agile gulls dip in predatory attacks on tiny polar cod.
Although the birds and plants are telling us to move south, we are not yet ready to pay heed and our adventures continue tomorrow.
