Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [101]
“Where does it begin, the ocean?”
Aroun etches a line in the snow with the heel of his boot, on what would normally be the beach, I guess—“The waves come up to here in the summertime.”—evidenced by a tide of petrified breakers standing to attention, frozen in place before they could reach shore, and crisscrossed by a mosaic of hairline cracks.
It's a ghostly, incredible sight. Like walking into a piece of contemporary art in which the painter thought his feelings could best be expressed by leaving the canvas blank and going for lunch instead. If at one time I was the least bit concerned about global warming and the ice caps melting, after visiting Alaska I'm not so sure any more.
Venturing out farther. “Am I on the ocean right now, d'you think?”
“Yes, you are. There's water underneath us, so don't tread on the cracks.”
“Why? Is it unlucky?”
“Unlucky for you if you do, yes.”
Apparently, if you step on a crack, it may split open and swallow you, sucking you into the icy waters below.
“In the summer,” he adds, “where you're standing right now, you'd be up to your shoulders in water—”
“I would?”
“—and maybe over your head.”
Well, that's all I need to know. Since that psychic planted in my mind years ago that I'd someday die by drowning, I've not been able to shake off my profound fear of water, which these days sits very comfortably alongside all my other profound fears: heights, enclosed spaces, dogs, genitalia, spiders, and the rest. But that's not the only reason I decide to turn back. Apparently, there are roaming polar bears out here, too.
TV commercials and kids’ picture books perpetuate the myth that a polar bear would make the perfect house pet: it's just a couch with a head after all, soft like chenille and super-cuddly to the touch. Now I discover from Aroun that this is nothing but clever PR. In truth they're ruthless, aggressive predatory carnivores, vicious as hell, who don't believe in snuggling. Try it, and they'll pounce on you, rip your arms and legs off, and use your lower intestines as a parasol. They do it to their own cubs sometimes, so why would they spare the likes of you?
Bears are a real menace in Barrow, particularly when they wander into town and roam the streets scavenging for food. Their top preference is for ring seals. Those are favorites. The bears will lie in wait by holes out on the ice, then, when the seals pop out, they grab them by the head, crush and kill them. When seals are scarce, though, they'll eat just about anything—baby walruses, moose, pets, trash, you. They're not fussy.
I ask one of the local cops: given the choice of ways to die prematurely out here, which is better—falling through the ice or being attacked by a polar bear? He doesn't give it much thought. “I'd probably want to get eaten by the polar bear,” he says.
“You would? Why?”
“It would be over quicker.”
Gulp.
Continuing our ride into town, I'm startled by what a cadaver of a place this is, laid out on the slab of Alaska's North Slope, the rigor mortis of seemingly endless winter robbing it of all character, submerging anything that might be attractive about Barrow beneath sheets of snow and ice several feet thick.
“It's okay,” Aroun assures me from behind the wheel, “it'll be light soon.”
And by “soon” he means May. Just four months to go.
Up here, the sun sets in November (in their language, Inupiat, that's nippivik tatqiq, which translates as Moon of the Setting Sun) and doesn't rise again until the end of January (siqinyasaq tatqiq, or Moon of the Returning Sun), meaning it's night the whole time; then in May (suvluravik tatqiq, or Moon of the Flowing Rivers), after a few months of murky twilight, the sun eases back into view once more, bobbing a full 360 degrees around the horizon 'til August (aqavirvik tatqiq, or Moon When the Birds Molt), making it daylight the whole time. It's an awkward, extreme arrangement, forcing the locals to take drastic retaliatory measures to avoid a screwed-up body clock,