Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [106]
I realize I ought to be more grateful. Logic tells me I should be basking in the magic of such a glorious, rare opportunity. In fact, The Thumb said the same thing to me recently, suggesting that I'm whining a little too much these days and that other people who got to travel around the world at somebody else's expense, were paid substantial amounts of money for doing so, enjoyed the cosseted life of a TV celebrity with all its attendant glories, and were given free gift vouchers to a local spa for their birthday might be slightly more appreciative.
Oh yeah? Well, good for them. I don't care. Right now, I'm tired, I'm cold, my feet hurt, and I want to go home.
“HUH! Yaaaay-eeeeaaaa-aaaaay,” the elders bray in unison as the man in the feathers continues to fling himself this way and that. “HUH! Awwwww-eeee-aaaaaaaaa-eeeee-awwwwww.”
Would it be presumptuous of me to suggest that these are in fact the Wailers, and they just spelled their name wrong on the sign?
“HUH! HUH!! Yaaaaaaay-eeeeeaaaaa-aaaaay. Awwwww-eeee-aaaaaaaaa-eeeee-awwwwww. HUH!”
Heading back to the lobby, with Fat Kid and the crew in tow, Morgan introduces me to an imposing thickset man with long black hair almost down to his waist.
“This is my cousin,” he says. “His name is Bunna.”
“I run trips to Point Barrow every day to look for polar bears,” Bunna says, his large round face curiously expressionless.
Really? How odd. “And why would you do that?”
This earns me a strange look. Seems not many people around here quibble over whether polar bears are interesting or not. They simply are and that's that.
According to Science, polar bears used to be raccoons. Don't ask me how, it's all very complicated and happened millions of years ago, before documentaries, but at some point in time the raccoons evolved into brown bears, and some of the brown bears then turned white. Or something. Honestly, I have no idea; that's what libraries are for.
Now, however, having lasted this long, the polar bears' very survival is teetering on the brink. There are, at current estimates, around sixteen thousand of them roaming the world, which still seems like more than we really need, but the number is getting smaller all the time, due in part to poachers illegally shooting them to sell their fur on the black market, but mainly because the polar ice cap is vanishing, slowly destroying the balance of the bears’ maritime habitat. Less pack ice means less territory for hunting. Some bears even exhaust themselves while they're swimming around looking for seals to crush and eat, and simply drown. Result: Science predicts that polar bears will have completely disappeared from Alaska by the year 2050. Of course, from a conservation standpoint, that would be a catastrophe. Whereas for the rest of us it merely means there's less chance that something big, white, and hairy will come running out of the wild someday and eat our kids.
Anyway, Point Barrow is a clever decoy. Every year, the townsfolk haul a bunch of whale meat and bones out to this remote, snowy promontory and leave them there to keep the bears fed and preoccupied and away from their homes.
“I'm going out tomorrow to make a trail,” Bunna says. “D'you want to come along?”
Goodness, no! Not a chance. I don't like Nature, I tell him, or anything to do with wild animals. Now, let's never mention it again.
Honestly, have we learned nothing in our short time together? Nature is not our friend. Fact. Surely, therefore, we would all be better served by leaving it well alone and minding our own business. That's my philosophy at least.
But apparently such an argument holds no water out here. Besides, viewers will be very disappointed if we come to