It's our third day on Herschel Island and I've decided it's my new favourite place in the Yukon. I've pitched a job swap to one of the park rangers, but he's not biting.
Called Qikiqtaruk by the Inuvialuit, Herschel Island is an enchanting but little-visited territorial park on the Yukon's arctic coast. Quite distinct from any other place in the Yukon, Herschel imparts a sense of being in an exotic foreign location like South Georgia Island or Iceland.
Most of Herschel's gregarious and knowledgeable park rangers are Inuvialuit from Mackenzie Delta communities. For a few precious months each summer they are Herschel's stewards and hosts to the small groups of visitors who pass through.
On the day we arrived, ranger Andy Tardiff greeted our floatplane and led us on a tour of the settlement buildings, gravesites and icehouses. Most Herschel visitors take a half-day tour from Inuvik, but we planned to hike and camp across the island for several days.
Andy advised us our plans might have to change. He told us we should stay in the trapper's cabin, one of the settlement's few habitable buildings usually reserved for Inuvialuit hunters, researchers and winter travelers.
It turned out a young, bold grizzly had taken up residence on Herschel and was frequenting Pauline Cove. Over the five days we stayed on Herschel, this handsome bear made an appearance several times across the bay, often toying with a rotten, half-buried seal carcass on the beach. Our ambitious hiking plans were somewhat curtailed, with longer explorations requiring the company of a shotgun-toting ranger.
Sometimes tranquil, and at other times ferocious, Herschel's harsh and vulnerable environment gives Yukoners a very real link to the high arctic. But in spite of its isolation and inhospitable climate, Herschel boasts a surprising concentration of cultural, historical and natural features.
The island's colourful human history is filled with the exploits of whaling ships, explorers, missionaries, trading posts, RCMP dogsled patrols and the region's inhabitants, the Inuvialuit. Carpeted in wildflowers and frequented by scores of birds, wildlife and sea mammals, Herschel is biologically quite productive by arctic standards.
Geographically, the island seems out of place. The first clue to Herschel's odd presence became apparent from the air. Flying west from Inuvik along an austere coastline punctuated by sand spits and slumping headlands, Herschel looms on the horizon as the only sizable geographical feature between the Mackenzie Delta and Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.
During the last Ice Age, the Laurentide ice sheet pushed north from the continent and 'dropped' into the ocean, scooping out a basin and leaving a mound of displaced mud. After the sea rose, the North Slope's new appendage became a 115 km2 island eventually known to the Inuvialuit as Qikiqtaruk, meaning 'it is island'.
Ice surrounds Herschel most of the year. We could watch the edge of the ice floe to the north of Herschel-a winding line that plays tricks on the eyes and relocates with the weather. Even at the height of summer, when floatplanes and small boats are frequenting Pauline Cove, a change in the wind can bring pack ice along the shores and into the bay, stranding visitors and complicating access to the island.
Just a few kilometres from the mainland, Herschel can become an unintended home to caribou, muskox and the odd bear when the sea ice melts and they find themselves surrounded by water. Though some animals will swim across Workboat Passage, many are content to stay and graze on the smorgasbord of flowers and vegetation that covers Herschel.
The sight of large stumps and driftwood littering the shores of the treeless North Slope seemed incongruous at first. The Mackenzie River carries logs from lush forests in the Liard and Mackenzie watersheds and deposits them along the Beaufort coastline. Used for fires, shelters, boats and tools, the arrival of driftwood is a phenomena of nature that-like the seasonal arrival of caribou and sea mammals-is a vital resource that sustained the Inuvialuit people for thousands of years.
Under round-the-clock daylight, we adjusted our schedule to accommodate the light, often napping during the height of day to avoid the intense overhead sun. Instead, we explored in the middle of the Arctic night to enjoy endless golden twilight and observe Herschel's creatures during their most active hours.
One doesn't have to go far. The wetland at the head of the cove reveals red-necked phalaropes, golden plovers and arctic terns, and a sizable colony of black guillemots makes their home in the dilapidated Mission building. An eider duck built her nest in the lee of a settlement building, and 'Bianca' and 'Mick', a pair of sociable long-tailed jaegers, surf the gusty winds overhead.
I was prepared for the North Slope's notorious explosions of biting insects, but stiff winds kept Herschel's mosquitoes at bay. Though we carried bug jackets with us, only once during a lull in the wind did clouds of mosquitoes drive us to put them on. Strong breezes surged across the spit at Pauline Cove around the clock. Now and then we spotted a caribou bull standing motionless in the jumble of bleached driftwood, nose to the wind and visibly relieved to escape the bugs.
I lost track of time on Herschel Island, and I didn't want to leave. Artifacts of Herschel's complex past, its alluring environment, the quality of the light at 2 am-all are vivid in my memory. More than once I thought, this is a 'heart' place. Now if I can only get the park ranger to take me up on my offer.