Unsolaced by Gretel Ehrlich

Author:Gretel Ehrlich [Ehrlich, Gretel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2021-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

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Every day was a long hike up and over mountains and ice. When we crossed wide frigid rivers, we took off our boots and pulled on neoprene “socks” worn with Teva sandals. Before stepping into the water, we unstrapped our backpacks in case we fell so the weight of them wouldn’t cause us to drown. But on the other hand, if we lost our gear and food, we’d die anyway, so we didn’t let it happen. We linked arms or used our trekking poles for stability, and slowly made our way across with our pants pulled up over the knee—anything to keep our clothes dry. Sun out. No wind. “It’s the kind of silence in which you can hear the rocks getting old,” Chuck, one of our group, said. We followed the edge of a lake. During a rest I took off my boots and wiggled my raw toes, then doctored the abrasions and blisters. We heard water falling stereophonically: the remnants of the last ice age melting. A hundred tiny streams wormed their way through gravel; where water leaked down the two-thousand-foot-high scarp, the rock face was black and gold. “Here we are at the end of time,” I said to no one in particular.

Four days in and I was already feeling hunger. I’d come from a high-protein meat diet in Africa to one that was only candy bars and dried soup. I had packets of crackers and cookies and one sausage that I rationed. One slice a day—that’s all I permitted myself. As we walked the deep glacial trench, we saw no scat, no spoor, no animals. We were the only megafauna around.

Thick mats of saxifrage covered the rocks. Saxifrage is derived from the Latin for “rock-breaking herb”; the plant has an uncanny power to burst through the calcium-rich limestone latticework. Purple saxifrage evolved in the high Arctic. Its buds overwinter, so as soon as the snow melts in June, flowering can occur. Three or four weeks later, the ripened seeds cross-fertilize if there is a bumblebee or a butterfly around. If not, the male anthers grow long, bend inward, and as soon as a gust of wind pushes them toward the female stigma, pollination occurs. When purple saxifrage is in bloom, elsewhere, on the southern part of Ellesmere Island, caribou are calving. The entire season of one plant is thirty days.

Thinking of those botanical adaptations, I regretted how ill prepared we humans are. Survival was on our minds—not that I was frightened of our deep isolation. I was simply vigilant. But I rationed my food too earnestly and discovered that the salami I’d brought had gone bad.

Everything solid that I’d been able to carry—crackers, cookies, candy bars—was gone by the end of the second week. Hunger woke me: I stood outside my tent and licked the pockets of my parka for crumbs. Nights were below freezing. Days were barely above. It was always light.

Hunger became an ally. My metabolism changed and my understanding of this land changed with it.

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