Monday 19 March 2007

Nature Calls

At least Glastonbury has toilet facilities. In the Arctic, it’s back to nature. You dig a hole in the ice with a shovel, squat and pray you don’t get a frost bitten bum or attacked by a polar bear. All of a sudden, those portaloos seem like luxury.
There is also a device called a ‘pee bottle’ that women are advised to buy in order to wee in it in their sleeping bag at night. This avoids freezing outside at some unearthly hour. But what happens if you miss the bottle?

Before I dismiss the trip as a ludicrous idea I do some research. I’m sure that for many people the opportunity to go to the Arctic is a ‘Trip of a Lifetime’.
I have read all about Climate Change and the disappearing sea ice. This might well be my only opportunity to go to the Arctic. Shouldn’t I grab it?
The Arctic is certainly not high on my list of family holiday destinations. For the past nine years every Easter we have gone to stay near Dartmouth in Devon. I’m not sure what reaction I’d get if I said, ‘Change of plan this year. Fancy trekking 120 miles across ice this Easter?’

I google Baffin Island and here are some of the key facts I discover:

The island is one of several Arctic ‘hot spots’ . This is an area where the temperature has risen, on average, a degree Celcius per decade.
Sea ice is disappearing from the waters around Baffin Island nearly four times as fast as the rest of the Arctic.
Canadian activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier, from Iqaluit, Baffin Island, has just been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness about global warming and how it affects the local Inuit population. She puts a human face on the devastation being wrought by global warming. She said, “Inuit and other northerners are already experiencing the direct impact of human-induced climate-change, and we face dramatic problems with possible social and cultural dislocation in coming years.”
The warmer weather has been blamed for a growing number of deaths in Nunavut, as hunters fall through ice that was once stable.
I imagine putting my foot into the icy waters and the sledge dragging me down to the bottom of the ocean. Not a good way to go.

1 comment:

Dave Richards said...

This is really great to read...thanks for sharing your ideas and experiences...i hope you have a great time this Easter...and well for some more ideas and resources you can also visit my blog on Easter Greetings sometime and check out all that i've posted there!!!