A Walk In The Park

I have been invited on a trip to Baffin Island.
I haven’t got a clue where it is.
“Where exactly is it?” I ask.
“An Arctic island off Canada. It’s just a little walk in the park. Why don’t you come along as the journalist?”
My immediate thought is, ‘Impossible. I have two young children – Joe, age 5, and Lara, age 9. The longest I have been away from them is for a weekend.’ I imagine my little boy’s face, creased up in tears, clinging to me at the airport, screaming, ‘Don’t Go, Mummy!’ My pre-teen daughter would no doubt stamp her foot in a strop, ‘It’s so unfair. Why do you get to go on holiday and we have to stay in this dump?’
Home is a Victorian house in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, near Richmond Park. It is NOT a dump. Admittedly, our once quiet street has become a dumping ground for cars since residential parking was introduced in the adjacent roads - but that’s another matter altogether.

That night I dig out the atlas and look up Baffin Island. The only name I recognise near the Island is Greenland. I shiver just thinking about the place. I once interviewed Kari Herbert, daughter of polar explorer, Wally Herbert, about growing up in a hut in Greenland. Her family lived among Polar Inuit hunters in sub zero temperatures and she ate seal for tea. Would I see any seals on Baffin Island? And what, more importantly, do people eat on Baffin Island?