making progress
DESCRIPTION
Canoe & Kayak Managing Editor Dave Shively and Staff Photographer Robert Zaleski's photo essay flipbook feature from their story in the May 2012 "North Issue" on exploring the lonesome rivers of Nunavut.TRANSCRIPT
![Page 1: Making Progress](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062502/568c4a8d1a28ab4916989b52/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
making progressb y d av e s h i v e ly / / p h o t o s b y r o b e rt z a l e s k i
![Page 2: Making Progress](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062502/568c4a8d1a28ab4916989b52/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
a lone cairn marks apex beach near the weathered ruins of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s original South Baffin Island headquarters.
![Page 3: Making Progress](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062502/568c4a8d1a28ab4916989b52/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
No roads lead to iqaluIt. the broad spat of plane-landing tundra has kept this “New york city of the North” the gateway for any air travel deeper into Nunavut—a vast uninhabited territory almost three times the size of texas.
![Page 4: Making Progress](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062502/568c4a8d1a28ab4916989b52/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
Yes, just like New York City, only with 7,000 people and polar bear-shaped license plates.
![Page 5: Making Progress](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062502/568c4a8d1a28ab4916989b52/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
the community cemetery’s whitewashed wooden crosses reinforce every Wild West parallel.
m a k i n g p r o g r e s s
![Page 6: Making Progress](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062502/568c4a8d1a28ab4916989b52/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
every board and nail, every vegetable and piece of fruit, must be shipped from the south—every kilowatt of energy generated from a massive store of diesel fuel that arrives on a barge before freeze-up and must last through the winter.
![Page 7: Making Progress](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062502/568c4a8d1a28ab4916989b52/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
Climate change is magnified. We get one reply: “It IS WHat IS.”
![Page 8: Making Progress](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062502/568c4a8d1a28ab4916989b52/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
We pack for the bush flight to the pristine Soper River, rolling 16-foot inflatable canoes into tight bundles and loading food five days’ food into bear-proof barrels.
![Page 9: Making Progress](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062502/568c4a8d1a28ab4916989b52/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
The days blur in Two-hour incremenTs of waking, waiTing and waTching for a weaTher window ThaT never opens.
![Page 10: Making Progress](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062502/568c4a8d1a28ab4916989b52/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
louis’ dashboard hula daNcer doubles over as we bounce and scrape through the road’s puddles of unknown depth. air-travel be damned, we rally as far we can up the sporadically maintained road north out of town along the Sylvia Grinnell River.
Iqaluit
![Page 11: Making Progress](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062502/568c4a8d1a28ab4916989b52/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
louis-philip, the “inukpak” (big giant), and i gear up head-to-toe. Louis is wearing shorts, with some neoprene underneath and SIze 14 CHaCoS. He bends to fill his water bottle directly from the river. I follow suit. Nowhere to go but out, to the arctic waters of the labrador sea
![Page 12: Making Progress](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062502/568c4a8d1a28ab4916989b52/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
We unload and start the hike out, the beach quickly covered in the risen tide.
![Page 13: Making Progress](https://reader035.vdocuments.us/reader035/viewer/2022062502/568c4a8d1a28ab4916989b52/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
the human-shaped stone inukshuks are the emblematic guides, signaling that you are not alone out on the land.