Alone Against the North Read Free Page B

Sir Alexander Mackenzie found that in British Columbia he could follow well-worn trails made by aboriginal people, whereas in the harsh subarctic wastes where survival was infinitely more difficult, there were plenty of places his native guides could tell him nothing about. The difference is one of environment: coastal British Columbia’s more favourable geography could support a larger population, whereas the Canadian subarctic was sparsely inhabited, with a low life expectancy and periodic famines during harsh winters that could obliterate entire hunting bands. Indeed, archaeology informs us that life expectancy among pre-contact hunter-gatherers in the subarctic was extremely low, no more than mid-twenties. There were few elders to speak of. Thus, it was difficult for anything like detailed knowledge to pass from one generation to the next. Nomadic hunter-gatherers would certainly have possessed a good knowledge of the broad outlines of their hunting territories, the major rivers and lakes, heights of land, and watersheds. But within these immense districts were plenty of unknowns. Moreover, without any aid to memory in the form of a written language or maps, it was utterly impossible for any person to memorize the tens of thousands of different lakes and waterways in just one portion of Canada’s northern wilds, let alone names for even a small percentage of these landmarks. That is why even to this day, most of these lakes and waterways still have no names. To name them all would be practically impossible— several million distinct names would be required.
    Population scarcity also made the nature of exploration in northern North America different from exploration in Africa,Asia, or further south, where Europeans could rely to some extent on local knowledge of an area’s geography. In contrast, explorers in Canada’s desolate wilds sometimes couldn’t find any people at all, and those they did find were often unable to tell them much about the country beyond their own territory. Often, European explorers and aboriginal guides would venture together into unexplored territory that neither group had any prior knowledge about. The subarctic forests in particular were an area with limited human populations. These immense forests, consisting chiefly of black spruce and tamarack, possess meagre nutritious resources, scarce game, and long, harsh winters. Populations in these areas were usually confined to major rivers or other water routes.
    Stray far enough from a major waterway in the subarctic wilds, and there is a reasonable chance that you may find yourself in an area previously unvisited by humans. Mind you, without a time machine and in the absence of archaeological evidence, we can’t know with certainty what areas have and have not been visited by people in the distant past. That is why responsible explorers seldom make any claims on this front: they are impossible to verify and therefore meaningless. That is why, in the realm of exploration, records are essential. Just as science is about documentation and publication, exploration is similarly grounded in the publication and dissemination of maps, journals, scientific reports, books, and photographs. That is also why in explorers’ terminology, an “unexplored area” is anywhere on earth where no records exist of human exploration.
    One area that stands out as exceptionally sparse on people, even by the standards of Canada’s northern wilderness—and which was soon to exercise a strange spell over me—is themassive wetland known as the Hudson Bay Lowlands. The Lowlands is one of the world’s least-explored regions—a place where bears outnumber humans, maps are often inaccurate, and rivers are so remote that they have no names in any language. Stretching across 373,700 square kilometres of desolate muskeg, stunted forest, and windswept tundra, the Lowlands is North America’s largest wetland—an Amazon