At the Floe Edge

Cohn mounts the machine and I climb on behind him. He takes a last look at Kunuk’s gps monitor; we are a dot far from the shoreline. Even in the worst-case scenario we probably won’t die but we will have to wait hours to be rescued.

The waves of ice are smoothed out by the snowmobile’s suspension. I see the cairn, then the iceberg, then, tiny in the distance, the huge fuel-storage tanks of Igloolik. Cohn stops the machine and climbs off, engine running.

“Still alive?”

I nod.

“Gotta take a leak.”

For one mad moment, like a man on the edge of a cliff feeling an irrational impulse to jump, I look at the kill switch on the machine. Cohn climbs back on and whisks me to the front door of my “hotel,” a complex of school portables. I roll off.

“We really mainlined you, didn’t we?”