Ellesmere Island
Could you imagine living at the very top of the world? Well, you couldn't do it really - the very top place on the planet is The North Pole and regardless of all that propaganda about Santa-You-Know-Who, there isn't much there.
And by the way, according to Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams – a very good read – the north pole is not constant. Well, you don’t need that to confirm it – it’s a known fact. It’s just that Lopez puts it very simply.
See this page for more on Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez
http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0697...
The ice is constantly shifting so you can never say for sure where the exact spot would be. There’s also that long complicated explanation about Polaris, which is described as being merely a celestial coincidence.
About the best we can do to say we have been to the North Pole and stayed for any length of time to speak of is to visit the Canadian Forces Station (CFS) Alert. To find it we need to go to the most extreme tip of Ellesmere Island, and if you'll look at the map, you'll see that it's about as close as you're going to get to the North Pole.
http://www.athropolis.com/map2.htm
Ellesmere Island National Park is actually Canada's second largest.
(Really good fun, eh? Ha ha! But not exactly a Sunday afternoon outing with the kiddies park.)
Its 37,775 square kilometers is a territory which consists sedimentary mountains, ice caps, glaciers, fiords and fertile arctic oases. In other words, ice, ice and more ice, to the tune of about six-and-a-half times the size of Prince Edward Island.
The park covers half of the portion of Ellesmere Island north of Greely Fiord and a third of the island’s north coastline. Intricate networks of rock pattern, frost cracked ground, willows and wildflowers are found there. They extend to the mountains and glaciers. In the clear dry air they seem close enough to touch.
Like the old song says – and I can see for miles and miles and miles … that’s how it is up there. There’s not much to break your vision so what you can see gives the impression that it’s much closer. Ever been in Toronto and looked across the city from the western beaches? It looks like the CN Tower is just a few steps away. It’s big, and when you’re looking up at the tower itself, it makes it seem closer. But it is a good hour’s walk from Sunnyside.
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