It is my last evening at Lake Hoare Camp. The rest of the camp’s inhabitants have retired to their tents for the night. The sun has moved off the Asgard range, and is now shining gently down valley. Knowing that a helo is to come for me in a few hours, I am loath to crawl into my tent and bag. I just want to absorb as much as I can in the time I have left. I sit on a boulder outside my tent and let my mind wander. These valleys are mystical, mysterious. I have been lucky enough to have stayed here for days, long enough to settle into a frame of mind that allows me to begin at least to see some of the questions. Never mind the answers; the questions are enough.

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One question: what impelled, compelled the seals up here? On my hikes I have seen dozens of naturally mummified, freeze-dried seal carcasses scattered about, many, many long miles from the sea. As graceful as they are in water, on land a seal is extremely clumsy, propelling itself with agonizing inefficiency with motions that I can only think of as a writhing. On ice they rarely go more that a few yards from their haul-out holes, but here they are, in places where access is difficult even for us, with boots, crampons where needed, opposable thumbs. Why? Whatever force it was, though, allowed for no disobedience.

It seems to be still in force. I don’t know of any recent examples of seals coming up here, but Hassan the glaciologist reported that last month an adelie penguin wandered into camp. These creatures are scarcely better suited to terrestrial locomotion than the seals, and certainly are just as far from food here. Indeed, just a meter or so from the door to my tent is a penguin carcass. How old it is is anybody’s guess -- like the seals it is naturally mummified and bleached.

Projecting how I will feel as the camp recedes through the perspex canopy of the chopper, I predict that something will be missing. Just climbing in and going will be incomplete, somehow inadequate. There must be some protocol for it.

An idea slowly comes to me. There are no indigenous people on this continent, but that is not true of the Arctic. The Inuit have lived in that environment almost as harsh as this one since time immemorial. And they have done more than just live there -- they are one of the few peoples to have lived in balance with the carrying capacity of their surroundings. Their legends and myths have a beauty that reflects this. Their physical creations are minimal, just adequate to afford a reasonable chance at survival; of course, resources are at a premium, but more than that they don’t measure their self-worth by accumulation. For the most part their sculptures are small carvings, but they create small cairn-like monuments on the land called inukshuks, that bear varying degrees of resemblance to the human form. Sometimes these are on ridges, and help herd migrating caribou into defiles where they can be hunted with greater ease. Sometimes inukshuks are markers, such as when a son kills his first seal.

They always act as a portal to a spiritual dimension, to the Inuit’s inner world.

It seems a fitting gesture. I wouldn’t dare build a full-size inukshuk here -- moving rocks is no more allowed than spilling liquid on the ground, but given that every pebble here in camp has been disturbed by years of seasonal occupancy, a smaller version does not strike me as problematic. It doesn’t take long, and when I am done the result is about quarter scale, perhaps 16 inches tall. It is more than enough: it is the principle of the thing that matters. It is a small symbol of my acknowledgment of the deeper dimensions of this place.

I head to my tent, knowing that I will sleep without regret. The inukshuk will not last long. If it is still standing then, the fierce winter winds that leave evidence all up and down these valleys are sure to topple it and scatter its components back whence they came. They can do it now for all I care -- it has already served its purpose.