The Nasavaq (an old freighter boat) (storey 40 of 40)

Coppermine, N.W.T. Canada

Lying on the wind swept beach, a giant bank of snow has started to soften and reveal the outlines of a brooding hulk. A curve of ribs is displayed against the skyline. A dark splash begins to show on the rib line as the sun finds it attractive against the vast whiteness, the sun concentrates its warmth on the black spot and the blemish begins to grow. Slowly the black spot reaches the size of a dinner plate, it freezes at night and the process begins again the next day, the dinner plate becomes a dark platter as days lengthen. The nights are less frozen; the platter has now grown and become a curved black line drawn against a white horizon.

Sea ice begins to move and shift, in this old time it doesn’t melt, it shifts. Most of the hulk is laying on open display amongst the rolled pebbles that make up this empty section of beach. Forty feet long with a depth of twelve feet, its black/grey body has not moved during the deep freeze of winter in the high Canadian Arctic. On the shores of the Arctic Ocean it lays awaiting its fate. The majority of the bay is clear; the tinkle of ice rotting in the sun comes from far in the distance. Summer has come and will last briefly.