Belief in the possible is true gift

I really wanted see the whale but I was hesitant.

“Here, wear my parka and go down and ask the captain if they’ll take you out there,” my daughter urged. I was visiting her in Barrow, Alaska, where her husband was a police officer.

So I walked down to the umiak hauled up on the snow covered beach, flying its captain’s colors indicating they’d had a successful whale hunt. An umiak is an open Eskimo boat with animal skin, usually seal, covering a wood frame. It looks pretty puny for going after a whale on the open sea. Subsistence whaling requires the first strike be thrown by hand.

The next thing I knew that overcast May afternoon I was on a sled being towed behind a snowmachine (Alaskan terminology), along a path carved over the Arctic sea ice. Two miles out a 44-foot bowhead whale lay pulled up on the ice, its head submerged in the water, baleen poking up from its mouth like tall black feathered spikes.

A community of Inupiat were at work, each one with a specific job to do. Some tugged on the long heavy line tied to the whale and hooked in a hole drilled in the ice, keeping thea rope taut. I was not allowed near it in case it snapped. Others cut large chunks of salmon colored blubber covered in shiny black skin from the body of the whale, dragging the pieces off with big hooks at the end of tall poles. Several village elders dressed in camo white sat sharpening long wicked-looking curved knives.

One man showed me how he could call in the sea gulls. He flapped his arms and sang some words and sure enough, the gulls flew in. A trio of people seemed to be offering something from the whale back to the sea — in thanks for its gift. I did not see what it was.

I stood there at the edge of the ice amid a vast frozen white — the calm slate water of the ocean stretching before me. Somewhere out there was the polar ice cap. The awestruck thought came to me, “I am standing on the edge of the earth — as far as I can go on this last bit of ice.” I did not know that in recent past the sea ice had broken away from shore in a huge sheet, stranding the whale harvesters. They had to be airlifted off!

I was allowed to walk back to Barrow with another couple, being warned to keep to the established path as there were big crevasses in the ice. And to keep an eye out for polar bears attracted by the whale meat. Regular armed patrols scouted to keep them away.

A second immense thought hit me, “I am walking on the Arctic Ocean.” It seemed so unbelievable.

I’d been reluctant to attempt the whole experience. My curious nature spoke yes; my cautious side answered no. I just needed that push my daughter gave me — going to the closet, handing me the parka, and saying, “Go ask.”

I ended up with the memory of a lifetime. Because somebody else believed it was possible.