Ends of the Earth

The Supreme White Hunter At The End Of Nature

Avoid eye contact, say nice things if you can think of any, and never, ever run!

Larry Calloway | August 23, 2007 in Ends of the Earth | Comments (0)

Tags: , ,

The great white whale is a monstrous force of nature in American lit, but after walking among the relics of an Arctic whaling station established about the time Moby Dick was published, I saw that nature

Welcome to Parks Canada!

lost. The bow whale is long gone from the ice edge. The ice itself is receding. As the title of an early book on global warming suggests, we have seen “The End Of Nature.” I heard a Lakota spiritual leader say a white buffalo, among other white creatures, will be the sign of the rectification of nature, but I do not believe its time has come.

In this dark mood I returned from an aborted trip to an incredible wild national park in the Canadian Arctic that among other things has the tallest, sharpest granite exposures on the planet.

(more…)

Darwin And The Absence Of Yamanas In Their Fire-Hearted Canoes

Wake up! It's the end of the world, Jemmy Button.

Larry Calloway | February 9, 2007 in Ends of the Earth | Comments (0)

Tags: ,

The fires of Tierra del Fuego are gone. The Yamana people, whose smoke signals announced Magellan in 1520, are gone. Their bark canoes carrying fire, gone. And nobody for now lives at Wulaia, which in a missionary’s dictionary of the Yamana language meant beautiful-sheltered cove (aia).

On a summer day in January we landed at Wulaia in rubber Zodiacs from the Mare Australis, a clean new expedition crucero of Chilean registry. For now, this is the only cruise through the restricted Murray Narrows south of the Beagle Channel, a passage from Ushuaia to Cape Horn. (more…)