Original subtitles

*

In the eastern reaches of the Canadian Arctic

lies a vast wilderness of water, rock, and earth.

*

The rolling tundra can seem barren.

*

But jewel-like plants blossom.

Prehistoric animals roam.

Life thrives in hidden places.

*

The purest freshwater flows in torrents.

*

As summer ends, creatures fatten for winter.

The days grow shorter, the nights longer.

*

Fall on the tundra is fleeting.

*

The land and sea will soon be frozen.

*

This is Nunavik ...

a testing ground for survival.

*

*

*

*

*

Nunavik, meaning "Great Land" in Inuktitut,

is bigger than California.

A pristine wilderness of water, forest, and tundra.

On the shores of Ungava Bay,

the long summer days are coming to an end.

The tundra colors are darkening.

But the ptarmigan is beginning to whiten for winter.

Local Inuit harvest the fruit of the meadows.

*

And search shorelines for the fruits of the sea.

*

Some of the world's highest tides

sweep through Ungava Bay.

Driving mighty icebergs to the end of their journey,

aground in these shallow waters.

*

As the nights darken,

the Northern Lights become vivid.

*

The muskoxen's coats grow thicker,

preparing for winter.

For now, they graze with ease.

Soon they must dig beneath snow.

The young calves are four to five months old.

They were born early enough in the year to

fatten up before facing their first Arctic winter.

Within a week of birth, they could nibble

tender shoots of grass, but they won't be weaned

for another year or so.

A startled calf will hide in its mother's long wool skirt,

and will shelter there for warmth in winter.

It's still summer's end,

with swarming bugs to pester them.

This calf has learned to find relief

by scratching against a rock.

Muskoxen have grazed in the Arctic for 200,000 years.

They witnessed the emergence of the

boreal forest after the last ice age.

*

The boreal forest that circles below the high Arctic

reaches its limit here,

at the southern edges of Ungava Bay.

*

In this low, rolling country,

the transition from forest to tundra is gradual.

Although maps show the limit of the forest as a

rigid treeline, there's no such thing.

Sporadic clumps of spruce, aspen or larch grasp the

thin soil where they can, until no more grow.

As the trees become more sparse,

bedrock appears through the thin crust of earth.

This is the immense Canadian Shield,

North America's underlying foundation of rock.

*

These are among the most ancient rocks on earth.

Some are three billion years old.

There used to be mountains here.

They were eroded over thousands of years

by massive glaciers.

The Laurentide Ice Sheet retreated here

8,000 years ago.

But its effects still form the landscape,

which even today is rebounding from

the loss of its massive weight.

The mighty ice reduced mountains to rubble and

scraped the land clean.

The ice sheet left behind these raised ridges of

loose sand and gravel, called eskers,

that trace the routes of ancient streams of meltwater.

*

The well-drained surface and the sheltering sides

encourage the tough plants that grow here.

*

The Arctic tundra is extremely cold...

a treeless landscape with a growing season

barely a month long.

*

It's fall on the Koksoak river,

the largest in Nunavik.

*

The river's massive drainage basin

is larger than Greece.

*

It is calm now.

But in early summer, when snow and ice

melt along the shores, the river surges

to its tumultuous, maximum flow.

*

Salmon that spawned here a few weeks ago have left

for Ungava Bay, or beyond to the Arctic ocean.

*

*

A hoofprint in the moss... and a tuft of fur

snagged on a dwarf birch are signs a muskox

has passed through here.

The Inuit call this fur qiviut - the soft,

dense underlayer of a muskox coat.

This thermal underwear enabled muskoxen

to survive the ice age.

Qiviut is the warmest animal fur on earth.

It's stronger than sheep's wool and softer than cashmere.

It's time for creatures that came here in spring

to mate and give birth, to migrate back south.

On a passage from further north,

Canada Geese rest here.

They mass on lakes and ponds before taking off again

for the southern United States.

As sunlight decreases and temperatures drop,

the plants darken.

*

These bearberry leaves take on the

ruddy shades of fall.

*

They will survive the Arctic winter because

they need few nutrients and have silky hairs

to keep them warm.

*

A carpet of lichens covers the well-drained parts of

the tundra and helps to feed the muskoxen.

*

Lichen is unique.

It's one species, formed by a

partnership between two: fungus and alga.

Deeply intertwined, the fungus provides the framework,

while the alga provides nutrients

through photosynthesis.

*

They can survive for hundreds of years and

spread by fragments breaking off and blowing away.

One tiny piece contains both components.

The blending of the two species

is still not entirely understood.

It remains an Arctic secret.

*

Nestled among the lichen is Labrador tea.

Northerners use it to make a tonic,

rich in Vitamin C, and to spice meat.

Its thick leathery leaves and woolly hairs

conserve moisture.

Mushrooms are vital to tundra plants.

Underground, the mushroom intertwines with plant roots

and feeds them nutrients, especially nitrogen.

The ptarmigan spends fall's shortening days

eating plants and berries in a hurry.

Like all wildlife that winters in Nunavik,

it's fattening up for the hardship ahead.

It also eats tiny pebbles that help digest

tough, twiggy plants.

Its guttural, rattling growl

is a characteristic sound of the tundra.

The ptarmigan's coloring merges with tundra plants

and disguises it well from predators,

such as arctic foxes and bald eagles.

To stay camouflaged in the winter landscape,

ptarmigan plumage transforms to snowy white.

Moulting begins now, in the fall.

It sheds brown feathers to grow white ones.

Its feathered legs and toes help it walk on the snow,

like snowshoes, and keep it warm.

This transformation must be delicately timed

to the change of season.

A brown bird can be picked off from a snowy landscape.

If it turns white when the ground is brown,

it will be too visible.

Climate change is making the ptarmigan's life

more precarious.

In recent years, summer has lasted longer.

The seasons have also fluctuated unpredictably.

*

This tributary of the Koksoak River has

its source high on a hillside.

*

Here is true wilderness, hard to reach on foot.

The water cascades down through a series of

falls and rapids.

*

Nunavik forms almost a third of the province of Quebec,

which holds three percent of the world's freshwater.

Much of it flows in these northern rivers.

This region receives little rain and only some snow.

The snow that does fall accumulates on the ground

and doesn't melt for most of the year.

When the weather warms and the snow melts,

the water can't sink far into the ground

before hitting permafrost and bedrock,

so it runs directly into the rivers.

*

This waterfall cuts through the rock

of the Canadian Shield.

The cliff top trees latch on to meagre inches of topsoil.

*

In spring, salmon returning to their

spawning grounds must forge their way

up these rapids and over these rocks.

It's a journey that takes several weeks.

The fish will travel at least 60 miles and

climb almost 1000 feet in elevation.

There are no roads in Nunavik.

The air and waterways are lifelines.

(communication radio)

People here depend on bush pilots like Johnny May.

He supplies scattered camps and has flown many

missions for medical emergencies.

(communication radio)

A workhorse bush plane, like this Turbo Otter,

is built for short take-offs and landings,

and for handling rough weather.

It can be as hardy and enduring as Johnny.

*

With proper maintenance, a bush plane can fly for

as long as him, more than half a century.

*

Today Johnny is delivering supplies to a camp

in the wilderness on the Koksoak River.

This camp welcomes ecotourists from as far as New Zealand,

to observe Nunavik's exotic wildlife

and extraordinary landscape.

*

*

*

*

*

*

Thomas Groening is a guide with the camp.

He's on the lookout for muskoxen to show the visitors.

Muskoxen can be unpredictable and

dangerous if they're surprised.

He carries a gun for protection.

Muskoxen have roamed the Arctic since prehistoric times.

But in the 1800's,

they became a threatened species.

*

Hunters shot muskoxen for sport and

for their meat and fur.

They were easy to pick off because of their habit,

when threatened, of backing together to form a circle,

horns out, shielding the young in the middle.

*

Populations started recovering when hunting

was regulated during the last century.

*

Males and females both have horns that are sharp enough

to cut through ice to reach underlying forage.

With the weight of a 450 to 650 pound

adult muskox behind them, the horns make a fearsome

weapon against predators, such as wolves.

*

The female has smaller horns, with pale hair

on her forehead between them.

(growls)

The horns on the male are joined across his forehead

with a thick, bony plate, called a boss.

This protects his skull when he locks horns

during mating conflicts, competing for female attention.

The horns start growing from infancy, are never shed,

and keep growing throughout life.

Unusual changes in the weather can devastate the herd.

In freakish midwinter thaws, snow melts,

then quickly freezes to thick ice.

It blocks muskoxen from foraging for leaves and grasses.

They starve to death.

Their carcasses have been found on sea ice,

where they wandered searching and digging for food.

*

Rivers are the highways of the north.

*

Junior May is the bush pilot's son.

He and his wife, Sapina Snowball,

are traveling on the Koksoak river.

*

It's trickier than it looks.

*

An hour from Ungava Bay, the water is influenced

by tides from the Arctic Ocean.

River tides here are some of the highest in the world.

At low tide, Junior has to be careful not to run

aground on the sharp rocks.

(dog barking)

Must be a female in heat.

They are on an expedition to pick berries.

Junior and Sapina are heading for a small island

where the berries are rumored to be good this year.

Hello boys!

Hello, Oden.

A friend of theirs keeps his sled dogs here for the summer.

(dogs barking)

Canadian Inuit dogs have roots dating back 4,000 years,

when they were bred for strength and endurance.

They partner with Inuit people in hunting and

hauling supplies, and protect them against polar bears.

In summer and fall, people in the North

often keep their dogs on small islands to roam free,

and return every few days to bring them food.

*

*

*

Junior brings his gun because there are

unexpected visitors here.

*

*

Three young muskoxen have swum to the island.

*

Their coats are glossy and look freshly washed

suggesting they swam here recently.

While Junior stands guard, Sapina heads for the

berry patches at the top of the island.

Berries are the only fruit that grow in the Arctic

and among the few wild plants edible for humans.

There are some roots and leaves, but no vegetables.

Sapina will freeze or dry some to last through winter.

Food imported from the South is expensive,

so people in the North take advantage of

what grows in the wild.

They call it "country food."

Today Sapina is looking for sweet, juicy cloudberries.

But others are native here too: blueberries,

crowberries, and cranberries.

*

The cloudberry is a member of the rose family.

There are male and female plants.

The females bear the fruit.

*

Cloudberries can survive far below freezing.

But they do need damp soil, thriving in the

springy tundra and patches between the rocks of the Shield.

It can be difficult to find berries in the

open spaces of the tundra.

Families pass down knowledge of where they

grow through generations,

sometimes as carefully guarded secrets.

*

They need to understand the land and weather well, too.

The places where the berries flourish

can vary from year to year.

After heavy rain, the berries may grow

where they didn't the summer before; and a patch that

previously flourished may be barren.

Sapina's timing is good.

The berries are perfectly ripe.

In a few days they will be spoiled.

*

The island's shoreline reveals the gigantic

slab of rock underlying the slender layer of soil

where the cloudberries grow.

*

On the shores of Ungava Bay an amphibious habitat thrives,

fed by the dynamic movement of tides over the sand,

which is rich in nutrients.

*

At the north-western tip of Ungava Bay,

the low tide reveals multitudes of a creature that

stays put as the sea comes and goes.

*

Blue mussels flourish in this intertidal zone,

a marine ecosystem that is regularly exposed to air.

The mussels, called uviluk by the Inuit,

survive the freezing months of winter.

Ungava Bay is free of ice for only four months of

summer and fall, the rest of the year it's covered.

They're easiest to pick at leisure during a full moon,

when the tide stays out longest.

The mussel creeps along the rocks on a rubbery foot

and anchors itself in place with a group of filaments,

called byssal threads,

more commonly known as the beard.

The mussel releases the threads as a liquid that

hardens in contact with water.

*

Growth rings on the shell reveal the mussel's age,

which can be up to five years.

*

They are a gregarious species and will

link themselves together in groups by their byssal threads.

*

When the tide is in, the mussel feeds,

sucking in water and filtering it for nutrients,

then expelling the remains.

The probing foot seeks a new spot to feed.

*

Kelp also grows here.

Like the blue mussel, it flourishes in

shallow coastal waters.

It survives on photosynthesis,

so needs to be reached by sunlight.

The mussels thrive living among the kelp consuming

the detritus when it decomposes.

*

*

Locals have a few hours of low tide to pick mussels,

before the water sweeps back in.

Bertha Adams and her husband Adamie Kullula

live nearby in the small village of Quaqtaq and

often walk over to collect mussels.

Bertha carries their little boy, Adner,

in an amauti, a parka with a pouch for carrying a baby,

traditional among eastern Arctic women.

She can draw the hood over them both in colder weather.

Harvesting mussels requires ripping the

tenacious beard from the rock.

>> When I take one, you know, it's like

you get addicted to it.

>> These are among the cleanest mussels in the world.

But it can still be risky to eat them raw.

Adamie's been doing it for years and has built an

immunity to the pathogens that may lurk in the flesh.

Mussels are plentiful now, after spring mating and

summer maturing.

They're a prolific species: an average female

has seven million offspring.

But in an exposed site like this,

most will die in a year, easy prey for shorebirds.

*

*

The weather can change quickly here.

Adamie and Bertha must keep an eye on the sky

as they forage.

*

Today they are lucky.

The fog lifts and their passage home is clear.

*

*

These icebergs may have been traveling for as

long as two years, for thousands of nautical miles,

from their calving ground.

They most likely split off

one of Greenland's massive glaciers.

They've drifted on ocean currents, eighty per cent

of their bulk under water.

*

The rhythmic action of waves causes an iceberg to vibrate,

sometimes so much it can become unstable and

overturn without warning.

Their journey has now ended, here on the shallow banks

of Ungava Bay, where they have run aground.

If the high tide doesn't take them back out to sea,

they will waste away here, as the ocean's saltwater

erodes and breaks the freshwater ice.

*

Their shape is defined by warm air above the sea,

the frigid water below and by the bedrock

they scraped along.

*

*

*

*

*

*

The end of the Arctic summer brings its rewards.

As the nights grow darker, the spectacle of the

aurora borealis, the northern lights,

grows brighter.

*

Blasts of spiraling wind from the sun,

carrying charged particles, are drawn to

the magnetic pole.

Collisions between the earth's magnetic field and

the solar wind, colored by gasses in our

upper atmosphere, bring us the dancing light.

*

The glimmering display has fired human imagination.

For some, it's made by torches carried by souls

caught between the heavens and an abyss.

*

Some say if you whistle at the lights,

you will suffer calamity.

Others believe that if you whistle,

they will dance for you.

*

*

*

*

The sun rises lower in the sky each morning,

*

the days grow shorter and muskoxen gather.

*

They've been scattered across the tundra in smaller herds.

Some of only cows and calves,

some only bachelors.

Now they are readying for winter,

driven by two primal urges:

to eat and to mate.

This patrolling bull seems to lead the herd,

encouraging the others towards fresh pastures.

They need to feed intensively in the next few weeks,

before they must dig through snow and ice for forage.

Muskoxen excel at conserving their energy.

They have a low metabolic rate that drops

by more than half in winter.

*

A mother still nursing a calf needs enough fat to

support them both through six months

of freezing temperatures.

If a cow becomes pregnant she'll need to nourish the

growing calf which will be born when the snow

is still on the ground.

The mating season lasts for a couple of months,

throughout July and August.

During that time, a bull at his peak, aged six to eight,

impregnates as many cows as he can.

This bull is keen to maintain his dominance.

*

Again and again, he drives away rivals.

And keeps fertile cows nearby.

*

*

*

Females give birth every two or three years and

aren't fertile in between.

*

They tend not to broadcast their fertility as other

female animals do, so the bull has to keep trying his luck,

often with little encouragement.

*

The bull can reach near exhaustion,

battling with rivals and striving to mate.

At the end of fall and the mating season,

the muskoxen will gather in bigger herds,

to weather the winter together.

*

*

*

* (singing)

* (singing)

Lena Ezekiel and Bertha Adams are skilled in one of

the oldest forms of music, throat singing.

The women of this land know how to sing more than

one note at a time and have harmonized for

generations to sing babies to sleep, or play a game.

* (singing)

Two women, standing in an embrace,

often improvising,

challenge one another to be the first

to break down with exhaustion or laughter.

* (singing)

(laughs)

In their voices, you can hear echoes of the

ptarmigan's rattle, the muskox's growl,

and the breath of the wind.

* (singing)

* (singing)

(laughing)

Son of a gun!

*

As they have since prehistoric times,

the muskoxen browse the tundra.

They've evolved to match this rugged landscape and climate.

*

The muskox may have outlived the woolly mammoth here,

but populations in other parts of the world

did not survive so long.

60,000-year-old samples of muskox DNA have been

discovered in regions where they died out.

*

It's been found that muskoxen are vulnerable

to climate warming as has been happening here

in the Arctic in recent years.

*

For now, the muskox hunkers down for the winter,

slipping its body into the rhythms

of the changing season.

*

It may seem austere, but for them,

the Arctic is a land of plenty.

*

*

*