Like the time in my life where I was able to look at avant-garde forms of art and see content and beauty, where before I couldn’t see anything of worth, so too I no longer define the beauty of a landscape simply by its lush vegetation.

As I’ve already mentioned, the land around Ulukhaktok and the cabin in Mashuyuk is pretty much a barren, desolate, and bleak wasteland. Now, I realize these words have pretty negative connotations, they bring to mind the dust blown farms of the depression; they bring to mind places without hope and without life. So it’s ironic that I can’t think of better words to describe a place that has an aesthetic that is so pristine and beautiful and where life flourishes in subtle nooks of the land.

There aren’t colorful flowers in bloom or magnificently tall trees, but there are LOTS of rocks. These rocks have a fascinating loveliness all their own. Some, like the one below, were totally out of place when compared to the rocks around them. It looks like it’s made of fossilized or compressed sand, while the rock it sits is something harder, maybe granite.

Below is another example of a misfit rock. Are these glacial deposits, or have the muskoxen just been doing this to screw with our minds?

Here you see an example of the shale that is all over the place. This stuff is what makes me think that at one time the plateaus we walked over were once at the bottom of the ocean.