Many fresh flowers are blooming – forget-me-nots, buttercups (or rather a cross between a buttercup and a primrose), and many others. A few butterflies are noticeable and mosquitoes numerous, though as the wind was northerly, they kept in the hollow valleys and were not very troublesome. One of the greatest pleasures I have is to wash in the rushing streams, icy cold though they are. […] The sky was beautifully clear and the sun quite hot today, while the wind was cool and refreshing – altogether a very pleasant day for tramping if one were light and in fit condition. This fish and caribou diet seems to maintain only half my strength and I soon tire. Last summer I could race about and go 30 miles without fatigue – now I crawl along like a man of 60. Still, the days are creeping by and winter will soon be at hand when I can return to the station and enjoy good well-cooked food cleanly served, and the pleasant company of the other members of the Expedition. […]
Diamond Jenness
Anthropologist
Arctic Odyssey – The Diary of Diamond Jenness 1913-1918, edited by Stuart E. Jenness, Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1991.
Summer in the Arctic! The joy of warm air, flowering plants and berries. But warm water is not a part of Arctic summer. When streams are fed by melting glaciers, or late-melting snow banks, or even just because they flow through areas of permafrost, the water is always cold!
While Jenness was travelling over Victoria Island with his adoptive parents, Ikpukhuaq and Higilaq, he was still suffering from the malaria he had contracted in New Guinea, as well as severe stomach problems, not to mention a bit of culture shock.
Jenness’ notes and collections of plants and insects are an important part of the scientific legacy of the CAE. Today, as scientists plot the changing range maps of both insects and plants, the insects collected by the CAE help form a baseline that current biologists can use to determine the speed and pattern of changes in insect ranges and populations.
David
