Aulavik National Park

Listen first. Out here, the wind is often the only sound. It moves across low tundra that runs to the horizon in every direction. There are no trees. There is no road. Under your boots, the ground is soft and springy in summer, a thin carpet of moss, lichen and tiny flowers over frozen earth. The light comes from a sun that barely sets in high summer. It circles the sky instead. This is Aulavik National Park, on the northern end of Banks Island, far above the Arctic Circle.

The name comes from Inuvialuktun, the language of the Inuvialuit, the Inuit people of the western Canadian Arctic. Aulavik is usually translated as "place where people travel." That meaning matters. This land can look empty to a newcomer. In fact, people have crossed it, hunted on it and camped on it for thousands of years. The park sits within the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. It was created in the early 1990s through an agreement between the Inuvialuit and the Government of Canada.

Getting here is part of the story. There is no way to drive or walk in from anywhere. Visitors usually arrive by chartered small plane, flying out from Inuvik on the mainland. The nearest community is Sachs Harbour, a small hamlet in the south of Banks Island. Inuvialuktun speakers call it Ikahuak. Because the journey is so remote and so costly, Aulavik is one of the least visited national parks in Canada. In some summers, the number of visitors is very small indeed.

Now look for movement on the slopes. Those dark, shaggy shapes are probably muskoxen. Banks Island has one of the largest concentrations of muskoxen anywhere on Earth. Here is the first surprise. In the early twentieth century, muskoxen had nearly vanished from the island. Over the following decades, the herds recovered, and their numbers grew dramatically. Today you may see small groups grazing in the river valleys. Their long outer coat hangs almost to the ground. Underneath sits a soft, warm undercoat that Inuvialuit call qiviut.

When muskoxen feel threatened, they sometimes form a tight line or circle. The adults face outward, with horns lowered toward the danger. This works well against wolves. It does not work well against people with rifles, and that is part of why the animals once declined so sharply. If you come across a group, give them plenty of space. A muskox that stamps, snorts or rubs its face on its foreleg is telling you to back away. Calm, slow movement is the respectful choice.

The park also protects Peary caribou, a small, pale caribou found only in the high Arctic islands. They are hard to spot. Their light coats blend into the grey-green tundra. Arctic wolves live here, along with Arctic foxes and lemmings, whose numbers rise and fall in cycles. Polar bears can appear, especially near the coast. That is not a detail to treat lightly. Travellers here plan carefully for bear safety, because there is no ranger station around the next bend.

The spine of the park is the Thomsen River. It flows north through the island toward the sea. Many people describe it as the most northerly navigable river in North America. In practice, that means you can paddle it by canoe or kayak in the short summer season. The current is gentle in long stretches. The banks are low and open, so the view rarely closes in. Paddlers often say the river feels less like a channel and more like a slow road through open country.

Along the river and its side valleys, archaeologists have recorded many sites left by earlier peoples. Some are very old, linked to Paleo-Inuit cultures that lived in the Arctic long before the ancestors of today's Inuit. Others belong to later Thule people. You might see a ring of stones that once held down the edge of a skin tent. You might notice a small pile of rocks, or bones grown green with lichen. Leave everything exactly where it lies. In this cold, dry place, small objects survive for centuries.

The second surprise lies on the northern coast, at a place called Mercy Bay. In 1853, the British ship HMS Investigator was abandoned here. The ship had been searching for the lost Franklin expedition and for a route through the Northwest Passage. It became trapped in the ice for several winters. The crew suffered from hunger and scurvy. Eventually, a party from another British ship reached them. The survivors left the Investigator behind and travelled over the ice to safety.

That journey had a strange result. Robert McClure, the captain, is often credited with confirming a Northwest Passage. But his men completed it partly on foot, across frozen sea, not on board their own ship. For more than 150 years, the Investigator lay somewhere under the cold water of the bay. Then, in 2010, a Parks Canada team found the wreck. It was sitting upright in shallow water, close to where it was left. The site remains protected.

The name Mercy Bay tells you how the sailors felt about this coast. For them, it was a place of waiting, cold and fear. For the Inuvialuit, the same island was a known hunting ground, with routes, seasons and stories. Standing here, you can hold both views at once. A landscape that broke a nineteenth-century naval crew was also, for others, simply home ground. The difference was knowledge, passed down over many generations.

Before you move on, take a moment with the small things. Kneel down. Look closely at the tundra at your feet. You may find Arctic poppies, yellow and cup-shaped, turning to follow the sun. You may see purple saxifrage or tufts of white cotton grass moving in the wind. Many of these plants grow for decades and stay only a few centimetres tall. A single footprint can stay visible here for years, so try to walk on rock or gravel where you can.

Now lift your eyes again. Notice how far you can see, and how little interrupts the line of the land. Notice the sound of the wind, and maybe the soft grunt of a muskox somewhere out of sight. Very few people will ever stand where you are standing. When you walk on from here, walk lightly. Aulavik is still a place where people travel... and it stays this way because travellers leave it as they found it.