Sirmilik National Park

Listen first. On a still day here, the loudest sound may be meltwater. It trickles under rocks and runs in thin channels across gravel. Then a crack comes from somewhere far off, sharp and heavy, as ice shifts on a glacier. The air is cold and clean, with almost no smell at all. The light is low and wide, and it seems to come from every direction at once.

You are standing in Sirmilik National Park, at the northern tip of Baffin Island, in Canada's Arctic territory of Nunavut. The name comes from Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit who have lived on this coast for many generations. Sirmilik means place of glaciers. Look around, and the name explains itself. Ice fills the high valleys, spills down between dark peaks, and ends in pale tongues near the sea.

The park covers a huge area, over twenty thousand square kilometres of mountains, ice, tundra and coastline. It has three main parts. There is Bylot Island, a rugged mass of peaks and glaciers rising straight out of the water. There is the Borden Peninsula, a land of plateaus and eroded cliffs. And there are the long fjords around Oliver Sound. Each part feels like a different country, yet they share the same sea and the same sky.

Here is something many visitors do not realise. This park exists because of a negotiation, not only because of scenery. It was created in 2001, as part of the agreements that followed the Nunavut land claim. Inuit and the Canadian government manage it together. Decisions about the land involve the people whose families have hunted, travelled and camped here for centuries. That shapes the way you are asked to move through it.

The gateway is Pond Inlet, a small Inuit community across the water from Bylot Island. Its Inuktitut name is Mittimatalik. Most journeys into the park begin there, often with local outfitters who know the ice, the tides and the animals. If you arrived through Pond Inlet, you have already seen the view that defines this place. Bylot Island fills the horizon, white and grey, like a wall at the end of the world.

Bylot Island carries the name of Robert Bylot, an English sailor who travelled these waters with William Baffin in the early seventeenth century. Those European voyages were searching for a passage to Asia. They found ice, fog and a coast that Inuit already knew in detail. For Inuit, this land was never empty or remote. It was home, with names for every point, river and good hunting ground.

Much of Bylot Island is also a migratory bird sanctuary. In summer, the lowlands on its southern side become a nursery for greater snow geese. Many thousands of them nest on the wet tundra, among moss, sedge and small pools. Along the sea cliffs of the park, other birds crowd onto narrow ledges. Thick-billed murres and black-legged kittiwakes are among them. The cliffs fill with noise, and the rock below turns pale with their droppings.

Now turn your attention to the water. The seas around the park are some of the richest in the Arctic. Narwhals travel here, the small whales with a single long tusk that grows from the upper jaw of most males. Beluga whales pass through too, and ringed seals rest on the ice. In spring, the line where solid sea ice meets open water, called the floe edge, draws whales, seals, seabirds and the hunters who follow them.

Where there are seals, there are polar bears. They hunt on the sea ice and walk the shorelines in summer. This is the reason the park asks visitors to register, attend an orientation and plan carefully. It is also why so many people travel with experienced Inuit guides. A bear can appear on a beach that looked empty a minute before. Respect here is practical, not only polite.

If you are on the Borden Peninsula, look at the shapes in the rock. Wind, frost and water have cut the softer layers into towers and pillars, sometimes called hoodoos. Some stand alone. Others cluster together like broken columns from a forgotten building. Their colours are warm in low sunlight, brown and rust and ochre. They give a sense of slow, patient time that is hard to feel anywhere else.

The light changes everything. In high summer, the sun does not set at all. It circles the sky, dipping toward the horizon at what your watch calls midnight, then climbing again. Shadows stretch long and stay long. Glaciers turn from white to gold to blue. In winter, the opposite happens, and the sun stays below the horizon for weeks. The people of Pond Inlet live with both extremes every year.

The glaciers themselves are worth a second look. Notice the dark stripes running along some of them. These are bands of rock and gravel that the ice has scraped from the mountains and carried downhill. Notice also how bare the valley floors are below the ice. Many Arctic glaciers have been retreating, and the ground they leave behind is raw and grey. Plants arrive slowly here, one small patch at a time.

There are no roads in Sirmilik, no visitor centre at the trailhead, and very few signs. Travel happens by boat, by snowmobile in spring, on skis, or on foot. That absence is part of the experience. You carry what you need. You notice weather, because weather decides your day. You also notice silence, and how quickly your ears adjust to it.

Before you move on, stand still for one more minute. Look at the line where the ice meets the rock. Look at the water, and watch for a dark back or a breath of mist. Listen again for the meltwater, still trickling under the stones. This land was named for its glaciers, but it has always been shaped by people, animals and light. As you walk away, carry that slow, wide view with you.