Icefields

Thomas Wharton

Description

On an expedition in the Canadian Rockies at the end of the nineteenth century, Dr Edward Byrne slips and falls almost 60 feet into a crevasse on the Arcturus Glacier. While trapped, hanging upside down and wary that the slightest movement could send him plunging deeper into the abyss, Byrne notices a mysterious winged figure embedded in the ice wall. The vision shakes his sanity, and after his recovery continues to haunt him until he abandons his fiancee and his medical practice in England and returns to a lonely vigil in a shack near the spot on the ice where he almost lost his life. His spirit trapped, he seeks the truth by questioning closely the strange characters that cross his path and meticulously recording the advance and decline of the myths and legends of an early settlement and is transformed by the coming of the railroad into a thriving tourist centre - with an impact as far away as the battlefields for the First World War.

Informations

• Publié par: NeWest Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 1995
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781897126530
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

ICEFIELDS
NUNATAK FICTION
Nunatak is an Inuktitut word meaning lonely peak, a rock or mountain rising above ice. During Quaternary glaciation in North
America these peaks stood above the ice sheet and so became refuges for plant and animal life. Magnificent nunataks, their bases scoured by glaciers, can be seen along the Highwood Pass in the Alberta Rocky Mountains and on Ellesmere Island.

Nunataks are especially selected works of outstanding fiction by new western writers. The editors of Nunataks for NeWest Press are Aritha van Herk and Rudy Wiebe.
ICEFIELDS
T HOMAS W HARTON
Copyright Thomas Wharton 1995 Seventh Printing 2007
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law. In the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying of the material, a licence must be obtained from CAN-COPY, the Canadian Reprography Collective, before proceeding.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Wharton, Thomas, 1963- Icefields (Nunatak fiction) ISBN 978-0-920897-87-4 I. Title. II. Series PS8595.H37133 1995 C813.54 C95-910502-6 PR199.3.W52133 1995
Editor for the Press: Rudy Wiebe Editorial Coordinator: Eva Radford Cover painting and design: Diane Jensen Interior design and layout: Brenda Burgess Photo credits: Alberta Environmental Protection, Natural Resources Service -Parks: pages iii and vii , Provincial Archives of Alberta: page ix , Ernest Brown Collection (B 9822); pages 1 , 61 , 139 , 185 and 224 , Public Affairs Bureau Collection (PA 225/2)

NeWest Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Edmonton Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.
We are committed to protecting the environment and to the responsible use of natural resources. This book is printed on 100% recycled, ancient forest-friendly paper.
NeWest Press 201, 8540 109 Street Edmonton, Alberta T6G 1E6 780-432-9427 www.newestpress.com
PRINTED IN CANADA
F OR M Y F AMILY
AS IF EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD
IS THE HISTORY OF ICE.

Michael Ondaatje
C OMING T HROUGH S LAUGHTER
A N OTE TO THE R EADER
This book is a work of fiction and as such contains deliberate historical and geographical inaccuracies. The characters, places, and events depicted are products of the author s imagi- nation or are used in a fictional context. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, persons, or glaciers, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
N V
T HIS HIGH PLAIN OF SNOW AND ICE FROM WHICH THE GLACIERS DESCEND CANNOT BE SEEN FROM THE VALLEY.
I T MUST BE IMAGINED.
1
At a quarter past three in the afternoon, on August 17, 1898, Doctor Edward Byrne slipped on the ice of Arcturus glacier in the Canadian Rockies and slid into a crevasse.
Frank Trask, the expedition guide, was the first to notice his disappearance. He paused in his slow trudge to make a head count and saw, against the glare of the ice, one less dark, toiling figure than there had been moments before. Trask called out to the others walking farther ahead on the glacier. They turned at his shout and descended quickly to where he stood.
On this bare, windswept slope of ice there was only one place Byrne could be. The climbing party crouched at the edge of the chasm where the young doctor s snow goggles lay, the strap caught on a projecting spine of ice. They shouted his name down into the darkness, but heard nothing. Trask unwound the coil of rope from over his shoulder and knotted a stirrup in one end.
-I m not married, Professor Collie said. I ll go.
Trask shook his head.
-I am, he said. I will.
There was no time to argue. One end of the rope was secured around a rough bollard hacked out of the ice, and Trask tied the other around his chest. Slipping his foot into the stirrup, he took hold of the rope and stepped backwards into the abyss.
In blue-black darkness almost sixty feet below the surface, his gloved hand touched the doctor s boot. He realized Byrne was wedged upside down between the narrowing crevasse walls. Trask spoke his name and nudged him cautiously with his knee, but Byrne did not respond. The only sound was the muffled splash of meltwater. Trask shouted up to the others and after a few moments a second rope snaked down towards him from above. He caught the end of the rope and hung in space, waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the deep blue gloom. After a few moments he could see that the rucksack on Byrne s back was jammed against an outcrop of the ice wall. This lucky chance had saved him from falling even further, but now the rucksack would only be a hindrance to the rescue.
Trask squirmed himself down into the narrow space beside Byrne. With his hunting knife he sliced through one shoulder strap, then worked the free end of the rope behind the doctor s back, grasped it with the fingers of his other hand and slowly tugged it around. The doctor did not move. Trask let out a long breath. He felt sweat cooling on his neck.
When the rope was snug and knotted under Byrne s arms, Trask cut the other strap and gave the rucksack a shove with his boot. It tumbled down into the dark with a muffled clang of metal.
What the hell was he carrying in there?
Byrne began to slide downward, but the rope went taut and held him.
-I ve got him, Trask shouted. Pull him up,
slowly.
Byrne, and then Trask, were hauled to the surface. The doctor s skin was pale blue, his beard and clothing covered in a lacquer of refrozen meltwater.
Professor Collie knelt and examined him, unwound the ice-encrusted scarf from around Byrne s neck and felt for a pulse.
-He s alive. Unconscious.
With his teeth Trask pulled off his soaked gloves and spat them onto the ice.
-Then he missed all the fancy words I used trying to get that damn rope around him.
-Hypothermia, said Professor Collie. We have to get him warmed up.
The four men carried Byrne down the long, sloping tongue of the glacier to the terminus, where the wranglers were camped, waiting with the horses. Nigel the cook saw them coming and had a fire started and tea brewing when they arrived. Stripped of his soaked, stiffened clothing and bundled in a wool blanket, Byrne was propped upright in front of the fire. Drooping forward, he made a barely audible sound, a gasping hiccup. The professor rubbed his limbs and chest.
-The pulse is weak, but he s still with us.
Byrne shuddered and moved his arms. His breathing became audible. A pink glow spread slowly from the center of his chest, outward to the limbs, suffusing the blue pallor. He yawned, opened his eyes, and shut them again.
The professor forced hot tea down Byrne s
throat.
-We must get him away from the ice, Collie said. I m afraid that if we bivouac here he might relapse.
As he spoke, he pried the pocketwatch from Byrne s closed fist.
2
Dark was rising in the valley and, with it, a liquid chill to the air. Collie intended to make camp in the shelter of the nearest stand of trees, where there would be some cover from the freezing wind off the glacier. He stood up from his ministrations over the doctor and glanced around.
-Where is Trask?
-He thought he saw lights, Thompson said, further down the valley. He went to have a look.
After a few minutes, Trask rode up.
-I ve got us some shelter. He had found people living at the site of the old Arcturus trading post, just a short ride away. He told the settlers about Byrne, and they would have blankets and hot food ready when the expedition arrived.
Trask was astounded at his own discovery. -I thought the place had been abandoned years ago.
The wranglers improvised a sling with a blanket and willow poles and carried Byrne while the others rode. Trask led them through the stunted trees along the edge of the creek into a grassy clearing. They saw lighted windows in the darkness and headed toward them.
-Dear God, Stutfield said. To think people live here through the winter for the sake of a few marten skins.
A woman stood at the door of the nearest cabin, holding up an oil lamp. She beckoned them inside.
3
Byrne dreamed of flowers.
He breathed their scents and read the names that ran in orderly columns down the pages of his botanical notebook. Names of the flowers he had been collecting. The seeds and bulbs he had stored with their native earth in the tin specimen box he carried in his rucksack. He walked among them, he breathed and named, not knowing or caring if the scents matched the names he gave them. Flowers of snow melt, of early and full summer, of dry August.
Western Anemone, or Chalice Flower. Glacier Lily. Wild Blue Flax. Four species of violet, three of Orchidaceae.
Flowers of the lush valleys and the high, wind-scoured slopes.
Yellow Mountain Avens. Bluebell, hedysarum. River Beauty and Grass of Parnassus. Indian Paintbrush.
4
He woke in a log cabin, on a bed, under soft blankets of fur. Looking up at smoke-grimed rafters, the glitter of melting frost on the wood. His arm was stiff, held tightly against his chest with a cloth or bandage. He moved, and was aware of his nakedness under the thick fur blankets.
He lifted his head and looked around at sagging shelves cluttered with tins, bottles, books. Skins and sleek pelts hung from the walls between the shelves.