The northern tundra is a vivid landscape, a panorama of tough. colourful plants and dramatic animal life that seems surreal to southerners.

Home to the stubborn resilience of lichen, the predatory power of the polar bear, and vast herds of migrating caribou that cover huge distances, its ecosystems and landscapes are amazing on scales both epic and tiny.

The elements are an omnipresent force in the North, where even the most recent infrastructure seems tentative in the face of the wind and the cold. Travel plans are a matter of improvisation and patience, subject as they are to the judgement and skill of bush pilots.

My travels took me from Winnipeg to Churchill, and finally to Arviat and inland, to the shores of Baralzon Lake. Even in  mid-September it snowed on us, and the local communities were getting ready for the freeze-up that would close over the waters of Hudson Bay, but also open up the sodden muskeg to easier travel by skidoo and sled.