They resemble a gigantic, suspended, amorphous bubblewrap just about to envelop the brown silhouette of mountains below. The water between our boat and the far shore reveals nothing of this. Instead, the sea's surface shows a million tiny fluid lines of terra-cotta and burnt gold. My watch reads 30 minutes past midnight. Our gaze shifts 25 degrees north.
Clouds are absent in that part of the quadrant.
One of the children wakes inside the wooden cabin forward. She cries for a few minutes, but lapses into muffled contentment when she suckles on her mother's amama . I blink vigorously to clear my vision, but the desire for sleep betrays my sense. I give up, and surrender myself to this arctic phenomenon - the setting and the rising of the sun simultaneously. This particular movement is from Pangnirtung to the region of Cumberland Sound, but across the Arctic similar voyages are being undertaken by the Inuit of every community.