Three decades ago, for a few, fantastical days, this author was granted an experience wholly alien to the average American – most of whom reside comfortably enough in a reasonably temperate (more or less) swath of this two-nation continent called North America.

To be candid – I’m no airman. I am, however, a geologist and deeply curious researcher: naval aeronautics, the history of science; polar memoirs. By 1988, the "next" project was underway. Thirty years before, a United States Navy non-rigid airship (blimp) had penetrated the Canadian Arctic. Its orders: rendezvous with base BRAVO riding T-3 – an "ice island" adrift in the Arctic Ocean. Then positioned 800 or so miles off 90° North Latitude – the north geographic pole.[1] Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, the mission would assess the platform for support of science in the Northlands – and perhaps contribute to the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957-58.

En route T-3 that IGY August, the airship would log the Arctic Circle (66°33’ N) – the only military airship ever
to do so.[2]

And so an insight. If the Arctic was to come alive on the page, I should see it for myself. Chasing false leads and dead ends, an invitation was realized. Host-to-be: the Canadian Ice Patrol, a government unit within the Atmospheric Environment Service. With the Patrol as host, I experienced firsthand much of the roof of North America – an alien3 realm a world-away from the teeming millions "back south."

Researching one story, I found another.

A cold trail had warmed late in 1988, thanks to the Air Attaché at the Canadian Embassy, in Washington. My inquiry: an overflight of the High Arctic in a military aircraft. Commercial rates into the far north (I’d discovered) are frightfully expensive. (Round-trip fare from New York to the RCAF base at Resolute, on Cornwallis Island on the Northwest Passage: over $2,000.) [Slightly more than $5,000 in today’s money]