an ice-avoider.” You can tell that this is a line he’s delivered before. At the helm, Hiltz, a big man, looks like John Goodman seated in an easy chair, or a king played by John Goodman presiding from his throne. Or picture Captain Kirk at the helm of the Enterprise but imagine that instead of William Shatner, Goodman had played Kirk. That’s what Hiltz at the helm of the Louis is like. With Captain Rothwell stationed by the windows, looking anxiously on, Hiltz seeks the path of least resistance, following leads, or “puddle jumping” between patches of open water. When the leads close up and there are no puddles, Hiltz seeks out the “rotten” ice, ice so old and thin and waterlogged that the Louis can easily steam through it, bubblers bubbling away.
When we come to a dead end, when the ice at the terminus of a lead is hard and thick, the breaking begins. Hiltz pilots us straight at it, so that the bow of the Louis hauls out like a kayak onto a beach. An officer at the controls cranks up the RPMs. The three propellers churn in our slushy wake, pitching the ship forward, bringing its weight and the thrust of its engines down onto the ice, snapping it like a wafer. On the rare occasion that the ice fails to snap on the first attempt, the officers perform a maneuver they call backing and filling. We reverse a hundred yards, and the water churns forward, sending out a white-and-turquoise lacework of eddies and foam. The officer at the controls shouts, “Here were we go!” The ship charges forward under full steam, gaining speed, hitting the ice at eight or nine knots. Inevitably the ice gives way. It isn’t elegant, this diesel-powered battering, nor is it fast, but it works.
Near the entrance to the Northwest Passage, we emerge once again into open water and, assisted by a following current, make up for lost time. Speaking of time, I’ve begun to lose my sense of it. We’re now in the latitudes of perpetual daylight, and the schedule of fieldwork requires those of us on the scientific team to keep erratic hours, catnapping by day, working by night, taking meal breaks and cocktail breaks when we can.
A week out of Halifax, I wake up at 3 A.M. to fetch my last batch of bottles. Outside it feels like midday. Off the port bow there floats an iceberg, a white cake-shaped island on the dark water. I hardly give it a glance. How quickly wonders degrade into the ordinary. A fulmar swoops past, and the sunlight reflecting from the ship’s red hull turns its white belly feathers pink. How quickly the ordinary becomes wondrous. It’s cold out, near freezing. So much for the balmy forecast I overheard back in Halifax. If I didn’t know the difference between climate and weather I might well be inclined to dismiss global warming as conspiratorial bunk.
As I carry my box of bottles to the taffrail, Dale Hiltz, bleary-eyed, soon to begin his next watch, notices my cargo, hitches his trousers, lumbers after me, and asks, sheepishly, “Can I throw some?”
“By all means,” I say. “As many as you like.” Hiltz’s face lights up. He has been working on this ship for thirty years, and yet the prospect of bottle throwing has elicited from him boyish delight. A graduate student working with the marine biologist Glenn Cooper also requests permission to join us, as does Glenn Cooper, as does the chief scientist, Jane Eert. Our little merry band defiles to aft, along the starboard rail, down the flight of steel stairs, I leading the way, my box of bottles clinking cheerfully.
There’s something irresistible about throwing bottles into the ocean. You take the bottle by the neck and send it flying tomahawk-style, and as it flies, end over end, there’s a faint whistle, and it catches the light and describes an exuberant arc through the sky, an arc that ends in a sad little splash. Cooper, the marine biologist, starts calling out “Launch!” as if preparing to shoot clay pigeons. Bottles fly—to port, astern, to starboard—tomahawking through the air, plopping into our frothy wake. Watching them drift away, it’s hard not to dream of distant shores. Just two weeks ago one of Eddy Carmack’s bottles, tossed into Baffin Bay last summer, was discovered on an uninhabited island south of Iceland. By tourists on horseback. Tourists who then sent Bonita LeBlanc a reply that read, “Hello! We