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Cornerstones - The Canadian Arctic

Episode 2 of 5

Travel writer Sara Wheeler recalls her time visiting Canada's Arctic region, staying in a tent with a group of geologists.

'Rock talk' is what the travel writer Sara Wheeler recalls of her time cooped up in cold, billowing tents with a horde of geologists well north of Hudson Bay up in Canada's Arctic. That and the unforgettable smell of drying socks. Visiting a geoscientific mapping project whilst researching the circumpolar Arctic had its highs, as well as its lows. Besides the socks was the extraordinary encounter with a browned circle on the ground, an old Inuit tent ring. In the middle sat a flinty limestone tool, which had probably lain there for 5,000 years since it had last been used to scrape seal hide.

Producer: Mark Smalley.

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15 minutes

Broadcasts

  • Tue 8 Dec 2015 22:45
  • Thu 3 Aug 2017 22:45

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