You have to be there to feel how a wolf's howl - beneath a crescent moon in a sky filled with dancing northern lights - forever becomes part of your soul. In early summer, time flows without punctuation as days merge into undark nights north of the Arctic Circle. Wildflowers dot the tundra and trace the edges of flowing waters in what appear to be endless mountain meadows. This place is called Nunavut, "our land" in the Inuktitut language.
On April 1, 1999, the vast region of the Canadian North will become a new territory larger than any province. Of course, Nunavut has been there all along in the netherworld of the Northwest Territories where the continent splatters into myriad islands before dropping off the edge of the Earth into the Arctic Ocean. But on that date, a line will be drawn on the map of Canada, splitting the territories, and Nunavut will become a reality.
More important, the establishment of the new territory means the 80 percent Inuit majority will regain control of ancestral lands inhabited for thousands of years before Europeans "discovered" and claimed them without even a treaty. Inuit, meaning "the people," refers to the circumpolar ethnic group outsiders used to call Eskimos, a name still in use by aboriginals in Alaska, but not in Canada.
Mentioning Alaska begs comparison with a Nunavut that will be a third again larger, farther north, with one-tenth the people and far more polar bears.
Before my August visit, I held a romantic notion that seeing Nunavut before the change would be akin to a pioneer vision of my native California before statehood. I returned with frontier experiences far beyond my imaginings.
After 1999, tourism in Nunavut is destined to become ever more regulated by local people. Businesses will be required to be at least 51 percent Inuit-owned with key decisions made at the community level. Adventure travel will continue to be the tourism mainstay in a land with only 12 miles of roads outside its few scattered towns. These factors make Nunavut unlikely to become just another one of those ecotourism destinations where travelers face each other in suspiciously comfortable lodgings owned by absentee landlords and surrounded by an underclass of seemingly traditional people who worship the dollar.
An Inuit guide on Baffin Island told me, "We live off the land, while white people live off money. That's why we worry about our land and you about your money."
