N THE CRISP afternoon of September 14, 2008, a small crowd gathered at Arrowhead Point on the northeast shore of Lake Washington. Bits of conversation and nervous laughter were punctuated with furtive glances to the sky, as friends and family strained for the comforting growl distinctive to the de Havilland Beaver. Presently, a faint buzz became a rumble, as two small dots above the northern shore morphed into Beavers N67DN and N2SF; after 12,000 miles through the Canadian Arctic, the Great Arctic Air Adventure was home.

Some forty-five days earlier, Seattle pilots Mark Schoening and Doug DeVries departed in an attempt to circumnavigate Canada via the famed Northwest Passage. The High Arctic, the Northwest Passage, de Havilland Beavers, and polar bears, could it get any better than this?

CANADIAN HISTORIAN Robert McGhee describes the Arctic as the “The Last Imaginary Place.” In a world where Darwin’s Galapagos can be reached in a few hours and viewed from the comfort of a cruise liner, the relatively inaccessible Arctic remains an enigma. This is a place of no roads, no arable land, and no wood. The Arctic is unyielding – they soon learned that visitors must adapt. The simple task of fueling the thirsty Beavers entailed wrestling drums and jerry cans to the aircraft and pumping more than 1200 lbs. of fuel - by hand – usually in a driving rain. Four to eight hours later they’d be on their way.

Mark and Doug elected to fly the Beavers on “straight floats,” thus gaining access to thousands of remote Arctic lakes only reachable by floatplane or on foot. As romantic as this notion sounded, from a practical standpoint, all fuel and supply depots had to be water accessible, limiting the available resupply sites. The greedy Beavers would consume nearly 6,000 gallons of fuel through the trip, requiring fuel depots every few hundred miles. In addition, Beaver N67DN was specially outfitted with extended range fuel tanks in order to make the 8 hour round trip from Eureka to the Magnetic Pole – a quest not realized due to ice flows clogging the landing site in Eureka, a remote weather outpost at the eightieth parallel.

THEIR TIME MACHINE, the venerable de Havilland Beaver seaplane, provided unique access to this unfamiliar place. From the sky, they observed the “big picture,” a mosaic of lakes and rolling tundra, punctuated by the occasional esker rising from the plain. On landing, their craft became a boat, gliding to the shore where they set their nightly camps. Once on the tundra, they experienced the other Arctic, an unexpected ecosystem teaming with life against impossible odds. A curious weasel popping up from the tundra like a jack-in-the-box, a pair of sik-siks scolding the intruders, a curious caribou wandering by to gawk at the visitors from the sky, a pair of regal Arctic swans floating in the distance, all part of a community of life thriving in an unlikely land.

Mark and Doug are home now, trying to re-integrate into their old lives. As they fumble with the TV remote, or inch along the 405, their minds return to the Arctic, The Last Imaginary Place.

An experienced film crew, including Oscar-nominated Director of Photography, Eric Thiermann, filmed the venture in high-definition. Doug and Mark have put together a travelogue of their adventures, which has been well received throughout the Pacific Northwest. Come hear tales of the far north as Mark and Doug relive the adventure through dramatic narrative and video taken en route. The next presentation is:

· December 5, 2009, 2:00 PM at the Seattle Museum of Flight.