9781422279212

1

Moving North

Words to Understand domesticate  to tame a wild animal for people to use exiled  to be banned from a country as a punishment indigenous  native or original to a particular place nomadic  always moving around, often to find new food or other resources permafrost  a layer of soil that stays frozen all year long

T he common image of the Arctic is somewhat bleak. It’s cold and icy, sealed in a layer of permafrost that never melts. It looks empty, with nothing to offer. It’s true that the Arctic has vast sheets of ice, but the ice is not a solid, unmoving mass. In- stead, it’s almost like a living thing. It drifts, melts, and refreezes with the seasons. As it does, it brings the animals that people in the Arctic depend on for food. Polar bears travel across the ice looking for new feeding grounds. On the coastline between ice and sea there are fish, seals, and walrus. Farther inland on land that is sometimes covered with ice and snow,Arctic people hunt animals like caribou (reindeer). In the summer, thousands of birds migrate from the south. They are another important food

9