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[email protected] www.tundracub.com 218-744-2003 3 NOTES This is a book of non-fiction. A few liberties were taken with the sequencing of events, but all of them actually happened. The northern natives that we once called "Eskimos" prefer the word "Inuit," the Inuktitut word for "the people." To convert Canadian costs to U.S., subtract approximately one third. In keeping with our antiquated U. S. system of weights and measures, temperatures are given in Fahrenheit, and volumes are listed in gallons. 4 This book is dedicated: To the Bernoullis, a family of 17th century scientists who fled to Switzerland to escape from persecution by religious zealots. Daniel Bernoulli discovered the principle that helps lift our wings to the sky. To Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Charles Darwin and their many contemporaries who, often at great risk, opened our eyes to grandeur and advanced the sciences that provide our many comforts. To Orville and Wilbur Wright, two independent thinkers who, in 1903, achieved the world's first successful, powered, piloted, heavier-than-air flight. (The local paper didn't consider the event worth reporting. The United States Army later called the use of airplanes a "crazy" idea.) To the bush pilots who bring supplies and human contact to remote corners of the world, and to all who seek new horizons. 5 Preface The room where I write overlooks the tea-tinted waters of a northern Minnesota lake, a view that I share with a common loon. When I taxi my seaplane to and from our pier, the loon parallels me, yodeling a raucous theme while he performs his water-walking act.