The Martin and Howard Expedition      Part 5

“Gold!” This jubilant cry echoed from California all the way to the upper reaches of New England, unleashing the frantic 1840’s Gold Rush. Most took the train to Kansas or Oklahoma where the tracks ended, then joined a wagon train to California, or so they thought. Many fell into the clutches of unscrupulous Wagon Masters, few of whom when signing up the wagon train travelers, pointed out the fine print in the contract regarding the Indians.

Boarding a clipper ship, and heading south around the Horn and up to California looked easier than the wagon train, but no one mentioned that leaving Boston or New York harbor, a California-bound ship had to sail eastward, almost to the coast of Africa before heading south, in a maneuver called “The Long Easting,” Failure to sail this long easting route resulted ultimately in being dashed onto the northeast shoulder of South America by the irresistible southwesterly currents.

After navigating the long easting route, there followed the perilous trip around the tip of South America, called The Horn, where many clippers broke up in the pounding of the iceberg-laden sea with the loss of thousands of more lives. Running the gauntlet of The Horn, the beleaguered ships had to sail westward almost to Hawaii, then from there, east to San Francisco, in order to avoid the onrushing current coursing down the west coast of South America.

Specs Howard and I described these perilous Gold Rush trips to our rapt WXYZ listeners, to dramatize our feeling that the rigors of those early pioneer efforts were not much greater than the trip to be undertaken by the four man Martin and Howard Expedition.

They had come to our WXYZ office in Detroit, and vowed to drive to the Polar province of Nonuvat in northern Canada, then harnessed to a sled, they would trek southeastward into Manitoba, through Ontario, swing a long easting around the lakes region, and then westward to Windsor. This called for running a gauntlet of hundreds of miles through blizzards in terrain filigreed by frozen streams and lakes, dense forests, and trails which could run for miles to an impenetrable dead end.

If you throw out the wild Indians and rotten ships, and compare just the physical rigors of the two trips, the 1840’s Gold Rush, vs. the Trans Canada trek by our guys, they size up about the same. The difference is that those Westward Ho! wagon trainers had an incentive. Gold! Our guys simply wanted to be extolled in the WXYZ Martin and Howard morning radio show. At this stage, I had to give the nod to them for sheer intrepidness. At that time, we sincerely regarded our guys as the embodiment of all that was human. good, and brave.

We dramatized the challenges that lay ahead for these brave souls. Of course, being Martin and Howard we also threw in a lot of humor.

Specs: “I guess you know that it was all baloney about Hannibal crossing the Alps with those elephants. His supply sergeant said, ‘I am proud, sir, to report that we have rounded up the elephants you ordered for the trip across the Alps’ “You idiot! “cried Hannibal. “I said elevators.” (Sting with the jingle)

All of the foreplay having played out, we were now down to zero (or sub zero) hour for the Martin and Howard Expedition to launch into their quest for immortality. Specs and I had lined up our sister television station to receive them when they drove into the WXYZ parking lot after their ordeal, but first came the actual trek.

The scene: the exterior of an Inuit trading post on the Nunavut border with Manitoba. The alpha male of our group made a heartfelt speech to the assembled Inuits calling them “Indians” during his speech. Inuit are a stoic lot. They are not Indians, but descendants of hearty souls in Siberia who migrated thousand of years ago across the land bridge into Canada. Centuries of living in Polar weather had rendered them thick skinned to insensitive remarks. They stood expectantly, waiting for the Mountie to fire his pistol into a snow bank, the signal for our Expedition members to begin.

The four M and H Expedition team members tensed their muscles, ready to lunge forth. The Mounties raised his pistol, firing the 38 Magnum with a deafening blast, sending a volcanic plume of snow skyward where the bullet had blasted into a snow bank.

History does not record exactly what came down after the gun shot, but it was like the Indians had descended on the wagon train and the clipper ships’ rotten hulls had given way to the turbulent waters of the treacherous Horn. The Martin and Howard Expedition members bent into the task of lugging the sled forward.

They heaved and tugged at their sled for an estimated 700 yards before giving in to the insurmountable inertia of the deep snow. Telling you any more would be a cruelty. I will simply reveal that we never heard from the guys again. I mercifully conclude this by telling you that the Martin and Howard Expedition men ceased to be eligible for inclusion in that pantheon of pioneers mentioned earlier.


EPILOGUE

Over 35 years passed without my actually having seen an Inuit. Then, in 2004, I inspired 90 fun seekers to go with Carol and me to Alaska. We cruised through the Inland Waterway winding up in Anchorage, then took the train to Fairbanks.

Fairbanks featured a magnificent river trip on a stern wheeler that included a visit with the world famous Iditarod champion, Susan Butcher. Her home was on the river allowing us to stop and talk to us in her back yard. She was mic’d and spoke to us about her exploits and introduced us to her spirited 60-70 pound racing dogs, the breed that absolutely loved running 1200 miles in the Iditarod. She then brought out the next generation of champions, a fresh crop of tail wagging puppies all of whom yapped like they were delighted to meet us.

What happened next on our river trip was surreal. The stern wheeler pulled up at a recreated Inuit village festooned with native arts, fur apparel, weavings, and a cast of outgoing Inuits ready and eager to fill us in on their culture, far richer than one would imagine considering that they lived in a huge refrigerator most of the year.

A highlight of the Inuit village was an exhibition of dog sledding. .Though it was summer, the sleds were mounted on wheels and at the ready to race around a three hundred yard oval. A wrangler hooked up dog teams to a couple of sleds.

Two young women entered the ring, representing the next generation of sled racers. Not just women, but Inuit women, who might well have peered out from the pages of Vogue: dazzling smiles on their beautifully sculpted faces, their skin the color of antique ivory. They motioned for us to gather around them so they could speak more intimately, then they segued seamlessly back and forth in a brief history of Inuit culture and how they lived a rich life despite the blistering cold.

I noticed that their accent was middle American, Kansas or Nebraska , and they didn’t say “aboot” instead of “about,” and didn’t end every other sentence like the Canadians with, “eh.” Then abruptly, in the middle of their riveting narrative, running straight for the girls, came two teams of noisily baying Iditarod dogs, hauling sleds at warp speed.

The girls screamed primally, and sprinted after the speeding sleds at what might have been a 6 second “40.” They scooped up the dragging reins trailing the rear of the speeding sleds, leaped aboard and half- rode, half-ran the entire length of the race track, finally jumping off the sleds as they came around, and vaulting the guard rail with the ease of high hurdlers, back in front of us in nothing flat.

The girls instantly composed themselves like nothing had happened, returning to field more questions about the Inuit culture. This led to personal questions, the sub text of which was, what are two nice Inuit girls like you doing this far from the Arctic Circle, and so civilized at that?

The reply was dizzying. One, Miki, was on summer vacation from Annapolis where she would soon graduate and solo in a Tomcat.. Her Inuit partner, Aariik, was about to graduate from M.I.T with a degree in Meteorology.


There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights

That would make your blood run cold

The Arctic trails have their secret tales, but the queerest they ever did see

Was the Martin and Howard Expedition on WXYZ.

Legal Disclaimer re: The M and H Expedition story is basically true.

The names have been changed to protect the Inuits….. a little Inuit joke there.