Esmarkbreen – not quite monochrome
Along the glacier’s edge
Glacial ice boulder at the edge of Esmarkbreen
Boulder in perspective
Glacier’s edge at mountains’ feet
Ice and rock = rock dust
Scale
Setting sails
2 October – Ymerbukta
Tall ship Antigua at anchor in Ymerbukta
We left port yesterday afternoon with the motor but put up the sails quickly and fairly flew across the fjord. We helped with the sails – a token effort by the guests. Ropes everywhere, sails pulled up front to back and staysail in the bow. The wind was high and rough and almost everyone felt it. I did well outside but inside was pretty queasy. Eating helped and the food was good. I didn’t eat a lot and went to bed almost immediately.
Someone pounded on the door to say the aurora was visible. Lena (my cabinmate) and I got dressed and went out but there was little activity and after 10 minutes I went back to bed. By the time we went up for the aurora the crew had pulled down the sails and dropped anchor in a quiet arm of the fjord with a wall to protect us from the wind bombing out of the north. The water was calm, and the boat rocked gently for the night.
We did a landing this morning and a hike up the glacier edge. The grays and greens and blues are satisfying and intense. The glacier was growling and grumbling. Thunder came from within the glacier, massive rolling peals as it shifted and creaked into a new position. It calved audibly but we couldn’t see it from where we were, though we watched the wave from the calved iceberg cross the bay and wash up onto the shore.
The landscape is wide open and at the same time constrained within the walls of glaciers and the surrounding mountains. The beach is gravel and sand with gently lapping water. There is a tide, but it seems very small. Black guillemots in their winter attire were on the water and a few purple sandpipers along the beach. Two seals followed us when we first landed; they barked at us.
Ant-sized humans cross the gravel outwash plain at the foot of Esmarkbreen
Arctic Circle residents hike along glacier’s edge
The Divine Arctic Comedy, Heaven
Heaven Air Future
Sublimate. Dissipate. Eliminate. Obviate.
Retreat – Sublimate, v.: to pass directly from the solid state to the vapor state; archaic: to improve or refine, as in purity or excellence. As the world we created spins out of our control, it is time to recant. We know the Past and the Present, they hold no secrets, and no amount of blame or negotiation will change either. As a species watching our suicide drama play out in slow motion, we must withdraw from the feudal and futile, selfish and rapacious, allowing light and air to supplant notions of dominance.
No time – Perhaps I overestimate. The universe, here long before humans began their journey, will remain long past our term. As humans fade into the geologic past, our constructs, physical and metaphysical, will be of no consequence. Like thousands of species before us, we may become a sedimentary layer, or a fossil pressed in rock. Unlike our predecessors, we can choose our course of action. It is not beyond our ken to initiate a new design, accepting global shifts as they occur, choosing to remain a part of the universal configuration rather than apart from it.
Outside the human realm, independent of water and ice, Past and Present, the aurora borealis sways and glows in the Heavens. Indifferent to the vagaries of the human ego, the plasma flow viscerally draws us to join the dance. It is within our power to redirect Present Chaos. Necessity obviates the need for further debate. If we want to know the Future, we must create it, and we must nurture it.
Our path then is this: move toward the light. Collectively overcoming inertia, seeking the light, we can pull the Future out of thin air.
Impetus.
Ascendant, adj.: directed upward
“…real beauty is so deep you have to move into darkness to understand it.” Barry Lopez
The Divine Arctic Comedy, Purgatory
Purgatory Ice Present
Millennial. Annual. Tangible. Visible.
Advance – Water became ice. Masses of ice ranged from the north across oceans, continents, and islands; tongues extended from mountain tops to valleys, grinding through walls of stone, depositing sediments via meltwater. Sea level dropped as cold held water in its solid form. Earth’s crust deformed, depressed by the weight of ice, and its rotation shifted as the mass on the north side of the globe held sway.
Our time – Products of geologic time, humans found their way to the far north, ever expanding their range, ever devouring that which they believed to be rightfully theirs. The Cosmos, now in our hands, took a new shape. We moved mountains, tilled bottomlands, mined minerals, metals, and power. We tamed, maimed, and killed animals, plants, forests, and oceans. We harnessed fire and created ice on demand. We built new substances from the elements, exploiting natural structures to suit our desires, turning oil to plastic and coal to heat.
Retreat – Ice becomes water. Glacial ice, pack ice, shore-fast ice, it all melts. Sea level rises; shorelines drown. Our heat does not dissipate, but instead stagnates overhead, trapping us in our effluent. Hurricanes, cyclones, blizzards, forest fire, drought, floods, the Earth we manipulate responds in kind. We hide in our denials, in our superiority, in our arrogance. Our expectation that Earth is ours is flawed. The sun oversees all. Its cycles are unaware of our needs or our existence. It is fire not harnessed.
We are not rulers of Earth, nor conquerors or tamers. We are stewards. Our tenure will be marked not by our great deeds or structures, nor our mass upon Earth’s surface. Rather, we will be remembered for our refuse and that which was lost during our watch. In place of glaciers and polar bears, we leave pit mines and plastic water bottles.
We have agency, and we have created the untenable. A new equilibrium, not yet reached, is imminent. We of the Present, we are in Limbo, Purgatory.
Chaos.
Every empire must fall.
Disintegrate, v.: to lose unity or integrity by or as if by breaking into parts
“Would the last animal, eating garbage and living on the last scrap of land, his mate dead, would he still forgive you?” Barry Lopez
The Divine Arctic Comedy, Hell
Barbara Crawford, a co-resident on the Arctic Circle, asked me to write three essays to introduce her exhibit opening this June in the Montefalco Museum, Montefalco, Italy. The gallery has three rooms one leading into the next where she is presenting her paintings and sculptures from Svalbard in a version of The Divine Comedy, each room will be introduced by an essay and will follow the themes of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Hell is explored through water and the past, Purgatory as ice and the present, Heaven in air and the future. If you happen to be in Umbria in June, be sure to visit. In the meantime, and with no further delay, here is Part 1, Hell.
Hell Water Past
Distant. Persistent. Resistant. Recalcitrant.
Immemorial time – Before there was Europe or Svalbard, the Arctic Ocean or coal, even before there was life, there was primordial soup – a steamy, overheated, water bath that covered the Earth. Whatever you believe about creation or evolution, there are undeniable truths: seafloors spread, mountains rose, life began.
Advance – Fire and brimstone greeted the first water-borne carbon-based biological beings. Across time, continents moved, an atmosphere formed, and life burgeoned. Shapeshifting was the norm, land masses stretched and smashed together; oceans mixed and remixed, and uplifted mountains washed back into the seas. Plants and animals diversified, flourished, lived, and died. Their bodies fell to the earth, to the seafloor, into the future in conglomerations of sediments and carbon reserves.
Mountain chains were spurned by wandering continents, eroded by unceasing weather, and churned by heat and pressure into new forms, into new mountains or no mountains. Carbon was compressed deeper, harder. Pieces changed position or were reworked, but the players remained the same.
Cosmos.
Time immemorial proceeded into the ages of the ancients, pharaohs, empires, and deities. What was once wild and raw and orderly in its state of natural fluctuation became fodder for the human dynasty.
Infrangible, adj.: not capable of being broken or separated into parts
“Eden is a conversation. It is the conversation of the human with the Divine. And it is the reverberations of that conversation that create a sense of place. It is not a thing, Eden, but a pattern of relationships, made visible in conversation. To live in Eden is to live in the midst of good relations, of just relations scrupulously attended to, imaginatively maintained through time. Altogether we call this beauty.” Barry Lopez
And the rest of the crew
The people, part 3
Last but not least, this rounds out the cast. Twenty-eight residents and 11 crew members set sail for two weeks on the waters of the North Atlantic. Tight quarters, snowy weather, and a boatful of ideas make for lively times.
Carson contemplates
Mary Ellen in the ice field
Andrea intensely focused
Rachel in waders
Lindsay at the rail; Dawn under the veil
Kristin at leisure
Nora seeds the Arctic water with ice cubes. Restoration.
Isaac in the Zodiac
Barbara C. in the white sea
The galley crew, Piet, Janene, and Jannah, after dinner calm
Crew member Alex climbs
Siegmund with walruses in sight
David in the middle
There are no bit parts
People, part 2
As each person on this trip takes shape in my photos, I realize that they all held leading roles as stars of their own Arctic show.
Theresa in scale
Stina by glacier light
Christina belonging to the surge glaciers
John ponders exposure
Åhsild on watch
Kim ready to climb, photo-bombed by Captain Mario
Barbara L. at a standoff with an iceberg
Shirley listening
Second Mate Annet keeps order on deck
Emma, the rear guard
Guide/guard Kristin scouts
The characters take the stage
A few characters
As a field biologist, I often said there was a reason I worked alone in the woods for so many years. Not quite a misanthrope, I don’t suffer fools lightly – though I spent many years as a fool myself, and fooling myself. Two weeks on a ship full of people from which your only escape is to get into a Zodiac with the same people and spend time on shore again with those same people, oh, that took some mental wrangling.
In the end, the people were as much a part of the success of this trip as the location. For someone who rarely takes photos of people, this group enthralled me. The crew each knew enough for twenty people. The crew and residents both were not diverse but rather were infinite in their stories, their articulation via a chosen medium, their creativity, and openness to the possibilities of art, design, expression, and life.
In the order taken
Sarah, the lead guide, and Nemo, the lead dog, above Esmarkbreen
Martina and Georgia attempt to see-saw
Lena blows bubbles
Max paints Arctic landscapes in the dining room
Max’s painting
Mario, the captain, with roasting fork out of hand, explaining the boat
Julie waves for the camera
Offer watches the sky from the Zodiac on deck
Dawn and Bonnie out of the wind against the wheelhouse
Dog parking at the end of the trail
When the season’s over
There are fewer than five miles of roads on an island more than 500 miles from the nearest landmass. At the end of the season, ride your snowmobile to the edge of the remaining snow and walk away. When you return in the fall, it will be there. Maybe you got close enough to town to store your bike with the snow machine. Just lean it against the snowmobile. It’s fine.
Stopping in for a beer at the Coal Miner’s? Great. Park your dogs out front. Take off your shoes and leave your gun at the door.
A lone snowmobile stands at glacier’s edge and away from the pack conveniently camouflaged as rocks (lower left)
Ready to head back out
Longyearbyen storage unit
Dog Parking at the Coal Miner’s
A few billion-piece jigsaw puzzle
You’ll need the box
These slopes surround Longyearbyen. A jumble of billions of pieces of talus could, with a bit of patience and a lot of time, be put back together. Rock caps give way to steep slopes and mounds of coal mine tailings stretch across the valley floor, all creeping toward the fjord. Rock slides etch the ridges with geometric patterns that stand out under light snow cover. Ridge after ridge stands against the sky, crumbling into the earth.
A billion pieces…
A few billion more…
Maybe a bigger table…
Or the floor