Afternoon light and cloud shadows play on snowy mountains.
As you may know, in October 2018, I spent three weeks in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard as a member of The Arctic Circle, an annual expeditionary residency program. Sailing from the town of Longyearbyen on the three-masted Barquentine ship, Antigua, we explored the coast and fjords, the light, textures, sounds, and landscapes, following the western edge of Spitsbergen, the largest and only permanently populated island of the archipelago, to the south and to the north and back again to Longyearbyen. In between, we motored; we sailed, putting up and pulling down sails; we ate and laughed; we heard stories of our shipmates, the residents, and the crew; we explored on foot, in the Zodiac, in the ship; we saw reindeer and seals, a handful of birds, polar bear tracks and snow angels; we heard glaciers; we watched the sun revolve around the horizon morning to night and again; we saw the aurora; it snowed, it rained, it was cold, windy, foggy, and raw; it was sunny, blue, and gorgeous; the water was calm and it was not; and day by day, we lost daylight as we revolved our way closer to the Polar Night and winter. And day by day, we lost, in the smallest modern human-pampered-on-a-ship way, what it meant to be separate from the landscape.
There is a lot to tell in this tale. And there is a lot that I cannot express, neither through words nor in my photographs. I kept a journal, of course, but it is perfunctory. I was too enthralled and engaged with the place and the people, too overloaded with the intensity of the space. My introverted anti-social self was in way over my head. Finding calm headspace to reflect and express the experience did not happen for me on board. And writing onshore in the cold and wet, well, many of you know my handwriting. In the months (!) since I meandered in and out of my photos, racing through them initially to share what may be of interest to the rest of the residents and crew, I bogged down when it came time to express the meat of the place in my images.
Arctic geometry: angles, triangles, and plane plains.
Via email, I lamented to my sweet friend Linda that I was not keeping up with my blog, ideas were percolating but I was reluctant to put them on paper or into the ether. Her response, “my sense is that you saw too much, know too much and hurt too much. Your slowness in letting it out is, I believe, more kind to us who think it’s going to hurt us too much.”
My lazier self says, yes, I am being kind. My practical self knows not where to begin or how to convey the mesmerizing passage of time and light in a place known for cold and dark. And, as this place passes from our memory in the years of melting ahead, I will mourn, as with all things, not for its passing but for my loss. For our loss. For all those who will not know it and who will wonder at its very existence. Like the miles-long herds of bison and the days-long flights of passenger pigeons, the Arctic is fading.
I don’t believe that we alone are entirely to blame, the planet has long worked in its own mysterious ways, but in no way have we helped. Exploiting everything we could for centuries, erasing landscapes for coal and oil, eliminating people and their ways of life, executing populations of fish and animals for our endless, grinding consumption, we certainly carry the brunt of the shame.
And so, I start the only place I can, with my experience and impressions. Like the Cooper Island series previously posted here, over the coming months I will share my journal, photos, and thoughts. I hope you’ll tag along.
I know that there are no words to make death better and so, I often remain silent for too long when people I know suffer a loss. For all the power of words, they are only words, and they cannot replace the love of a lifetime, a father, husband, or child. They cannot replace the smile, the joy, the humor of one who is no longer.
Process
Lessons in scale.
For months I have been ruminating, exploring my experience on Svalbard. I am leery of processing my photos – they cannot truly represent the exquisite colors and textures of the ice, the ocean, the landscape. They cannot convey the quality of light, the weight of the cold air, or smell of snow. They only pluck at the edges of the vast expanse, the scale of mountains, glaciers, open water, and solitude. It does not seem possible to feel the distance, the isolation, or the fortitude of the place, resolutely anchored in the north with nothing but open water and ice between it and the North Pole.
No words
Polar bear tracks disappearing
Now, more than ever in our species’ memories, the Arctic is commonly open water. The ice ages and Little Ice Age are gone. The pack ice of the Arctic Ocean basin, oscillating around the northern axis; building and retreating; seizing ships and men of old; providing a hunting and birthing platform for animals supremely adapted to the cold, the ice, and the dark; releasing accumulated nutrients into the water for the ocean-bound and the flying, diving creatures of summer; this great pack ice is leaving us.
There are no words that can mollify this loss. And yet, now more than ever is no time to be silent.
Each year I put together a dozen or so photos that describe the year past. This year I have an extra year’s worth of photos from Svalbard so I am presenting them in two parts. I hope you enjoy them.
Part I
The year stateside.
Arrowleaf balsamrootRattlesnake CanyonOwyhee stormPainted HillsPainted Hills 2BobCatCrater Lake and Wizard IslandSmoke Sunset
One early autumn afternoon, toward the end of The Arctic Circle residency, many of the residents and crew were on deck pulling down the sails from our morning sailing, enjoying the sun and the views, painting, and chatting. The lead guide, Sarah, came out of the crew quarters, walked directly across the deck to the gunwale gate, opened it, and stepped off the side of the ship. On a day that probably had not risen above freezing, she jumped into the Arctic Ocean. I saw this happen. She was purposeful and composed. And, I thought, “Why did she do that?”
She was entirely encased in a red survival suit and wearing a life vest. Her face, with rosy cheeks and a few wildly curly locks of hair, was framed in red. John, standing next to me, yelled, “Man overboard” and pointed to her in the water, as we were instructed to do at some distant time in the past.
Everyone on deck scrambled, the Zodiac was lifted and launched, the second mate and another guide jumped in and off they went. By now, only a minute or two later, Sarah had drifted a substantial distance from the ship. The ship turned hard to when the alarm went up but the currents and the wind took her away. I watched with my binoculars. John held his position, not looking away from Sarah’s. She bobbed in the waves, floating easily, and just as easily disappearing into the swells and into the low-angled sunlight. As John later pointed out, it was probably the most peaceful eight minutes of her entire trip with us.
Contact
The Zodiac reached her, and the two women began maneuvering her deadweight into the boat. It took a couple of attempts to gain a solid hold (and why don’t survival suits have handles built in?) before they were able to slide her over the Zodiac’s tubing and onto the floor. They returned to the ship and lifted her out. A drill that required eight minutes, start to finish.
Retrieval
In the Arctic Ocean, two minutes means near certain death. For a ship underway, in heavy seas or the Arctic dark, two minutes is an impossibility. For a crew new to each other, under reasonably controlled circumstances, eight minutes was a good trial.
This is not a drill.
The climate change alarm went off long ago. The global survival suit, a tremendously thin layer of atmosphere between Earth and the universal void, has a few leaks. We’ve long known this. Somewhere along the line, we collectively decided it doesn’t matter and we walked off the side of the ship. I am still thinking, “Why did we do that?”
While many people stand around pointing, a handful more are scrambling to reduce emissions, decrease resource extraction, and increase a range of efficiencies. We can’t turn the whole planet hard to, or launch a Zodiac to drag floating carbon back to Earth.
Antigua depth sounding in the uncharted waters of Lilliehöökfjorden. The glacier, Lilliehöökbreen, background right, retreated enough recently to open this entire bay. Antigua felt her way into the unknown depths ranging from 4m to 70m. She draws 3.2m
I repeat this is not a drill.
Whether or not you believe in climate change, whether the climate change I believe in is caused by human-made CO2 or fluctuations in solar radiation, it is hard to deny that Earth is changing. Storm seasons are shifting, intensity, duration, and total numbers increasing. Droughts and floods are deepening, fire seasons extending, desertification encroaching. Glaciers are melting and pack ice is not forming. Animal ranges are expanding and contracting to retreat from or fill in newly (in)hospitable territory. Some creatures are disappearing entirely; waters are too warm, too acidic, too stagnant. Parasites and diseases previously kept in check by heat/cold/ water/drought are rampaging through populations that were once better able to withstand a seasonal, rather than a year-round, onslaught.
In reality, it doesn’t matter what we believe. The Earth is in rapid motion in uncharted territory.
My recommendation is, get the crew together and run a few emergency drills. We need the practice.
Blomstrandbreen glacier, foreground, was attached to Blomstrandhalvøya. It was thought that there was a peninsula under the glacier. It wasn’t until the glacier melted that an island was exposed. Note the tiny people lower right foreground.
Not known for my technical skills or my use of cutting-edge technology, I found some photography challenges in Svalbard. The cold, the instant fog-up when entering the ship cabin (which opened directly onto the always-steamy galley), low light, great distances, ship motion, focusing while wearing mittens (not to mention shooting while wearing mittens), snowfall, rain, bow spray, and wind along with a host of computer program and storage space issues left me reeling with the feeling that many of my photos would be utter failures. There were no second chances; ships keep moving and the sun never really rises.
What I didn’t expect was some of these problems contributing to more interesting photos. The pixilation caused by low light, a zoom lens, and a high ISO creates the illusion of watercolor in some. Others appear as line drawings, pastels, or Suminogashiprints. The photos have more texture and less detail. Sharp edges give way to soft brushstrokes and smudged impressions.
My analytical, sharp-edged mind concedes; maybe the challenges added up to brilliant success in an unexpected form.
The billion-piece puzzle of pixilated tallus slopes on Hellvetiafellet and the waning moon above Longyearbyen.
Isfjorden takes on the color of a glacier while the mountains hide against the sky and peak out from behind the clouds – paper marbling at its finest.
A curious seal peers through a Monet-style painting.
The jagged beach on Gåsøyane looks across to watercolor-softened mountains.
The pastel view from Gåsøyane.
Antigua at anchor in the Impressionist Billefjorden.
Another Monet, return from Svenskehuset, across the tundra, mud mountain, and rogue waves.
The post-fire-season fires rage in California not far south of where I am working at my desk. There is smoke in the air despite it being November. It is daylight from 0715hr to 1645hr. There is a waning moon, the mornings are frosted, the days full of sun. Where are the glaciers?
Svalbard is an experience scrambled in my brain, the light and time, the landscape, people, and water, have no edges, no differentiation. They are fluid, bleeding one into the other. My method of understanding seems to be via deconstruction. I look across my photos, writing, and thoughts for small things I can grasp — details, colors, scale. I hope the whole will reveal itself slowly in the shades of wonder it deserves.
In the meantime, I’m meditating on a few Svalbard blues.
The ocean’s surface shifted colors according to the sky’s mood, the sun’s position, and the motion of the waves. This best represents the fluidity of time, light, people, that lives in my mind.
An iceberg in front of Recherchebreen, the glacier from which it calved, glows with inner blue light during a snowstorm.
Once thought to be a peninsula, the retreating glacier Blomstrandbreen revealed an island instead. Antigua anchored between the sky and its reflections.
Icebergs and ice floes, deep water- to ice-blue, fraternize at the base of Wahlenbergbreen glacier.
Ice imitates frosty agate on the beach in Tempelfjorden.
Polar Permaculture dome glows with pink grow lights in Longyearbyen’s early morning light.
“A Yup’ik hunter on Saint Lawrence Island once told me that what traditional Eskimos fear most about us is the extent of our power to alter the land, the scale of that power, and the fact that we can easily effect some of these changes electronically, from a distant city. Eskimos, who sometimes see themselves as still not quite separate from the animal world, regard us as a kind of people whose separation may have become too complete. They call us, with a mixture of incredulity and apprehension, “the people who change nature.”
Barry Lopez in Arctic Dreams
The plume of smoke released from its coal-powered plant exposes Barentsburg’s location from across Isfjorden.
Afternoon shadows on the mountains of Norde Isfjorden National Park, Svalbard.
Confession
I am reluctant to write about Svalbard and the Arctic. The place is so far removed from the usual and from the expectations of the norm that it is difficult to describe.
I have had a few conversations with people where pieces of the whole leaked out, like secrets I was not meant to share. And the response was as anticipated – the ideas, the images were so beyond recognition and understanding as to be preposterous.
Like rumors, gossip that is not unheard of but beyond credibility. The Arctic and the small corner of Svalbard that I saw fall into this category.
The colors of autumn in an October sunset over Spitsbergen.
The mountains rise directly from the sea and the fjords unimpeded by beaches or plains; the glaciers grind down the mountains and valleys. The sky extends beyond the imagination in colors that don’t exist in other realms. The atmosphere is both clearer and thicker, which seems counterintuitive and contradictory. The sun is never overhead – even in summer, it circles the horizon at a stubbornly low angle. Setting in late October and not rising again until mid-February it begrudgingly offers light for eight months a year. Graciously, however, it bestows the same amount of light in the year that the rest of the globe receives. When there are snow and ice, the colors of the sky offset the monochrome palette of mountains and rocks. Distance is deceptive and what appears just across the tundra may be hours away. Mountains loom above the water, glaciers loom above the people, and the sky wraps us all into its folds indiscriminately.
Challenge
Does the Arctic feel my absence the way I feel its? No. The land is indifferent to me. The Arctic does not suffer fools lightly, and only a fool would go to the Arctic for a few weeks thinking that was enough.
To say I am changed is trite. To deny it is folly. My challenge now is to express what seeped into my consciousness and spirit without losing the essence of the experience, without giving in to hyperbole and empty words.
