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
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
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
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.
We all know the results of our collective actions, we see it daily in raging hurricanes, in photos of starving polar bears, and microplastics in alpine lakes and city water supplies alike. The hundreds, perhaps thousands, of conservation organizations, environmental advocates, and ecological prophets bend ears at every opportunity; if we can reach the children, the lawmakers, the governments, surely things will change, surely we will make a difference. We lament the loss of things many will never see outside of TV or a zoo – elephants and tigers, glaciers and polar ice caps.
A dream
I point no fingers, as I am guilty, too: I drive, I fly, I use more water than necessary, I appreciate many comforts of modern living.
I go to Svalbard next week with the dream of connecting people to a world they may never experience, to a place that bears the brunt of our time, and does so stoically, as those with the gravest injuries tend toward silence while the superficially wounded produce the loudest caterwauling. How long before we recognize the consequences of our actions? How long before we bring the Arctic and its denizens to their knees?
I don’t pretend to have the answer. I am not so arrogant to think that my trip will change the face of our culture nor our fate. I believe we each have a role and every person who connects with the natural world becomes sympathetic to its plight. To our plight. We are not separate.
I am in pursuit of this connection. For myself, yes, but also for the wild upon which we depend, for it depends equally upon us.
I will have limited to no internet over the coming weeks. Bear with me; I will post what I can. I look forward to catching up here when I return to stable wifi. In the meantime, wish me many polar bears and stunning northern lights.
