A day of abstracts
Water, light, and movement
3 October 2018 – Day two, or is it three?
Time zones and timelines
At some point during my trip, I realized that I never changed the date and time on my camera to reflect the European time zone. Photos I take on one day appear with a different day and time than when I took them. Time becomes irrelevant and the bright days flow into cold, star-filled nights. The textures of water, clouds, and mountains shift with the morning and evening light, the wind, and the speed of Antigua.
Cloud and mountain play as one
The last of the autumn birds
The long, flat plain gives way
Reflective water stretches mountains
Land breaching
Mountains rise from the water
At the end of the day
Last impressions of the first day
Worn, gray glacier ice plows past mountains
Ymerbukta’s high point, an esker at the foot of Esmarkbreen
Minuartia, maybe? Still blooming under the first fall snow during the first week of October.
Esmarkbreen and Ymerbukta
The face of Esmarkbreen
Deck of the tall ship Antigua
Northern lights play over Antigua’s bow
Ymerbukta and Esmarkbreen
Views from a glacier front
Iceberg on sand
Arctic Circle residents exploring
Ice and mountain
Bow and ice
Landscape number x. Brown and russet, gray and white, tundra and mountain.
Purple sandpiper
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