by aramatzne@gmail.com | 2 Jul 2018 | Roads Taken
Part 19, the songs of summer
Black Guillemots enjoy the summer water, ice floes and all, off Cooper Island.
25 Aug July
I am now paying for the nice weather I so cheerily wrote about the other day. It rained most of the night and has been sleeting and snowing and blowing a gale all day. Ye-ha. I’ve been busy with chicks, they are rolling in fast and furious. It’s too cold and nasty to push anyone off the nest if I don’t have to so I’m not pushing them. It seems they all weigh the same and have the same length wing the first day anyway. It is probably I who is in need of shelter from the cold and wind, but I’ll still try not to push anybody.
The folks who brought pastries – Mike and Patsy – returned on their way back to Barrow. They left me a whole white fish – yummy. I cleaned it and filleted it then pan fried half and made fish chowder out of the other half. I sacrificed a whole can of evaporated milk to the cause. I would rather have good chowder than a week of coffee. I hadn’t expected such a delight, but it was welcome!
George is planning to be in Barrow on Sunday and will come out here, weather dependent, on Monday. I’m not sure how long he will stay, but I’m going to tell him that if he moves one thing from its current location and drops it in the sand, I will have to kill him. That’s all there is to it. 🙂 I’ve spoken regularly with folks at ARF. There was a round of Guess the Product yesterday (BBQ sauce) – it took me a while to figure it out since I never use the stuff – the first ingredient: modified corn syrup… Yuk. Other news from ARF: the king eider chick is eating like crazy but somehow hurt its leg. So it goes. Dave is busy with the fish folks- they got their supplies to Atqasuk but didn’t have any TP for the summer– oops. There’s no helicopter fuel.
I was thinking today about the songs that have randomly wandered into my head since I’ve been here – first it was Gordon Lightfoot’s “That’s what you get for loving me” – everything you had is gone, as you can see, that’s what you get for loving me. Then the Neville’s “Thank you, Miss Rosa, you are the spark, started our freedom movement. Thank you, sister Rosa Parks.” Then the title song from Oklahoma (egad!), “O-k-l-a-h-o-m-a (except I kept doing it as H-m-o-a-…) and the land we belong to is grand.” Then Bruce Springsteen’s “I ain’t nothing but tired/Man, I’m just tired and bored with myself/Hey there baby, I could use just a little help/You can’t start a fire/You can’t start a fire without a spark/This gun’s for hire/even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark/Message keeps getting clearer/Radio’s on and I’m moving ’round the place/I check my look in the mirror/I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face/Man I ain’t getting nowhere/I’m just living in a dump like this/There’s something happening somewhere/Baby I just know that there is.” Yesterday, I woke with Bonnie Raitt’s “Run like a thief” – How sweet the wine of desire. It’s both interesting and annoying to have one or two lines so solidly wedged in my mind that it occupies whole days (and weeks) and is the first thought when I wake. The worst stretch of days was when “Convoy” lodged into the deepest reaches of my head and filled every waking and most non-waking minute. “‘Cause we got a little convoy/rockin’ through the night/Yeah, we got a little convoy/Ain’t she a beautiful sight? …an’ Eleven long-haired Friends a’ Jesus in a chartreuse micra-bus.” Wow. That was painful.
I had another dream last night from which I woke startled and afraid. I only remember the end. We (me and several unknown people) were in a house; maybe I was supposed to stay there – I don’t know, but everyone went out. As I went back to turn off a light, I thought I should have someone stay with me; I was afraid. As I turned to ask, I saw the door close and everyone moving away. I couldn’t get to the door or say anything. I tried to call out, then tried to yell, and found I could neither move nor speak. The effort of trying to scream woke me. I jolted awake; I didn’t open my eyes (or maybe they were covered). I lay in the dark, awake, and startled. That’s twice in a week. Why am I feeling trapped? Trapped enough to be having such dreams. I am locked into nothing; I owe no one anything. I have no obligations. Perhaps that’s it. I’m trapped in my demands. This lack of stability, my boastful attitude of not needing any solid ground. No one would taunt me if I settled down for the rest of my life tomorrow. No one would be surprised, either, if I didn’t. So, why do I feel trapped? I have to face it all sometime.
I read a bit today and wrote a couple of letters. Too cold, raw, and nasty out there to be out and about. Too bad, I would like to check on the tern and Xena chicks. I haven’t been down that way in a few days. I also want to take photos of the freshy-bugger guillemot chicks, but it is too nasty to have them out of the nest longer than necessary. Maybe tomorrow I can flush somebody and take photos.
27 Aug [sic, actually July]
Where will I be in 10 years? Phew. I can’t even imagine where I will be next month. Well, OK. I’ll be on Cooper Island next month, but the month after that I have no clue.
The weather continues to be awful. Cold and raw, the wind switched around to the NE and picked up speed, remarkably. I spent today walking, in the colony and along the shore, it was pretty brutal, but I wanted to be out nonetheless. There is a lot of bird movement these days. The guillemot prospectors are in town, scoping out sites for next year. I thought I had pretty well eliminated the ranks of unbanded and cohort banded birds; there were a dozen or so left to catch. Then all of a sudden, numerous unbanded and cohort birds started appearing and sent me into despondency. I can’t band now as it is too late in incubating and too early in hatching. I watch and weigh and measure chicks.
This morning when I woke the sun was shining through the strips of cloud, heavy, dark, and 3-dimensional, crowding along the northern horizon and there was a dark, impenetrable wall of fog on the western edge. It soon moved in to obliterate the light and what little warmth there was in it.
While I was out this morning, in the distance over the water, I saw a line of common eiders, 70 or 75 of them moving west, single file. They flirted with the fog and the waves, growing faint in the thick gray air and then standing out sharply again. The line flew ever forward but also as if the energy of a wave was moving through it – as the wave rolls through water. The line never broke, if the lead bird dropped to the water the others followed in turn; when the lead bird rose again the undulation flowed through the birds and continued as they passed. Eventually, they disappeared into the mists and were gone. There is something striking about watching so many birds in a single line. Eiders almost always seem to move this way and, when they are out of lines, it only takes a few minutes for them to regain their structure, never losing ground or speed. Just as shorebirds know when to turn, land, or take off in synchrony with the hundreds of other birds, the eiders always seem to find their order and where they fit. Amazing really, and pleasing to see that long row stretch out across the sky, across the water through the fog.
An Arctic Tern chick lays low on the Cooper Island gravel.
Tomorrow I will walk down to the tundra again – I went yesterday for a bit. The tern chick is getting fat and is hard to see even still. Its parents always give it away, if it weren’t for them hovering and harassing me I would never find it. There are a dozen or so long-tailed duck babies on Pasta Pond. Gosh, are they cute? The pintails are back, and the eiders are more noticeable. The long-tails are probably still down the island, but I haven’t gone to look. Lots of glaucous gulls, they seem to have increased. I wonder what early dispersers I might see over the next month – there are already lots of western sandpipers.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 25 Jun 2018 | Roads Taken
Part 18, summer slides by in the Arctic
Sabine’s Gulls wing by Cooper Island.
19 July
I couldn’t keep my eyes open to read and passed out at 0100 but woke at 0300, and again at 5, and finally got up at 0730. I had a big omelet for breakfast w/ tea. Mmmmmm. I was dreaming about food again. And about making coffee. I was having trouble with the whole measuring thing. I dreamed I was at a feast and there was food everywhere. Of course, I was drawn to the desserts. Rich, creamy, fat. Mmmmmm.
After I ate, I went to the tundra. It is gray, horizon to horizon. Gray. No relief. There is no real horizon either. The water and sky meet somewhere indistinguishable. There must be a line there somewhere, but it is not revealing itself to me.
The bluffs were clear and double in a superior image, but there was also a big gap between them. The air has a remarkably clear quality so that even when, or perhaps especially when, there is no sun, and it is gray all around you can see miles without any loss of clarity. The bluffs seem as close as my hand they are so sharp. Anyway, I walked to the tundra; I found the remaining tern chick, a mobile ball of fluff. The parents were diving on me. It’s incredible I wasn’t struck. They dive straight for your face, right between the eyes. The more you look directly at them, the more they attack. One parent would stop and hover over the chick for a minute or two to be sure it was OK – that is what gave its location away, and finally, I saw it move. Cute bugger. Except for its orange bill it blended into the gravel and sand perfectly.
The long-tailed duck nest I’ve been watching is still being incubated, and amazingly, I discovered a second nest only about 20’ from it. I accidentally flushed the female today. There were six eggs. How long has that nest been there that I completely missed it – even with all the trips to the terns and the other long-tailed nest? There were two Xena (Sabine’s gull) babies on the pond. Another pair of cute buggers. The Xena also dove on me. Nobody likes me over there. The Brant are gone. They and their balls of fluff are on the lagoon. There are hundreds of long-tailed ducks piling up on the beach and the lagoon. They are beginning to molt- or as I thought to myself this morning, shed. Silly me.
There was a little mist/sprinkle in the air, and as it got later, it got colder and rawer. Walking back to camp, I found a whale vertebra pushed up on the beach by the ice – still no jaw bone. There was also a fabulous pair of red-throated loons on the north shore water. I took probably too many pictures as they were not close enough for the lens but were within 50’ of me so great for the binocs. This is the first time I was able to see the red of their throats and the lines up the backs of their necks. Gorgeous. Different from both the Pacific and Yellow-billed loons but spectacular nonetheless.
It has begun drizzling, and the temp is down to 36º. I am aware these days how dark it is at night. Of course, it isn’t dark at all, but it is quite definitely night. Without having seen the sun but for two days in Barrow, the night is gray, cold, and an eternal dusk. As the eastern sky lightens, there is the effect of sunrise and often the pink and gold light that accompanies such a time. In Barrow the other morning, as I was leaving the ARF at 0600, I could see the golden early morning light, and I was glad for that few minutes of beauty and sad for its implication. The summer is by no means eternal and, while I wait for the intense summer sun and warmth, the days slide by in their most fluid form, unbroken by the dark of night. Each day threatening that much more to slide straight into fall and the dark of winter. I expect to switch my schedule soon to accommodate the chick weighing – noon to 1700-ish. It will be dark soon at night. Aug 2 is the first day when the sun technically sets, that’s less than two weeks. I’m not ready to relinquish this extra time and the energy that I gained. I am not ready to relinquish the sun, of which I have seen so little.
22 Aug July
Again several days passed since I wrote. I had only a couple hours of sleep on the afternoon of the 19th when I was awakened by Dave – he came to the tent and woke me. He told me there was a fax from Mom that said my grandmother died. She didn’t say which one and I was rather sleepy and startled from a dream I was having (falling into the water at the edge of the ice pack and being unable to breathe or move or call for help – the effort of trying to yell woke me). We radioed ARF, to have them call Mom. To no avail – Dave made an executive decision that I should go back to Barrow until I could talk to Mom. We boated back – by the time we got in, it was too late back east to call so I went to Dave’s softball game.
Back at ARF, the owl crew was celebrating the success of their first owl transmitter attachment.
I spoke with Mom in the morning, her mother died of heart failure. She was 94.
I went out with Mat from the owl crew that morning for nest check. We hiked probably 10 or 12 miles checking nests on the tundra, and we hauled – he’s the only person I’ve ever known that can keep up with me (and vice versa). We made it back to BASC at 1400 and headed east, back to Cooper. Mat came along with Dave and me for the boat trip, and was suitably impressed by Cooper – I think he now knows for sure that I’m crazy. He saw a Sabine’s gull – a lifer –so was happy to make the trip. I walked them down the island to the boat and sent them on their way. I am glad to be home.
I tried to modify my schedule some, but it is impossible since switching back and forth twice in as many weeks. I tried to sleep only a few hours last night and pick up my old routine, but I slept through the alarm and didn’t wake until 0630. There were a few chicks this morning and lots of pipped and hatching fuzzy little creatures. They are cute. All black down and fluff.
Ice slabs piled high.
Ice has been sliding off the push all day. The great slabs are sliding and falling. There are constant booms as they hit other slabs and sometimes massive splashes as they glide into the water.
When we put the boat in the water yesterday the sun came out, and it was clear and blue and beautiful all afternoon and evening, right into today. There is still blue sky with a few clouds. I am wearing cotton pants, a t-shirt, and cotton flannel. No shoes or socks. No hat, no gloves… this is the first Summer day on Cooper. Alas, there are mosquitos and I finally had to retreat into the tent and zip the screen. It doesn’t matter, it is glorious, and I am happy to be here.
A family stopped this afternoon. They were boating to their camp 30 miles or so farther east and wanted to see who was here. They brought a plate of pastries for me. The ice turned them back last night, so they landed on Cooper to check in. I was asleep and didn’t awake when they approached the camp or tent. They said they called out to me and could see me sleeping in the tent – I always leave the top half of the door unzipped so I can look out – in case I hear a bear, or maybe, so it’s easier for a bear to get in since I’m obviously not going to wake up as one strolls past. I’ve been sleeping so well here and hard. The world could about blow up, and I probably wouldn’t notice. We talked a while before they continued east and I went back to nest checks. I check each nest daily until all the chicks hatch, and then I’ll split the nests and only check them every other day. The wind has picked up, and it sounds like it might be serious.
A Black Guillemot chick peaks out of its nest cavity.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 18 Jun 2018 | Roads Taken
Part 17, a new epic
Snowy owl nest with chicks and unhatched eggs, Barrow, Alaska.
17 July – Cooper Island
While in Barrow, I went out with the snowy owl crew for nest checks on the tundra. The snowys are beautiful. The chicks hatch asynchronously – some nests had barely mobile chicks and chicks running and hiding from us. We banded a few older ones. We weighed dead lemmings at each nest, tried to find each chick, and tried not to get bombed by the dad. Some of the males were aggressive, others just noisy – barking and hooting at us. Females with smaller chicks did a distraction display – an impressive scene with a bird that size. The tundra is beautiful, rolling, pockets of water and hummocks. It was, by far, the nicest day since I’ve been here. Beautiful, clear, and blue. There was a good wind but still fabulous.
Later with the snowy crew, we went to Point Barrow, the northernmost spot in the US (there is one more northerly place in North America in Canada). Then continued out to Plover Pt. No bears, alas, but we flushed a guillemot on eggs from under a plane wreck.
The next morning, the weather was no good for boating, and I spent it on email, puttering. Then went out again with the snowy crew. They were trying to catch an adult owl to fit it with a transmitter backpack. I stayed well back from the work as there were already four people there. They looked like a S.W.A.T. team. The owl never came to the noose trap – a cage w/ a live lemming and nooses tied all over it. They tried to catch the same bird the day before. I think she was smarter than they were. I wandered around to look at flowers and plants. We moved to another site and went through the same routine. No luck. I sat in the sun and watched. It was another clear, blue day, though the wind was a lot stronger.
The weather changed the next morning. Gray, cloudy again but the wind died down, and Dave and I decided to make the Cooper Island run; we left ARF about 1600. We loaded the boat, put it in the water, and headed east. The water wasn’t bad and the weather was good. It was good to be home. Such as it is.
Dave and I unloaded and hauled all the stuff to the tents. He had coffee and headed out again. I watched until he was just a speck and then turned and walked up the island to the tundra patch. One of the tern chicks is dead. I couldn’t find the other one but the parents were attentive and watching it from nearby. The Sabine’s chick was also dead. The Brant are all gone. There are a few long-tailed ducks around still, but it is much quieter than when I left. The guillemots are about the same.
I stayed up until 0500 – 23 hours –before a four-hour nap then got up for nest check. I was able to stay awake until radio call at 1:15 and then died. Slept until 2200. Had a great night – it was 40º, almost no wind, the air was clear –even though it was cloudy – and I could see the bluffs and the mainland well. I caught eight cohorts, two previously banded, and two newly banded. George was much pleased and impressed. I’m slowly working that list down. If I have just a few more good, mild nights I’ll have all of the breeding birds banded. It is almost time to start looking for chicks and then I guess I’ll be busy.
The fog rolled in this morning, and now it’s raining. Surprise. Dave said it rained there all night, so, I’m lucky really.
I saw caribou on the tundra when I was doing nest checks with the owl crew – I almost forgot to add that. There were two grazing calmly by a big pond. Lots of water out there, ponds everywhere and just endless pools between hummocks. I took lots of photos. I hope some of them turn out well.
What will I do in the fall?
18 July
It began raining yesterday as I finished nest check. I slid into my tent, went into hiding as it were. I slept for 12 hours. It was still raining when I dragged myself out of sleep and made an effort at starting the day. It was 0300. I climbed into the cook tent, ate the last of the winter sausage and apple curry I made the night before and drank good strong coffee.
I finished reading Homer’s The Odyssey today and began Zorba the Greek. Oh, that it was as Zorba lived. After three months he remembered his work and said he must go to attend it. Sophinka responded,
I will wait one month; if you don’t return, I will be free. As will you.
…I calculated my stakes. I thought it interesting, to say the least, that I would leave the world I know to spend a summer alone on an Arctic Ocean island but am leery of the trap a man may set to get me into his bed for one night. Or worse, for longer. The pure and utter suffocation I felt at the end of my relationship is enough for me to know that it will be some time before I get involved to that extent again. It will be a lonely pursuit and a lonely life, but for me, it will perhaps be a more fulfilling one.
“I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with soul.” Perhaps I have done this. The quote above and the following are from Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis: “No, I don’t believe in anything. How many times must I tell you that? I don’t believe in anything or anyone; only in Zorba. Not because Zorba is better than the others; not at all, not a little bit! He’s a brute like the rest! But I believe in Zorba because he’s the only being I have in my power, the only one I know. All the rest are ghosts. I see with these eyes, I hear with these ears, I digest with these guts. All the rest are ghosts, I tell you. When I die, everything’ll die. The whole Zorbatic world will go to the bottom!” Alexis Zorba
Snowy owl chick takes a stand.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 11 Jun 2018 | Roads Taken
A huge thank you to everyone who supported The Arctic Circle fundraising campaign – the residency fee is paid and I’m gearing up to go back to the Arctic in October. I hope you will come along, and I hope you enjoy reading these excerpts as much as I enjoy reliving them. Read on, my friends.
Wow, my hair was brown. Photo: D. Ramey
Part 16, a return to Barrow
10 July
Dave and a couple of other folks tried to boat out from Barrow the other night. They only got halfway before turning back because of the ice floes. Early yesterday morning two boats came right up to the island and then made a hard west turn and disappeared. I thought it had to be Dave, but no. As it turns out, it was good they didn’t make it. George called from Seward to say he wouldn’t be up for a while. He said on the first boat trip out they should collect me up and take me back to Barrow for a few days of R&R. Dave had my mail and groceries packed to bring out so now it has to wait for me to get in – but it still all depends on the ice and when it clears enough to get a boat here. Dave said even if they had gotten here the other day they wouldn’t have stayed long for fear of the ice closing them off.
It seems I have a following at the other end of my radio. There are quite a few folks who stop in to chat with Dave and who hear me each day. Today he said they couldn’t wait to hear my voice – I asked what they were going to do when confronted with my physical presence in the shop. Dave said they would probably just have to bow down in worship. I could suffer that.
I walked down on the tundra today – the first Brant chicks hatched. There were some gray balls of fluff out on the ocean with their parents. The first long-tailed chick was in Big Lake. Oh my goodness, it shouldn’t be legal for anything to be that cute. It was a ball of down bobbing around. All tan and brown like dried grass and incredibly adorable.
I found a tern nest with an egg just hatching. The chick had broken a hole in it. It was not peeping but moving its bill. The adult terns are ever vigilant, and I didn’t get too close to their nest. I found a second tern nest farther up the beach.
Meanwhile back here in the colony, I lifted one of the covers to a snow bunting nest and found a whole pile of fluffy chicks. They all tried to hide under the edge of the board so then I couldn’t set it back down. They scattered around and about while I attempted not to squish them. When I finally was able to resettle the board, I helped the parents gather up the little ones, shushing them back into the nest. I felt horrible. I thought they long ago fledged, but no. Oops. I’m sure the parents didn’t need that stress. I sat off to the side and watched for a while to make sure they were all there. The parents seemed ok and continued with their feeding and singing.
Last week I was laughing at myself for being the vigilante tourist – carrying the shotgun slung across my chest and having the binocs around my neck and the camera slung over my shoulder. Pretty silly really. I laugh at myself a bunch. So much of the daily tension and constant uptightness that I became over the last 5 years has dissipated and I’m a much happier person. I wonder how long that can last when I return to the world of everyday life. Perhaps the answer is to never return to the everyday life but to make every day a unique day.
12 July
Wow has life changed drastically. I was up early (evening 10 July) about 2200. I didn’t band because of the wind, rain, and cold. I did some walking and tern tormenting trying to take photos. Radioed as usual but Dave said it looked like the lagoon/bay was open and he was going to try to get out to Cooper Island. I put some earnest effort into organizing and containing the camp. I was just about done when Dave radioed that he was within 3 miles.
He was on the north side of the island and had to circle back around to the south to land the boat; he towed the boat, wading through the water, beaching it at the sardine box. I met him with a big hug. We hauled food and water down to the tents and hauled a few other things back, then ate the last of my lentil soup before loading the boat and starting on our way. There were tons of long-tailed ducks on the water, as well as loons. Although the wind was at our backs it picked up and made the ride choppy. The spray made my face freeze but I had a survival suit and was otherwise cozy. We made it to Barrow just in time to drop the boat at BASC base and get Dave to his league softball game. Dave’s girlfriend and a researcher staying at the ARF went as well; we were the three cheerleaders in the bleachers. We drank scotch while hanging at the game. Dave’s team lost and after a few shots of scotch, he didn’t do too well. Alas.
And – I almost forgot – it was a beautiful day. By about 1000 the skies were clear, and it was blue and beautiful. I almost didn’t want to leave Cooper Island; it was too beautiful to go anywhere. It actually stayed nice through the ball game. Finally, at about 0130, after six weeks on Cooper, I had a shower and went to bed. I had been awake for 27 ½ hours. It was time.
13 July
I spent most of yesterday wandering back and forth between BASC base and ARF. I feel like I’m a bit of an imposition wherever I am. I can’t just eat at the ARF because everyone has their own food and expenses. I don’t want to eat in the cafeteria each meal, though I can and suppose I should.
Yesterday, when I walked into ARF at 0630, three guys were sitting at the table. I said, ‘Hi.’ One of the guys said plainly, “Who are you?”
“I’m Tamara”
“YOU’RE Tamara?” He jumped up, shook my hand, got me a bagel, and made me a pile of scrambled eggs. He and George go way back. He’s been doing work on snowy owls for a long time. We laughed and talked about George. The other guys were working on eiders. Eight people are staying at ARF, as I was introduced to each, I told them what I was doing. One by one they said, “You’re where? For how long?”
Who wants to leave Cooper Island on a day like this?
Like this:
Like Loading...
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 4 Jun 2018 | Roads Taken
Part 15, a compilation and expansion.
The ice fades from shore.
7 July
I woke to rain and so stayed in bed until it ended – at about 0200. It was mild and almost balmy out (well, I’ve been here a while, 40ºF feels balmy). I wandered around the colony. It is dead quiet, there is almost no wind and the birds are not moving much. Got some food and then started banding. Not such good luck today. 5 birds, 2 previously banded. I guess that’s ok really. I banded the female in the Tango Echo site – named after yours truly for establishing such a pathetic nest box – I banded her K/OBr- Cobra for me also, year of the snake, you know. I think it fitting. More than one person would think me a snake. Speaking of which – I wanted to write a letter to XXX and will put it following this page. I may even get to Barrow to Xerox it when the ice breaks.
Dearest XXX, 7 July Cooper Island
It is somewhere around 0 dark thirty in the am. I just opened a bag of Smartfood popcorn (which arrived as packing material in a care package from Vermont) having a bit of tea and patiently waiting until my rice and lentils take an edible form.
It seems I have quite a bad influence on the weather. January through April were unusually dry. May and June were unusually wet. The average annual precipitation for July fell in the first four days. Needless to say, it has been a bit damp. On the fourth, 1/10 of the year’s precipitation fell – 0.61 inches. It was 34ºF. The wind was about 15 mph. The next day the rain stopped and the wind began again. It was 30 mph with gusts up to 40. Tent-bound again. I keep thinking that it will get warm (it’s all relative, 45º would be fine) and I was told it never rained on Cooper Island…
I’ve been here almost six weeks, except for eight days, I have been alone. I haven’t gotten back to Barrow yet. My expeditor (Dave) snowmobiled out the first week I was here – hence the letter you hopefully got earlier. George came out for a week, he went in to do some paperwork and then couldn’t get back out. Using the Search and Rescue helicopter to get here and a charter plane to get back to Barrow (a charter plane that happened to be in Barrow but is otherwise in Deadhorse); he was gone. I have been blissfully alone.
Have you ever had the wind knocked out of you – if you’re hit in the solar plexus or dive into cold water – when the first oxygen hits your lungs and you breathe deeply there is that feeling of exhilaration and lightness – that’s how I feel these days. The suffocating weight of the last few years of my life is gone and I am breathing deeply again. Life is good.
There was a huge ice push on the north shore of the island the other day. The wind was mostly west and I don’t know what else could have caused such a push but sheets and blocks of ice, some 4 feet thick, piled up on the beach. Pushed in from behind they plowed into the sand, rode over one another and built walls. They are impressive, these piles of ice. In some places the walls are 35’ and 40’ high, all moved slowly, but perceptibly, into place, piece by piece, almost silently, building and then settling into an immobile, impenetrable fortress against the sea. What I notice the most is that mysterious, surreal, ethereal color that they hold. It is so intense and, when seen deep in a crevice between piled, jumbled blocks, it fairly jumps out of the blocks and into the air around me. This color juxtaposed against a sky so gray it is almost violet, that bruised color of dark clouds on a bright but sunless day, makes for an incredible waking dream of time and motion. It is beautiful.
The Brant are on their nests. As are the long-tailed ducks. The male long-tailed ducks began rafting on the far side of the ice push. They leave their mates when they are certain the eggs will hatch and go off to molt and feed. Hundreds of them have begun gathering, though they are not yet flightless. The Baird’s sandpipers are still on their eggs; beautiful pyrimidiforme (or whatever that word is), four to a nest, eggs. Best of all, the Arctic terns. I only found one nest but the eggs are glorious in color and texture, even if the texture is only in the mind, from the color and the splotching. The terns themselves are fabulous. Much like the wolf in the mammalian world, the tern, in my mind, is the loper of the bird world. It moves with no effort whatsoever. Ever so nonchalantly gliding along. Barely even ruffling a feather, certainly not expending any energy. That black leading edge marking progress across the sky. The long forked tail, holding tight in a line until it stops to hover and then splaying open to show a perfectly symmetrical rounded V. I watched them do a courtship flight many times. I don’t know what it’s called. I don’t care. It was stunning. The two birds fly vertically, holding the exact point on the ground and moving straight up until you almost can’t see them and then they wheel on a wingtip and glide away. And they talk all the time. I know when they are here.
Last week I saw three Stellar’s eiders and eight spectacled eiders. The common and king eiders are regular company. There are also pectoral sandpipers, Parasitic, Pomarine, and long-tailed jaegers (all very cool birds), a lone horned puffin, which I caught and took photos of (poor beast), ruddy turnstones, Sabine’s gulls, Red-throated, Yellow-billed, and Pacific loons. The Pacific loons are incredibly elegant with their checkered back and silver-gray head. The Red-throated has by far the best call and the Yellow-billed is impressive for its size.
The Arctic poppies and potentilla are all in bloom. The poppies are brave little things. There was a day of 28ºF and freezing rain last week. Every flower stalk was coated in ice and each bud hung heavily with the weight of the ice. This week they are all opening, holding their own against the wind and cold. Their delicate, pale yellow petals never cease moving and turn with the light. The potentilla stays low and tight to the ground, clumps of bright yellow against the sand and gravel. There is even one marsh marigold that I found. Just one.
A few weeks ago I found polar bear tracks. The first track I found was larger than any bear print I had ever seen. Then I realized it was the cub’s track. The mama’s track was as wide as my foot is long, a good dinner plate-sized print. Last week I found bear scat about 200 yds from my tent. It was fresh. That big ol’ bear probably walked right by me while I was hiding from yet another wind storm – another 25-30 mph Southwestern – He kept right on going though ‘cause I haven’t seen him. Much to George and Dave’s relief and my consternation.
I radio in to Barrow every day and talk with Dave. He’s got me signed up for the whale census next spring and he and George have me set up for another tour of duty on Cooper Island next year. Dave is the expeditor for BASC (Barrow Arctic Science Consortium). He sets up all of the scientists from everywhere with gear, solves all of their sampling problems, invents things and generally makes their lives much better. He created the perimeter alarm system for my camp. He introduces me, via radio, to all of the people wandering through his shop. I have a whole host of voices that I know and that watch out for me at a distance. For 20 minutes or so a day I have coffee with them and hang out at the water cooler. It’s actually pretty great. Dave also radio patches George through so we talk business while he is in Seward or Seattle. Dave collects my mail and sends me treats (all of twice there has been a trip in or out of here). He takes care of me. That’s about the speed of relationship I can deal with just now – 20 minutes a day at an unbridgeable distance.
The ice is almost out of Elson Lagoon – I guess some folks back in Barrow have got their boats in the water. The ice pushes here over the last week have blocked me in more than I was a month ago. The north shore is 30’ high and a couple of hundred yards deep. The south shore stayed as a flat sheet but I can only just see the edge where the ice ends and the water begins. Eventually when the lagoon is boatable and the island is clear, George will come out for a few days and I will go in to Barrow for shore leave. Then back here to deal with chicks.
The busy and harried mating season for the guillemots is over. Egg laying is almost done, there are still a few clutch initiations trickling in but the bulk is past. Now I mostly get to sit back and relax. I have been banding a lot of birds – while I’m not really thrilled about bird banding (especially in its least productive form where you just catch and band everything) I see its utility – George has been banding here for 30 years. He banded a chick in 1975 WOGy (white orange gray) who returned to breed in 1978 and has returned every year since. Without color banding how else could he learn about that life? Who would have suspected they would live so long? That’s pretty amazing, really. Anyway, the worst part of the job is pulling feathers for trace metal analysis. It just hurts me –they flinch sometimes but I think it bothers me more. They are really beautiful birds. Although they just look black at a distance their feathers have a brilliant green sheen to them that is striking. And the scarlet legs and mouths are intense. They are not particularly graceful in the air or on land, even on the water, though I imagine they dive/swim beautifully. They often land on land as they do in the water – their feet touch and they belly flop straight into the sand. Youch. In the water they belly flop and dive in one motion.
There is a quality of distortion to the air and to distance here that I haven’t quite figured out yet. Distances change relative to light and air quality. Some things that are side by side seem yards apart at a distance and things that are quite far apart seem virtually on top of one another. From my tent I often see the guillemots walking across the beach and they look like people strolling along on the sand. Very odd, this distortion.
On rare, clear days, when there is sun and the ice is sublimating and there are heat waves, the mirages on the edge of the horizon are astounding. There are walls hundreds of feet high all around. A bird flying on that horizon seems just a bird and then it turns on a wing and becomes a giant. I can see Barrow, or its mirage really, 25 miles away. Individual buildings stand up on the horizon and are identifiable. Icebergs and floes loom on the edge of sight as large as freighters and then some.
And conversely, when the fog rolls in, the more usual state, it slides right up to the edge of the bay by which I am camped, making it look, quite convincingly, that just there is the edge of the world and a step beyond would be into the great void.
So, I haven’t yet taken off my long underwear, for that matter, I haven’t changed my long underwear. I last had a shower on 28 May. There is sand in my food, in my clothes, in my bed (did I mention that I hate sand?). I have heard no news or weather in weeks. I’ve blown out all the fingers in my liner gloves and I haven’t had a decent cup of coffee since I left my Aunt’s. Luckily, thanks to the sympathies of George and my Aunt, the scotch is holding. I am supremely content.
I do hope you have recovered from the meeting hell you were earlier enduring. And I expect you are thoroughly enjoying your peaceful summer. Please have a pint at the People’s Pint for me. Mmmmmmm. That does sound good…
Join me this fall on The Road not Taken Enough when I go to Svalbard on an Arctic Circle residency Artistry in the Arctic.
An Arctic Tern settled on its nest among the gravel.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 29 May 2018 | Roads Taken
Part 14, still floeing, still flowing.
Ice push rings Cooper Island.
6 July
There are several things I wanted to write about but keep forgetting, so, I’ll see how this goes – the ice push: the ice push impressed me. It is remarkable, this jumble of gargantuan building blocks and slabs of ice, this pile of debris that made up a flat, level surface across miles of open water. Flat and level in the mind’s eye, at a distance. Now this surface is splintered into millions of crystalline shards, for it is crystalline. And, as the days wear on since its arrival on the north side, the piles of sand and gravel it moved, the short-lived scars gouged in the beach, and the sounds it displaced are evident. After the rain, the blocks are somewhat diminished but only somewhat. After the day of southwest wind, the blocks are darkened by the flying sand and grit embedded in their windward surfaces. Still, they line the island like a row of guards, watching, blocking views beyond their shoulders. If I climb on top of them, I can see the quantity of ocean ice diminished. There is more open water and fewer slabs of ice; floes drift by at a distance. There is less crunched, loose slurry of ice and water. Long-tailed ducks raft on the floe edges. Guillemots and loons dive among the blocks and at the front of the push. Terns hover and dive, hover and dive.
Through all of this, the one thing I see repeatedly is that mysterious, surreal, ethereal color. The aquamarine of the imagination. Surely there is no real color like this. It is so intense it almost glows and, when seen in deep crevices, blocks all in a pile with a deep hole and light between them, it fairly jumps out of the blocks and into the air around you. This color-light is backlit by a sky so gray it is almost violet, that bruised color of dark clouds on bright but sunless days. It makes for an incredible waking dream of time and motion through those colors and textures.
There is an extraordinary and unknown quality of distance here. I’m sure someone can explain it, but not I. Things seem to move in space and relative distance depending on their angle and the light. I noticed it many times with the tents. They stand out so vividly because of their shape and color in an otherwise flat and colorless landscape. But somehow they also move in space, appearing further or closer than they are looking across the island with binocs; everything is out of proportion. Things that are 20’ or 30’ apart seem right on top of each other, and things side by side seem miles apart. I don’t know what that distortion is, but it is eerie and a bit unsettling in a way that I can’t explain. It’s not like climbing a mountain and, seeing the peak through the trees, realizing how far up and away it is. Rather, it’s a feeling that things are not what they appear and I can’t be sure whether moving toward that object will actually bring it closer.
Looking down the island to the east on a rare clear day I can easily see the barge, yet when I walked there I couldn’t see it for a long way, and I walked a very long way before I came to it. Some days it is as if it were right up tight to the tundra patch though it is always a little out of reach from it, too.
Today, early this morning when the sun was out and the air unusually clear and not yet warm enough to create heat waves, I looked across the lagoon to the south and could see the bluffs and cabins and tundra there, six miles away, as if they were just down the beach. Even the ice push’s huge pile of dark blocks were as clear as if they were right outside the tent door. I can see now how George said you could see caribou and people walking on the bluffs; you couldn’t miss them like that.
Sometimes a gull will sit on an ice block or floe or a far spit of land. Seeing it from the island, it seems so enormous and white that it must be a polar bear. But then I raise the binocs, and this giant white creature turns into a gull. It isn’t just wishful thinking; there is some greater distortion happening. It is impossible to explain.
The mirages, too, are impossible to explain. Sometimes it seems that the world is ringed with a wall of ice hundreds of feet high. It is only an illusion, the heat waves creating a mirror image above the horizon. It is remarkable because, at many miles distance, you can see what is at the edge of the horizon clearly. Some days this mirage takes in Barrow, and 25 miles away, I can see buildings in Barrow. They become inverted on the margin of the sky. I wonder how this effect will play out now that the ice is out. Today I noticed that floes seemed to be reflecting, miraging, in the north. They are double in size.
I’m starting to feel like I’m on the dating game with Dave and the varied cast of characters that wander through his shop. It is a great break from my own company. There is always a pile of people filtering through; Dave introduces us before he goes off to work for a bit. Then he returns to round things out. Today we went through two guys from MSN – as he introduced the second one I told him I felt like I was on the dating game – Dave said all four guys in the shop that morning were eligible bachelors. I said they should visit – but they had to bring my mail.
I finished reading Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams. I think I will take as my motto the title Banner from the North Georgia Gazette, a weekly paper printed by the crew of an overwintering ship in Winter Harbor (Perry’s crew the HMS Hecla and HMS Griper 1819 [?]): “per freta hactenus negata.” Meaning to have negotiated a strait the very existence of which has been denied. “…it also suggests a continuing movement through unknown waters. It is, simultaneously, an expression of fear and of accomplishment, the cusp on which human life finds its richest expression.”
I know this will blow my self-importance out of proportion, and my travails can hardly be compared with the sufferings that nineteenth-century Arctic explorers endured. Nonetheless, I somehow feel that I have negotiated a strait whose existence has been denied. Regardless of what the rest of the world does, I will continue to move through unknown waters, through fear and on to accomplishment.
Join me this fall on The Road not Taken Enough when I go to Svalbard on an Arctic Circle residency Artistry in the Arctic.
A self-portrait, with ice. Cooper Island, Arctic Ocean.
Like this:
Like Loading...
