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.
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?
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.
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.
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 22 May 2018 | Roads Taken
The Owyhee. Fifty miles of inhospitable road offers this, and it is worth every inch.
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 21 May 2018 | Roads Taken
Part 13, the ice and wind come to call.
The ice push begins.
2 July
Rainy, windy, cold day yesterday. Rain finally cleared and I banded a few hapless birds. The egg season is slacking off. Dave did a radio patch so George and I could talk, he seems pleased that things are going well.
When I sat up in my sleeping bag this morning, I could see that an ice push was happening on the north shore. There was a low wall of ice forming along the horizon. I had to go check it out, of course. I wandered through the empty colony (the birds are feeding on the ocean) and up to the beach. Massive slabs of ice two and three feet thick were pushed 30 feet or more up on to the beach and piled on top of each other. As I stood there, nothing was moving, and the ice was quiet. I went back to camp for my camera and decided I had to eat. While I was eating, I noticed or thought I did, a change in the ice. By the time I got back to the ice 15 minutes later, a new pile of slabs was on top of the spot where I had been. If I hadn’t had anything to eat, I would have been out on the ice taking photos – and potentially caught in the shift.
Since then, that spot seems to be most active. The wall, the whole length of the north shore is still building impressively. It is probably 25 feet high. Jumbled blocks of ice three thick and six or eight feet square, sheets of thinner ice in massive slabs. Blues of a vivid, ethereal quality, greens of the cold ocean, monoliths of ice that stand for 10 minutes before spinning, sliding, crumbling under the unforgiving pressure behind them.
I spent a long time standing on the edge, watching cracks form in an upright slab, slowly they spread and grew, large chunks would slide or tumble into the water, and the splash would move across the pool. Sometimes a big slab would fall on another slab and crumble into a million smaller pieces. The wind takes most of the sound away but standing close by I could hear the pieces falling. The more solid ice doesn’t sound real; the looser, granular ice sounds like melting snow. Now and then a big rumble breaks free where two slabs are colliding, or a piece has fallen hard onto other ice. I wonder how far it will move?
Well, in the last hour – since I wrote the above – there has been some action. The ice continues to pile drive its way into the beach. There are several places where my tracks from earlier this morning are obliterated. In some places, the wall is 45’ or 50’ high. I can’t see the ocean past the wall at all anymore. The giant tanks to the east of camp have been pushed; one dug into the bank 4’ or 5’. The other was pushed across the surface, probably 10’ or more. I can’t tell any longer where it started. The BGs whose homes were underneath are out of luck, I’m afraid.
The wall is impressive with the sun on it. It runs the length of the island, and with the sun striking from the northeast it fairly glows against the sand and the dark, cloudy sky.
What force can move ice like this? Thousands of pounds of ice being driven over and into the sand with no effort. There is no tide to speak of, no surge of power that would push like this. The wind is strong but not enough to move ice onto land, it might pile it up on the windward side of the bay but not pile drive it 50’ or more from the water’s edge into the sandbanks. Truly awesome power. Again, I feel as insignificant as I am.
The BGs are a bit jumpy. They are spending a lot of time at the roost on the North Shore. Maybe it’s the noise that bothers them. I don’t know. Achoó.
I noticed there were no seals around the last few days. Perhaps they perceived the ice shift and bailed out. Maybe that is why, too, the bear didn’t linger on my paradise island.
Today as I was walking around the pond I had this thought. I was thinking about the feeling you have when the wind gets knocked out of you – when you get hit in the solar plexus or are being tickled until you can’t breathe – and how when air first reaches your lungs again how sweet and exhilarating that breath is. This is the feeling that I have now after being alone, here, for so long.
4 July
Today I feel like I am on an island in the Arctic Ocean. It is relatively mild in temp, but the fog is thick, the air heavy and damp and everything is cold and raw. The ice wall is the limit of my world. The fog fills in the rest, the bay is gone and so too are most of the east and west ends of the island.
I keep thinking the weather will get better but it doesn’t seem to. My toes and fingers are cold and hurt. Working through the night, I hardly see the mild afternoons. When the wind stops, and the air is calm, life is good – even if the temp is low and there are clouds, just the movement of the air is debilitating. So, the paper is physically soggy, and the tent is steamy. It is cold and raw outside. It rained heavily earlier in the night – I stayed in bed and curled up in a ball, tight and warm. The wind switched around to the NE, and the air coming off the pack ice is cold and wintery.
The only thing I miss so far is my light little summer dresses. Those clothes that let you feel like you are wearing nothing. How I love them – It is hard to remember that feeling when you are embedded in many layers of wool, polypro, and nylon. Bleaaachk. Ah well.
The ice push the other day left big ridges and piles of rubble and cut blocks. I thought of Hadrian’s Wall marching across the Arctic Ocean to keep out the Roman hordes – in some places the push really does look like a wall. I went down to the tundra yesterday morning and sketched a little – I’m pretty bad but it is a fun exercise. How do people actually copy what they see and make it recognizable?
5 July
Well, as I was settling into my sleeping bag last night, I thought the rain would let up, and I was sure I would awake to a southwest wind howling. Sure enough. At 0530 the antenna went down and set off the perimeter alarm. I hurled myself out of my dreams and into my boots. As I disconnected the fence, George’s tent went sailing by. I was just able to grab it and heave it into the lee of the wind block I had set up on the NE side of my tent (for the wind and rain that was present when I went to sleep). I secured the cook tent as best I could, reset the windbreaks, and went back to bed. I woke at midnight and listened to the wind. Checked to see if the other tents were still there and then lay in bed and read for a long time. I was finally driven out by a need to pee and to eat. The fly of the cook tent is shredded. Everything in there is thrown about and jumbled – I pulled out P.B. and bread. It’s not possible to cook with it like that. I would even be afraid to start the stove. I reweighted the tent, and still, it tries to migrate north. I threw extra weight in George’s tent last night and in its relatively-wind-blocked place seems fine. This tent, my sleep tent, has a new hole in it where the force of the wind pushed it into my tripod and punctured it. The whole side is collapsing in on me. This wind is by far worse than the first two.
I just went for a walk – it was about all I could do to walk into the wind – I went to the sardine box and hid behind it for a while. The ice of Elson Lagoon is all piled up on the south shore. It has stayed flat and in floes, unlike the jumbled blocks of the north shore. On the north, the rest of the ice pushed in and piled up, and there is open ocean a few hundred yards out and for as far as I can see. Just at the edge is the pack ice, a thin white line. The open water is dark and angry and hurling itself against the ice that still stands out in the shallows, in its path. There is a slurry of smaller chunks and slush that slides along behind the immobile blocks of Hadrian’s Wall. It is moving east rapidly.
The few birds that are moving are doing so either in the screaming delight of going with the wind or the tortured slow motion float of those laboring against it. Few guillemots are out. Some are on the water, but mostly the colony is empty and quiet. There is a flock of oldsquaw heaved out on the edge of the water, bills tucked into their wings.
The water on the south side is as high as I have seen it. That means the atmospheric pressure is as low as it has been since I’m here. The south spit is underwater. I am relatively comfortable in my tent. If the wind lets up a little bit, the collapsing effect is not as pronounced, and I can sit comfortably and read. I have attempted no work and will not, outside the mandatory egg check, and even that won’t be so bad since there are relatively few nests left to check. Many that should have had 2nd eggs yesterday did not. I suppose that means that they will all come in today, but I’ll only note their existence and leave measuring and weighing for another day.
Join me this fall on The Road not Taken Enough when I go to Svalbard on an Arctic Circle residency Artistry in the Arctic.
Black Guillemots lounging poolside.
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 14 May 2018 | Roads Taken
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. xoxo T
Part 12, in which the Arctic poppies show their mettle, the snow bunting chicks emerge, and a polar bear leaves its mark.
Arctic poppy in frost.
27 June
Although my alarm went off at 2200, I didn’t get out of bed until almost 0100. The wind was so ferocious that I was more than content to stay in my cozy bag and snooze.
The radio antenna came down in the wind, and I spent almost an hour trying to rebuild it before I was able to connect well enough to radio Barrow. Dave and George (a.k.a. Delta Romeo and Golf Delta – I am Tango Echo). I barely ventured out at all. One census trip and the nest/egg check that was it. I sorted bands, created a hit list for birds to catch and band, read Arctic Dreams, and re-read my latest mail.
It is nice that after these four weeks my mind is clear of so much of the garbage I harbored. I don’t think with anger anymore. I can live with that. It is always easier for me to feel this way when I am on a journey or an adventure and more difficult for me to accept what is when I am juggling the things of everyday life. Perhaps that is a lesson for me. Believe the things of everyday life are unnecessary and find a place where there is no need to follow them. Find a way to live and work without that. Perhaps a space and time where I can write, but what would I write and where would that space and time be? Something I need to think on over the next month of solitude.
28 June
When my alarm went off I could tell the wind had slackened since yesterday (25–30 mph w/gusts up to 35) but it was raining. It rained all morning – until about 0630 – 34 º and raining. My favorite weather. I went around the colony a few times, though I couldn’t see anything, the binocs were fogged and wet all the time. Everything was soggy and covered in sand.
I did nest check– got to the west side of 73 and found a giant pile of bear scat. Went back to the tent and got the gun, finished my rounds, and went for a walk on the tundra. No bears. But the birds were jittery. They were in constant motion, and I had only a handful of Birds on the Nest (BON) for the whole colony, everyone else scattered at my approach or shifted out of my way when I reached in for eggs. They knew something was up. I couldn’t find any tracks, the scat had been on loose gravel where no prints would hold, and although I went down to the beach, there was nothing. Bummer.
I’m reading Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams and just read the polar bear chapter this morning, so I was ready. Oh well, maybe next week.
The Arctic poppies started blooming. The first was out the other day. Beautiful, delicate, pale yellow. I thought of it struggling to stay upright in that miserable wind yesterday. It’s no wonder they stay so low to the ground and incredible that they ever grow more than a few inches high. The fuzzy, oblong buds are expanding and beginning to crack along their perforated seams, slowly they turn their faces to the sun and bask in the few brief minutes of summer at its height. Lucky me.
Arctic poppies glow.
29 June
It was about 28º and freezing fog this morning (welcome to summer!). Brutally cold for man and beast. The poppies were most amazing, these diminutive creatures trying valiantly to show themselves. Each hung heavily with frost and ice crystals on their west-facing sides; the buds heavy and weary of the cold. One or two flowers were turning to face the fog-enshrouded sun. Brrrrrrr. Brrrrrrr. Egad. How anthropomorphic.
It was much too cold to band birds or do anything else. I kept moving, walking up the beach and around the tundra. I stood up the Bowhead whale jawbone on the beach and tried to take my picture with it. Pretty goofy.
When I was walking this morning, I sat (I know that’s a contradiction) on a piece of driftwood and looked out at the ice, the pools, the fog, the enveloped sun. I turned my face to the light, closed my eyes and just was. There were no sounds but the wind and the very gentle lapping of the water that is just a few feet wide on the north shore. The long-tailed ducks and Baird’s sandpipers ended their dances, and their eternal aaqhaaliks (not in that order) and it was silent. It is the first time I can remember that I was utterly content. I had nowhere I wanted to be but there. I wanted no companionship but my own. I needed nothing of the physical world. I just was. No shoulds, musts, or wills. Pure physical existence. What a joy. How many people in this world experience such a thing? There are no objects of desire for me and no place better than here. Finally. How long can this last?
30 June
A snow bunting chick blending into a 2 x 4.
Two good birds today – Steller’s Eiders and Spectacled Eiders. Gorgeous birds. The night was mild (it’s all relative) and now that I’m almost ready for sleep it is beautiful, clear, and sunny, lots of low puffy clouds and a southerly breeze. I checked on a snow bunting nest today; it was full of chicks with gaping mouths. Very cute buggers – I’ll check again tomorrow. George says they seem to spend no time in the nest at all.
The eggs keep rolling in on the Guillemot front, and I continue to check, measure and weigh. I’ve been hooping birds off the nests and was relatively successful today. I hate taking feathers. It just hurts. Poor guys. I feel like the hated kid at summer camp; everyone suffers when I appear, and they all want me to go away. But that’s not what I wanted to write.
There is almost no tide on the Arctic Ocean. It is more atmospheric than lunar, and it is interesting to see how sometimes the water is very shallow and far off the beach edge. Like today, I crossed probably 20 feet of slimy gravel to the shallow water, and the pond south of camp is a pond. Some days, when the water rises, it becomes part of the bay. The water level is probably only a foot or two different, but it is noticeable. I hoped to wash socks and underwear today, but the water is too low to do it. I guess I could do in Pasta Pond, but it seems like too much work – not to mention frozen, raw hands.
The air is clear and the sky blue, low puffy clouds move north, and high wispy cirrus seem stable. The light sparkling on the water is remarkable. A million points of light all independent and yet so numerous they almost all run together. At the same time, there is a light fog rising off the wet mud flats along the beach edge where the water receded and a light gray fog-smoke slowly rising off the tundra. Altogether a most spectacular day. This morning the north moat was frozen over again –thick enough that a stone I threw didn’t break the surface, but several hours later the water was clear and ruffled in the wind. The meltwater pools on the ice to the north are growing larger, stretching slowly out to sea. The dark, charcoal gray of the distant ice is evening out and is less pronouncedly distinct from the shore-fast ice. It seems that summer is moving on and the water is slowly becoming water once again.
It is funny to look out across the Bay of Jaws, which has been open for a week or more already, across the south sandbar with a barrel as a landmark and once more to ice beyond. The layering of water, land, ice, land (Ketchikan bluffs), and the sky seems almost too well planned, too evenly distributed between solid, liquid, and the ethereal and eternal sky.
This morning when the sun was hiding in the fog, and the air was still, the entire bay lay like a sheet of liquid mercury, reflective, alive. The land and sky and water all merged and became one and distinct at the same time.
Join me this fall on The Road not Taken Enough when I go to Svalbard on an Arctic Circle residency Artistry in the Arctic.
Liquid mercury meets rippled sand.
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 7 May 2018 | Roads Taken
Part 11.
The summer of abnormal distribution, fried radios, and a translucent moon progresses in the Arctic Ocean.
Red phalarope with sea nettle jellyfish that washed ashore en masse.
21 June
Yesterday was a long day, and I never got to write. We continued confirming pairs and figuring out who lives where. We set out noose mats (plywood squares with fishing line nooses that catch birds when they step into the noose and they pull the line tight. Commonly used for birds that walk on the ground, it’s a safe way to catch birds for banding) for 2 hours and caught one already-banded bird. Oh well. It was still relatively mild for a while but the forces of good and evil fought again, and evil won. George was planning to fly back to Barrow for a day in town, but the plane needs a part, so he won’t be leaving this week and possibly not until he is forced to go back to Seward – then only if he can get off the island. We are getting along well, I feel less defensive, and although we hassle each other, it is good-natured. George jokes about Dave’s and my conversations on the radio, but George and I laugh more with each other when Dave is mediating – though he’s not really. I guessed another product of the day, though it took me a while and George excused himself from the competition because he had seen the product when he was there last week. Dave gave him two points for his honesty and integrity. So, although on Products I am ahead 3 to 1, George’s honesty and integrity tie us at three each.
We caught and banded the puffin yesterday; it didn’t return today, which bums me out. I hope that he isn’t injured or that we didn’t unduly stress him. He was beautiful.
After we censused and wandered through the colony and the tundra this morning, we did radio call – which was moved to 1315. It was too cold to band birds, so we skipped that. It was also foggy and gray though the wind wasn’t strong. After radio and a wander and some food, I walked the tundra and took photos of Brant and Baird’s sandpipers and flowers and the snow bunting.
There were three Pacific loons on the moat today. They are beautiful, elegant, all black and white with a silver-gray head and lining on their throats and necks. There were also king eiders on the pond in the tundra. I got to see them a little bit but was trying to get a photo (of course) and scared them off the water. The Brant are on their eggs, as are the long-tailed ducks – aahaaliq – and Baird’s sandpipers. The red phalaropes spin in circles, and the Arctic terns glide through the sky screeching and scolding all the way. It is magnificent.
22 June
It’s late, and I need to sleep soon but wanted to write a few words about the moon. George and I set up the noose mats and were wandering about waiting for things to happen when I looked past George, across the water. It was gray, breezy, and cold. There was a cloud mass over us that stretched as far west and east and north as I could see, but to the south, to the south, the edge of the clouds stood over the Ketchikan Bluffs, and there were a few inches of clear, pale blue sky. I had my binocs on the edge of the world and there in that few inches of pale blue was an even paler and magnificently huge ¾ moon, as if someone missed a small piece of the sky when they were painting it that morning. It had that see-through quality; the darker white parts had the same color as the sky, and you could look right through the translucent wafer to the sky on the other side. It was fabulous. I look forward to seeing the moon again through the summer and maybe even in August when it gets dark.
The puffin was back today, checked things out, circled ‘round – but did not land.
24 June
Long day. I have been getting up at about 2100 and going to sleep b/t 1600 and 1700. I haven’t felt tired though; all the light has set me in motion. I sleep hard and soundly and wake and go back into motion.
Yesterday I hooked up the radio, heard a crack, and smelled smoke. I connected the positive and negative wires to the wrong poles on the battery. Oops. The fuse blew a day or so earlier, and with no fuse between the radio and the battery, I cooked the radio. We are, with the exception of the PLB (Personal Locator Beacon), out of contact with the world.
We have no idea when or if someone will come pick up George. They can’t find out if we need anything before they come out. What a goof. George was good-natured about it and said, “well, it was just the day for the radio to go, no big deal.” He’s been teasing me about it but nothing serious.
George figured out the distribution of the days when the nests become clear and the cavities open. It’s not quite even or normal, and so it looks like I checked boxes every other day, rather than daily. Luckily I have most of that data in my book so that I could go back through, but it still doesn’t look right. George didn’t say that I had fucked up or wasn’t doing my job, but he seemed frustrated? Bugged? I don’t know, not angry necessarily but not happy. So I was feeling a bit defensive and sullen. I don’t think it’s huge, but it doesn’t make me look good.
When I got up last night, it was clear and blue and absolutely still. It was beautiful. I ate and walked around the colony for pairs and birds that were looking ready to lay earlier in the day – the first two eggs were in on the 23rd – and then walked down around the tundra with my camera. The light at midnight is wonderful, vibrant and honey colored. I took a roll of film and got back in time to find George rolling out. Off we went to band, noose, torture, and maim.
When I was out this morning, it was still. The water, all of it, the bay and the ponds and the moat, was absolutely still, a perfect mirror. Just glorious. I watched a long-tailed duck come across the bay and land in the water. As it drew closer to the water’s surface, it forced its tail feathers down to the surface and dragged them through the water, just breaking the surface, making a perfect, straight part before touching down. It was remarkable. I’ve seen it before, but it’s not as impressive when the water is choppy. A flock of murres went over first thing also. Common murres, footballs with wings. Pretty cool.
Must sleep.
26 June
George finally got off the island yesterday. He flew out about 1500 and will be back sometime tonight. Dave sent out my mail and a bunch of toys and a new radio. I connected the radio right away and called Dave to let him know it was working and that George was on his way. Dave sent a cribbage board, a scrabble board, a toy boat, a Frisbee, a ball maze (which I can never do), and my mail – including a box of books, letters, a box of candy, and scotch. Dave said something about things to keep me busy. I said I had a whole pile of books, a box of chocolate, and a bottle of scotch, what else did I need?
I had a splendid quiet afternoon with letters, toys, and scotch.
I’m sitting in the sand watching the birds at the Condos. I noosed one pretty quickly and quietly and without much commotion banded it and took all the info. I left the feather pulling until last (I collected a few small feathers for isotope analysis to help determine migration and wintering locations as the isotopes in the feather reflect the bird’s diet.); it seemed to traumatize the bird less. All of the non-invasive stuff was done and once the feathers were pulled it could go. I’ll suggest it to George. There is some low lying fog that is making the paper damp, but it is not raining the way it was when I first got up. And it seems that there is blue sky to be had to the south, if only it can clear the fog under it. More later.
Well, it never cleared out. The fog lifted eventually, but the sky never cleared. I did nest check for eggs, had something to eat and rechecked BON sites. Radioing George was an adventure. Of course, the airplane won’t be in Barrow for the summer. They said they could bring him back out to the island but that was it, the plane would be gone for the summer. So, he is off to Seward and Seattle and wherever else. He’ll be back when the ice is out, and he can boat in. Someday he and Dave will boat in, George and I will talk for a few hours, and then Dave and I will head back to Barrow so I can have a few days of R&R – more like S&L shower and laundry.
So, I am on my own for a couple more weeks. If a plane is headed this way they may try to drop stuff off, or if the helicopter has to go out they may land. Otherwise, I’m on my own until the boat is in the water.
I saw more loons today. There are three species around – Pacific, Red-throated, and Yellow-billed. All of them are beautiful, but I think I like the Pacific best. They are elegant and stunning in their simple pattern and their colors. The Red-throated by far has the coolest call, and the Yellow-billed is impressive for its size and sharp lines. Beautiful all.
Although it is good having George here, I am happy to have back the solitude and silence. I have lots to eat, lots to drink, lots to read, letters to write, photos to take, sketches to create. I am a content person.
A long-tailed duck on her nest.
Join me this fall on The Road not Taken Enough when I go to Svalbard on an Arctic Circle residency Artistry in the Arctic.
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 30 Apr 2018 | Roads Taken
Part 10. The ice is loosening its grip on the island, the bossman comes to call, after fifteen days I almost take off all of my clothes to bathe in the semi-freshwater Pasta Pond.
15 June
Well, I almost had a bath. It is clear and beautiful with only a little wind – but enough for me to say, well, I’m not really that grubby… 15 days? Nah, not such a long time without bathing.
I could hear the ice melting. Amazing. This morning, ever so early (well, I didn’t get up until 0200 having overslept my alarm again by 2 hours…). I was doing the rounds, it was bright, only a few scattered clouds shadowing the land and very still, no wind. I walked around Little Guillemot Pond as I do sometimes and stopped at the ocean’s edge. I could hear nothing except the sound of the ice melting. As the ice warms, the weak spots give and a piece of ice unexpectedly becomes buoyant in the surrounding water. The ice warms and gently falls in on itself. I could hear that. It is a very delicate and lulling sound, not the melodic, tinkling sound of waves washing up on coral beaches that you hear when snorkeling in tropical places, instead, a more subtle tone. Infinitely less tangible.
Later…
So, I’ve solved all the world’s problems. Time for sleep. It has been great sleeping these last few weeks. I almost always sleep through the night (or day as the case may be). I have been dreaming a lot every night. I often remember pieces of my dreams when I wake up. Once I get out of bed, which isn’t easy since it’s so cozy, I am awake and moving. It’s great to be alive.
An attempt at explaining the trajectory of the sun when it never sets.
I want to explain the angle of the sun, but I don’t know how – let’s see in the night and north it looks like this:
In the night and the north, the position of the sun looks like this. The path dips close to Earth and then slopes up again, never dropping below the horizon.
In the day, it looks like this:
In the day, the sun follows the curve of Earth to the South.
It doesn’t actually go overhead, but shadows get relatively short – my shadow right now, at probably 1500, is my height exactly. In the night, there are several hours of Ross’ light and the shadows, my shadow, is about 20’ long. It’s pretty cool.
I am sitting on the block in front of my tent. I have my shoes and socks off (YEAH!), and I took off my wool pants so just have my long underwear bottoms on, no hat or gloves, my long underwear top, and a sweater. Downright civilized I would say. It still gets darn cold at night and my fingers and toes get cold but the days are fabulously nice when the sun is out. The sand is very toasty on my toes. I still might have a bath…
16 June
Well, no baths. I could use one but am hardly anxious to go out in the freezing wind. The air is not warm but tolerable. The wind and the water are chilly brrrrrr. George finally made it to Barrow. Now he can’t get to Cooper Island. The plane that can land here needed a new engine and so is in Deadhorse for work. They don’t expect it back to Barrow until Monday. No big deal for me. It is great being here alone and, although I would like to get mail, I have no great need to see anyone. I have a pile of letters to go out and several rolls of film whenever an exchange does take place. George and I talked by radio. He is all excited about the birds and can’t wait to get out here and start working. He has gotten a third tent – a 4-man tent- so there will be plenty of space when he’s here. Maybe we’ll put the cook stuff in the new tent so we can both easily fit in it without food and science junk.
Today I went to each sub-colony and sat and watched to see who was copulating where. They were much more subdued than on other days and seemed to be more concerned with sex than with me, which was fine as it made my job much easier. My task over the next few days is to determine how many are in each colony, breeders and non-breeders, how many of each cohort, if possible, and how many unbanded birds there are. I guess our immediate job upon George’s arrival will be to band as many unbanded birds as possible. After that, I will be weighing and measuring eggs. It seems like July will be a month of casual observation and, I hope, a lot of time to read and write and draw and be. Not that this past few weeks have been so terribly busy.
After radio call this morning I went for a walk through the tundra. The Brant are all on their nests, and I chased several off before I figured it out and started seeing these utterly prostrate bodies strewn about the place. They simply look like a chunk of old peat or exposed mud. It is quite good how they completely flatten down over the eggs. One nest I looked in had four eggs. The nests are all fluff filled and look cozy. The long-tailed ducks have been squawking like crazy over the last few days. I saw two males having quite a tussle this afternoon. The one sat on the other’s back – like mating guillemots – and held him underwater as long as possible. This particular fight went on for 10 minutes, mostly on the water. If the offender tried to get away and take off across the water, the other would catch it and dunk it again. When he finally did take off the other flew after it and harassed it wherever it landed. Brutal. There are about eight gazillion pintails. Well, OK, maybe not so many. But they do seem to be everywhere. There also seems to be a disproportionate number of males. Perhaps the females are already incubating? There was an influx of long-billed dowitchers and red phalaropes today. The same two turnstones are around. I would like to see a black turnstone; I’m not sure they are here yet. The long-tailed Jaegers are back. There was one or two yesterday, and today there have been a few more. They are more graceful flyers than the Pomarines and the long tail, of course, is appealing, but I think my loyalty stays with the Pomarines.
Brant, as one with the tundra, incubating eggs.
Watching the guillemots copulate is something. They head bob and strut a bit then the female usually lays flat and begs – as a chick for food – head raising and lowering and crying all the while. The male then steps on her back and rhythmically thumps his feet on her back, mostly balancing there, sometimes opening his wings to maintain and only for a few short seconds do they copulate. Sometimes the male will step sideways or turn a circle on the female’s back, and half slide off, before rebalancing and centering. He might copulate with her two or three times in the course of one encounter. Afterward – I find this particularly amusing – the male will spread and flap his wings and stand tall on his spindly legs. Aaaaah that was great. Boys, did you see that? The female usually steps aside and settles into the ground to rest. She seems to be the one to decide when the whole event is over, though the males initiate the coupling more than the females.
18 June
Well, in mid-entry on the 16th a helicopter came up the beach, louder and louder. It went past the camp, coming in from the north to land. George piled out. After having thought that I would be here another couple of days alone, I suddenly have company. So, we fought our way through the day’s census and figured out all the bits that need to be dealt with. I hadn’t entered the daily data in the 2000 breeding bird book because I thought he only wanted the final pairs’ data there so… we slogged through each day’s pairs, color bands, and maraudings. Egad. How painfully brutal. I felt as if I had done no work at all given how many times pairs changed and I misidentified colors. But we managed to get through it and did another day’s census based on what we were missing.
We seem to miscommunicate a lot. I’m fairly relaxed in my specifics, George analyzes and picks apart statements to figure out why and how I’ve decided something. Although he accuses me of having lumped everyone into categories, he seems to have done just that with me – a judgmental misanthrope. I do show my more negative side, or perhaps the defensive side when we are together. Basically, I hear: do it in whatever way works best for you “…but the deal is, and it’s no big deal, what I do is…” So, I am told it’s OK to do whatever suits me, but I am made to understand that the preferred form is the way he does it and maybe I ought to just do it that way. Rather than telling me straight out this is how it should be done, I get, outside the quotations, here are some options, just don’t exercise them.
OK, enough. Generally, he is a good person. Obviously scattered, yes, and the neat little camp I created is now strewn with stuff, open crates and boxes, groceries everywhere. He said he was sure we could come to a mutually suitable agreement about our communal cooking space, i.e., he rebuilt it to his satisfaction. I am now glad for the company; I will be happy when he is gone again and have my solitude back.
Anyway, with George came my mail and packages! The two boxes of books I sent myself, letters, notes and crosswords, and a big box packed with fabulous things: bags of Smartfood (good packing material), curry paste, garlic, butter cookies with chocolate topping, bars of chocolate, snips of scotch and brandy, pretzels, dried fruit, moisturizer, on and on. Yummy. Coconut milk, hot sauce, almonds. Holy cow.
19 June
It’s late, almost 1700. I’m not tired but have to be up at 2200. It is a beautiful, warm day. In the 50s –it was almost 60º in Barrow today, a record.
We did the census, went through all of the notes and pairs and nests and figured out the holes and confirmed pairs. It wasn’t as tragic as yesterday. And it is warm and beautiful.
I washed socks and underwear in the ocean. The Bay of Jaws is opening up rapidly, and the sun is unmerciful. It will no doubt be free of ice in a day or two. I do hope the weather holds. I could live with the shame of spending the only warm summer in the Arctic 🙂
I moved my tent out of the runway and reset the perimeter bear alarm. George and I had discussions on the philosophy of family law.
The first, and perhaps only, horned puffin arrived today. A rather splendid creature. I guess puffins are aggressive toward the BGs, however, and the colony birds spent some time chasing him away. He is mateless and several hundred miles above his breeding grounds. Poor guy, all spring revved and no one to show off to. Alas. I must sleep.
Tundra willow in bloom.
Join me this fall on The Road not Taken Enough when I go to Svalbard on an Arctic Circle residency Artistry in the Arctic.
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 22 Apr 2018 | Musing
Part 9.
The Black Guillemots are back, bobbing their heads, and claiming their nest boxes. A cavity-nesting bird of Arctic waters, they traditionally did not nest so far north in Alaska, one reason was a lack of natural cavities more readily found in rocky cliffs farther south. A U.S. military site abandoned in the 1950s, Cooper Island, was left littered with debris – 55-gallon drums, plywood, and scrap metal. The Guillemots suddenly had nest cavities on an island nearer the pack ice where they feed. Cooper Island is about 9 feet high at its highest point, composed of sand and gravel; it disappears into the pack ice for the winter. As the island and its nest cavity debris emerge in the spring thaw, the birds return, find their mates and their previous nesting box, and start all over again.
George, the force behind this research – for more than 40 years – mapped the location of each cavity, banded the birds nesting at each site, and kept track of the schedule, arrival and departure dates, relationships, eggs, and chicks each summer. The massive data set that he is accumulating shows a shift in when birds arrive on the island, how early cavities become snow-free allowing birds to enter and begin their mating rituals, how many chicks fledge relative to the location of the pack ice. He has followed a world of questions and shifting answers about bird phenology, climate change, and the Arctic systems.
I stepped into this story only briefly, but 18 years later the impact has yet to wear off.
Black Guillemots in the midnight sun
10 June
The birds were back yesterday. They seem to be roosting randomly but have begun to claim boxes and squabble. I try to ID them, and some of my attempts are right – meaning the pairs as I identify them align with the claimed nest boxes as George previously determined.
George usually fills garbage bags with snow as a water supply for later in the summer, I did a few but they tipped and leaked, and I’m not terribly excited about drinking water out of garbage bags. Instead, I built a box in the sand, dug out the center, lined it with the tarp and garbage bags and filled it with snow yesterday. I don’t know if the tarp will hold water but the snow will last longer and I can melt it as I need it. If it doesn’t work so, I spent a few hours of labor.
It is still gray and grim out there. Since the fog came in the other day, it hasn’t left again. I couldn’t see across the island yesterday, and most of the time when I was checking boxes I couldn’t see the tent – only 200 yards visibility. Today it seems cloudy, the ice and sky are one again, though a lot of the land is clear.
The Guillemots are still circling, I hear them go over the tent – they sound like hovercraft in SciFi movies. I’ve been dragging out of bed each morning. My alarm goes off at midnight, and I get up at 0100 or 0130 or 0200. The birds got me up this morning. I kept dropping back into sleep and dreams, but I heard the hovercraft noise and was awake. They haven’t settled yet for the morning, so I am having breakfast and tea.
I saw the first American golden plovers today. Two of them flew over Pasta Pond – so named because it is not as salty as the ocean but not fresh water, either – it is the perfect salinity for cooking pasta. Beautiful birds. The ice is thawing quickly, and there is a deep layer of water on the surface, did the ice sink? Or was the pond frozen all the way to the bottom and now the thawing surface is forming a puddle on top?
This morning I watched an Arctic tern for a while. What a magnificent bird. As wolves are described as loping through a meadow, the Arctic tern is the loper of the bird world. The wings are so long and narrow with that elegant upper edge of black to the primaries. They slide through the air, very nonchalant and casual. Nowhere to go, all day to get there. When they pause to hover they open their long forked tails and the delicate feathers in the middle seem translucent, and perfectly, evenly, rounded out to the long outer feathers that stream behind them. When the tail is closed they are a streamlined bomb with a tail shaft. Watching one dive the other day it would lope along, tuck and hover, look, tuck and hover. Pulling up each time it dropped to have a better look and then wandering along as whatever it targeted disappeared.
This afternoon there were five terns, screaming, raucous creatures. Wheeling, spinning, turning and chasing one another, constantly talking. The clouds were so low that they would chase around, chattering and plainly in view and then they would be enveloped by the gray, dense air, their cries muted. They would reappear a few minutes later, out of thin air, as it were. Just there, the black trailing edge sharp and crisp, the rest of the bird hiding among the clouds.
There are now Sabine’s gulls floating around as well. They, too, are beautiful, elegant birds. A full black head, gray secondaries, and black primaries, the underwing white. They fly somewhat like a tern and have a forked tail, though not nearly so forked as the terns’. Graceful flyers, not lopers or speeders or trick fliers, just pleasing to watch.
And the Pomarine Jaegers are fabulous. I keep coming back to them. They fly somewhat like a tern though are much larger and their wings much longer. They are always silent. Sometimes alone, sometimes in groups of 6 or 7, always silent. I see them winging toward me, they materialize and pass by, uninterested in the doings of mortal beings.
The owl came to see me again this morning. I was brushing my teeth, looked up and there was the owl coming straight at me. Again it came within 15’ or 20’, looked right at me, turned on its wing and glided another 50’ before landing. It preened some, watched me, and then took once again to the wing.
There were a few flocks of long-tailed ducks, Brant, snow geese, and eiders. There are tons of Northern Pintails, another beautiful, graceful bird.
11 June
It’s foggy and thick again this morning. Now and then the sun works hard at break through. Relatively no wind, which is fabulous. I suppose as it warms up though it will begin again in earnest.
I had another owl encounter today. I walked the length of the colony and was walking along North beach. The ice is retreating, and I am finding a lot of beach hidden beneath it. I was looking across the ice, I turned to look west, and the owl was coming toward me. Again it landed on a perch 100’ away. It sat and watched, preened, fluffed, watched. I watched it and the other birds moving behind it. After several minutes it dropped low off the perch and winged straight to me. This time at eye level, straight into my binoculars, I could see its amber eyes and the golden flecks of light they emitted. The feathers around the eyes, the disk, the edges of the wings. I dropped my binocs when he filled the frame. It went right over my head no more than 10’ above me. I turned, watched him pulled up short, hover ½ a second and then glide away through the waves of moisture rising off the ice pack and sand. Am I such an oddity to them?
In the belief of many native peoples, the owl is a sign of death and deception. Are they warning me of something? Or just carrying a message of someone else’s demise? Perhaps they are trying to make me see that I am only deceiving myself with this path and life I have chosen. I have so many questions and doubts about myself that it is impossible sometimes for me to know what I am doing. Sometimes I think I have an idea, but I still wonder how I do the things I do.
13 June
I was watching the guillemots yesterday, a pair, they were head bobbing and touching bills and then would sit close to each other. The female would sometimes flatten herself to the ground, lower her neck and head and then raise her bill and cry – Here I am, let’s have at it. It made me think about how simple life would be if humans could do a little head bobbing, some bill touching, and then fornicate. Afterward, they could go back to their respective nest boxes with no one paying any attention to who had been where or what they had been doing. I think I can manage that whole head-bobbing thing.
Now, I think I must turn in for the afternoon; it is 3:00 after all. It has been warmer when I first get up, but that 0400 to 0700 shift is brutal. It is cold. If there is no sun or if there is any wind it sucks every ounce of heat out of you. Brrrrrrrrrr.
14 June
Well, my plan yesterday failed. The idea was to go to bed earlier, so I would get up closer to midnight when I’m supposed to start the morning bird rounds. So, I went to bed at about 3:15-ish. I slept through my alarm at 11:00, woke with a start from a dream at 11:43. Instantly fell back to sleep. Woke again at 12:30 and then again at 1:44 and finally got up at about 2:00. Good plan, huh? 11 hours of sleep. Guess I was tired.
Had a good morning, there was, mercifully, no wind. I did the requisite rounds, figured out the pairs and boxes. Radioed in and found out George wasn’t coming in (not surprised) and decided to give the birds the rest of the morning off. I had already been hassling them for 4 hours; they needed quality time with their mates.
I went for a walk.
All the way to the barge at the far east end. I don’t know how far it is, a few miles maybe, all sand and gravel. For a long way, the island is only a few hundred feet wide at most. The tundra is beautiful. The willows are blooming. There are a lot of meltwater ponds and birds of all forms. I collected three dead ones – two king eiders, one common eider. They are so beautiful, and their feathers are intensely dense and soft. I tried to sketch the common eider – eek. The head was the only part I liked. After a night of thick fog, it was beautiful, clear, and sunny for my walk. When I reached the farthest point, at the barge, the fog rolled in again.
I headed back, nowhere to go, all day to get there. I found two intervertebral discs from whales and, of course, lots of good stones – of which I collected many.
I walked along the south shore of the tundra. The brant have begun to lay eggs and were chasing each other and squawking as I approached. I found four red phalaropes feeding in a pond. Most of the birds pay no attention to me when I have only my binocs or as long as I don’t see them right off. I about stepped on a semi-palmated sandpiper, and it didn’t even hardly move. If I have the camera in hand, the birds are gone 100 yds in advance of me.
I walked away from the phalaropes stepping across a narrow channel that connected two large ponds. As I put my foot down at the edge of the channel this thought went through my head, “Is that a bear track?” Sure enough. I stepped back and looked around for more tracks. The track I stepped in – the largest bear track I’ve ever seen – was the cub. Mama’s print was as wide as my foot is long and about the overall size of a dinner plate. Big Bear. That changed my perspective on the possibility of seeing one. Of course, I would still love to see one, but maybe with some space between us. The tracks weren’t fresh, but I find it hard to believe prints, two sets no less, could have survived the winter, so, perhaps a few weeks? How much was open when I got here? Was that channel thawed already? There was a huge chunk of ice still in the channel – substantial enough for me to walk across… did the tracks survive the winter or did I have visitors recently? It has been so foggy, they could have walked past my doorstep, and I wouldn’t have known. Like the tundra swans on the pond yesterday. They appeared in the fog and just as mysteriously disappeared in the fog. I spent a lot more time looking around after that. Not surprisingly. Don’t want to startle a bear the size of a VW bug, especially if it’s with a youngster. No, that’s not a good idea.
George did not return today. The plan is that he will be in Barrow tomorrow and will find some way to get here on Friday. I’ll believe it when I see it. I suspected from the start that his idea of dates was a fuzzy one.
Dave didn’t have any products for me to guess today. I got him instead to teach me some Inupiaq words. I like them a lot. They sound real – not arbitrary sounds that form words but more like sounds that are things. And I like the way words are combined to create place names like Anaqtutuvuq – the pass where caribou leave their waste – more or less. An’noogaluk
Tundra sandpiper
Join me this fall on The Road not Taken Enough when I go to Svalbard on an Arctic Circle residency Artistry in the Arctic.
