Have I saturated your senses with ice and sky? I hope not. I never have enough sky. Vast expanses that absorb my thoughts, my anxiety, my idea of significance in the universe; somehow, ice fills the same need. I surrender to these things.
sunrise at 1000
ice wall
seal voyeur
Antigua at anchor
Åhsild on watch
ant people above Blomstrandbreen
Alongside Blomstrandbreen
Blomstrandbreen
Blomstrandbreen
Ice teeth
Often, when I feel pressed for time but have something I want to write, I leave notes in my journal, so I remember to flesh out the thoughts later. 10 October was one of those days, but I don’t think I adequately fill in the gaps here. What I do remember was standing on the bow of the boat surrounded by ice floes, brash ice, and pancake ice, alone, at 0100 hr., watching the northern lights play across the sky, the stars screaming brilliantly across the velvet blackness, and Bob Marley rolling through my head. Why would the Redemption Song fill my mind now?
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds”
Our only polar bear sighting
moving through the ice – pancake ice in the night
stars- shooting star
northern lights – green and white, pulsing, flowing, swirling, east to west across the south and above
glacier sounds- thunder and jet engines
setting sail – hauling ropes and raising the sails
snowing, pelting, cold, stillness, silence
snow cave on island at glacier base
northern lights and redemption song @ 0100 hr Bob Marley
Water on the hull, ice on the hull
We’re in port. Shore leave for an evening, and this morning we do a tour of the town. Built for coal mining, it is now an international research station.
While sailing the other night, we were called out for the northern lights, which turned out to be minimal. I never went back to sleep. An hour or two later, we had dropped the sails and were running on the engine, through the ice. Brash sea ice that was in giant pancakes in the fjord. I finally looked out the porthole and had to go on deck. The ambient light was inconceivable. The ice was thick and as far as I could see in the night. At the bow, Marijn was using a torch to look for icebergs and glacier ice, directing the captain port and starboard, maneuvering through ice cautiously. As I watched, we came to a stop and dropped anchor.
The northern lights began again in full 180º glory. Green and white, they swirled and spun, waving curtains of light. I stood for an hour there, in the middle of the night, in the cold, and watched the lights and stars. It was spectacular. We were in Blomstrandbreen in Kongsfjorden. We were anchored between a glacier and an island. The island was named as a peninsula because the glacier connected it to the mainland and it was thought to be a tongue of land that reached into the fjord. As the glacier retreated, it was discovered the island was not attached. This happened recently and it has not yet been renamed as an island.
find the Zodiac
We did a Zodiac tour through the ice in the morning. Giant pancake ice with glacier ice blocks in between. The pancake seams were fusing and knitting. Slush on the surface and the first sea ice forming underneath. It snowed heavily for a while, Christmas snow, as Kristin said. Fluffy, white, giant snowflakes. Beautiful. Arctic silence. Another massive glacier, we were well away from the face, which we estimated at 80m high. I took photos of the other Zodiac, miniature, at the glacier base.
We moved to Ny-Ålesund for the night.
Antigua’s route
John and the large format camera look north
Snow wind-blown from the cliff cornice above Antigua
Sky, water, and rock at Ytre Norskøy
At the wrack line
Teresa blending in and standing out
Beach trash on snow
Walruses 🙂 zooooooomed way in with the cell phone…
The snow cave
An image of old
Sails go up
Annet hauls sails
9 October – morning anchor Holmiabukta
We motored out of Lilliehöökbreen that night [maybe the night of the 8th?], moving through the fjord while we had dinner and then onto the open ocean, cruising north at speed through the night. I went to bed ~2200 and was awakened at ~2330 for the aurora. Standing on deck in the dark, with a sky full of stars and the shimmering green lights of the aurora was stunning. Inky black, velvety cold. Seven satellites and a shooting star with colors curving across the southern horizon – waves of color in a line, southeast to southwest, with the most intense walls of light east and west.
Antigua at anchor in Ytre Norskøy
When we woke yesterday morning, we were in Ytre Norskøy (~80ºN) – the northwestern tip of Spitsbergen. We were anchored between two islands in the corner of the archipelago with nothing between us and the North Pole, ~1,000 km north.
We landed and did a hike – up the ridge of the outer island. It was cold, windy, and snowing–pelting, horizontal, ice balls of snow. We got part way up but had to turn back and reroute. The snow was deep, and the landscape underneath was rocky. Rerouting, we wove our way up almost to the top. There is a modern, metal cross at the top. No one seems to know where it came from or who put it there. Kristin thought it was for the memory of the whalers.
Kristin scouts at the edge of the world
Another day at The Arctic Circle office
We moved the boat a short distance to another anchorage for the night, with a landing first. Few people dd the afternoon landing – most were tired, needed to work, didn’t want to go into the snow and cold. We had a static landing spot; big boulders and deep snow. I went waist-deep into a snow-well around a rock. Laughing, of course, and stuck. Extracting myself required a lot of floundering and flopping.
Whale ribs dug from the snow
Dropping back to the shoreline, I found six whale ribs in the rocks. I laid them out on a boulder in the snow to photograph before putting them back into the rocks. There was a jawbone, I think, too. An enormous length of bone – 3–4 meters, half-eaten, and chewed down and half in the water. Sarah said a whale had washed up there a year or two ago and that the bears had been scavenging. But I showed her that the ribs were cleanly sawed. It is illegal for humans to disturb carcasses.
A whale jaw bone at water’s edge
I’m struggling to put together some photos for a presentation. The new computer has few photos and all of my recent essays are on the blog site – I haven’t kept any on the computer. And what is interesting to this group?
We had presentations again last night. Kim, the weaver, uses scientific data to create patterns – like the incarceration and recidivism rate of kids, ice mass of Greenland over time, and the shape and size of a glacier in Alaska, over several panels and 40 years. Going, going, gone. Nora does performance art and sings – amazing work. More intimidation. Carson read the opening monologue of her new play. Dawn showed some of her documentary about an Australian ballet dancer set for the international stage who was randomly knifed in the face. The attacker was never found, and 18 years later, the woman continues to work through the trauma. Intimidating bodies of work and intellects behind them.
The blue tongue of a glacier behind Antigua
Yesterday’s second landing was across Lilliehöökbreen. Behind the ship was another glacier, a giant blue tongue, a sleeping goanna, along the water’s edge, and one smooth surface of blue ice.
Lena said last night that for the past 18 months, life was geared toward this trip. I, too, have been that way and when we return? Nothing planned, scheduled, or aligned.
Island landing in Fluglefjorden – I built a snow cave and curled into a ball inside.
The annual photo roundup. This felt like a hard year without much adventure or fun. Going through the year’s trips and photos, I guess it’s relative.
Spring Basin, Oregon
John Day Canyon, Oregon
Pioneer Mountains, Montana
Manzanita, Oregon
Mt. Adams, Washington
Sooke, British Columbia
Big Cat and the Great Pumpkins
White Sands, New Mexico
Bosque del Apache, New Mexico
Little Santiam River, Oregon
Pacific Chorus Frog sings Christmas carols
Polar bear tracks lead to Lloyd’s Hotel.
We moved the other night, from the beach with the sand and glacier cubes to the north into another fjord. Anchoring on one side of Lloyd’s Hotel (Möllerfjorden), we did a landing in the morning. [The grandly named Lloyd’s Hotel is a well-used cabin that appears to be heavily influenced by the Jim Morrison Paris memorial-type crowd. Open to anyone who happens upon it, it has collected random memorabilia from those passing through. A polar bear had recently visited the cabin. There were tracks directly to, around, and right up against the building. The bear must have stood on its hind legs to look at the roof – but I can’t say if it left any tokens.] We crossed the peninsula on foot into the other arm of the fjord (Krossfjorden). Coming through a pass, we hiked onto the ridge above the glacial valley (Lilliehöökbreen) and above Antigua, which had moved around the peninsula.
Across Antigua’s deck to Lilliehöökbreen.
When we came into view of Antigua, she was doing depth soundings in uncharted waters. The glacier once filled the bay. Now, as it retreats, it has melted far enough back to split into two glaciers where the mountains above the bay divide it. The foot of the glacier used to be a united face that met the water’s edge. The head of the fjord is a pan of glacier; mountain top knobs stand above and between the ice fields creating the same effect as a braided stream, many sources twining together and apart again. In this case, rivers of ice flowing around the mountains, each with a different mountain top source, met at the foot and combined into an expansive glacial face. Now, the single glacier front has moved back far enough to be two narrower glaciers split by the mountain ridges and flowing into the new bay. The uncharted water depth was variable, as little as 4 m – the ship’s draft is 3.2m.
In the Zodiac, we wandered through the ice pack, looking at the glacier. It calved regularly and rumbled like thunder. A tiny ringed seal came right to the boat, diving around and under the Zodiac repeatedly, watching us for 20–30 minutes. Kristin and Åhsild said seals never did this.
Christina did salt words – “longing” to “belonging” and “surge” on the bow of the Zodiac. We floated; we did a minute of silence to hear and believe. The walls towered above us, blue and white, black and gray, ice blue, and aquamarine. The surface water was full of ice floes, bergie bits, and pancake ice, congealing and spinning.
Zodiac tour to Lilliehöökbreen.
Ice and reflection.
Glacier face 1.
Glacier face 2.
Antigua depth sounding at the foot of Lilliehöökbreen.
Yesterday – Fjortende Julibreen
Yesterday, we continued motoring north along the strait between mainland Spitsbergen and the barrier island to the west; the water was rough. I only slept ~1½ hours between my watch and breakfast (mistake!). I was able to write and work on the computer for a while but, then I stood up and instantly felt sick. The rest of the morning and afternoon, I spent between the midship deck and the common room. Mostly outside, sometimes throwing up at the rail. A lot of people were in their beds for the day.
The kitchen crew is super nice. Alex stopped to rub my back while I was throwing up and asked if I needed anything. I sort of brushed her off in my puke-y state, despite her clear well-meaning intent. A few minutes later, Jannah came out and handed me crackers. She said, “Eat these.” Then, while I dutifully ate the crackers, she stood and watched me and talked. ~ “I love this job. I laugh all day. Some days, I get really sick from the motion. I come out here; I throw up. I go back and laugh more. It’s a good job. You need food in your stomach. Make sure you always have something to eat.” She was right, of course. Eating seems the last thing you would want to do when you’ve been heaving at the rail all day, but it makes a difference.
Footprints, I’m thinking about footprints – the human footprint, glacial footprints, polar bear tracks, the iceberg prints, fox tracks.
Finally, we left the open water north of the island and moved into the 14th of July Bay, where I took these photos.
Plumb line
Jump in!
Moonset
Sandhill Sunset
All of the photos on this page were taken on the same day in the same location. The variation in color from one to the next shows the range of effects that light, cloud, distance, time of day, and falling snow can have on images. At first, I found the eternally blue light on ice distorting and disorienting, but this is the color of the place and most everything in my memory has an indelible wash of shades of blue.
We did a morning landing on a barrier beach; an open channel along the side allowed access to the lagoon at the front of the glacier. I tried out the new waders, walking in the lagoon among the icebergs until my hands no longer worked. After lunch, we went again to a different spot on the spit where the icebergs were clear, aquamarine. It was cold and snowing but there was no wind and it was spectacular.
After an hour or so, the Zodiac picked us up and we motored across the lagoon and along the glacier face. The water was like mercury, calm, flat, and reflective in the fading light. The icebergs were beautiful shapes and the water surface was trying to congeal. There were thunderous rumbles from deep within the glacier. The textures and colors are so unimaginable, blues and purples I’ve never seen before. Sarah said she had never seen the glacier this way, the clouds and snow gave the colors new intensity.
We started moving before dinner was done and motored through the night, north. I “helped” with the 0200–0600 watch as we sailed. Fill in the logbook; do the rounds. I didn’t go into the engine room – that seemed impossible. The water was pretty rough and I had waves of nausea – I was fine and then felt terrible, fine, and then terrible. At one point, I stood at the rail and threw up what little was in my stomach and then was fine again. The 1st mate (Marijn) was on when I started and switched with the 2nd mate, Annet, his wife, at 0400. The time went remarkably quickly, and the light was beginning as we were released at 0600. In time for breakfast. Unfortunately, I didn’t sleep before I started the watch at 0200; that left me pretty wasted and with a sleep-deprivation hangover.
The residents are doing presentations during the trip. The first group went the other night. Kristin is a novelist for young adults – fantasy kick-ass girls. She had her first NYT bestseller 10 years ago but she looks like she is ~35. Christina was a publisher, and now is working on a book about climate change. She is also an artist and is drawing the maps for the book – on seaweed. Andrea is writing a book on Barents, the explorer who “found” this land. She has two previous books, including one on concentration camps across time and continents. Isaac does city murals. Starting with graffiti, he now has a crew that does public murals on commission for cities all over. Very intimidating. Not the people, but their accomplishments and the paths and personalities that have taken them so far.
Photo credit: Barbara Crawford