Shades of wonder
The post-fire-season fires rage in California not far south of where I am working at my desk. There is smoke in the air despite it being November. It is daylight from 0715hr to 1645hr. There is a waning moon, the mornings are frosted, the days full of sun. Where are the glaciers?
Svalbard is an experience scrambled in my brain, the light and time, the landscape, people, and water, have no edges, no differentiation. They are fluid, bleeding one into the other. My method of understanding seems to be via deconstruction. I look across my photos, writing, and thoughts for small things I can grasp — details, colors, scale. I hope the whole will reveal itself slowly in the shades of wonder it deserves.
In the meantime, I’m meditating on a few Svalbard blues.
The ocean’s surface shifted colors according to the sky’s mood, the sun’s position, and the motion of the waves. This best represents the fluidity of time, light, people, that lives in my mind.
An iceberg in front of Recherchebreen, the glacier from which it calved, glows with inner blue light during a snowstorm.
Once thought to be a peninsula, the retreating glacier Blomstrandbreen revealed an island instead. Antigua anchored between the sky and its reflections.
Icebergs and ice floes, deep water- to ice-blue, fraternize at the base of Wahlenbergbreen glacier.
Ice imitates frosty agate on the beach in Tempelfjorden.