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 | 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 | 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 | 6 May 2016 | Roads Taken
Cooper Island fog
We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.
Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not. Dao de jing
29 July 2000, Cooper Island, Alaska
I’ve been walking since I got up this morning, and eating, of course. The wind and rain of the other day finally passed. Yesterday was foggy and freezing; everything was covered with a thin sheet of ice. The fog lifted briefly in the afternoon and it was warm. This morning when I awoke the air was absolutely dead calm, the fog as thick as it has ever been. And so, I walked.
There is silence and stillness to this fog world that is unmatched. Even intensely cold days in the north woods have sound and a feeling of motion: the creak of ice laden branches as they sway under their burdens, the crunch of sub-zero-temperature snow underfoot. This Arctic fog stillness is absolute.
To stand on the edge of the water and look into the gray void created by the sky and water uniting in color and texture is to truly experience sensory deprivation. Except for a few birds, my footsteps, and the almost imperceptible wash of water on the shore there is no sound, even these few things you must work to hear. All sense of sight is gone; the utterly calm water perfectly mirrors the sky, eliminating any evidence of a boundary between them. Without an automatic brain override of the fog, I would think I was losing my sight.
Black guillemots on ice floe
Now and then, on the lagoon side of the island, a dark spot that is a loon or a long-tailed duck will break free of the fog and show itself, giving definitive life to the water and proving that there is more than one dimension. On the ocean side, ice floes loom, moving imperceptibly; they often calve. The sound, that distorted fog sound, travels across the water. In the ocean there is no change, no motion, and no acknowledgement by the water or the air that the ice balance has shifted. Only silence once again.
Occasionally a red-throated loon gives its eerie, raspy, almost desperate call. No loon is in sight but I know it is among the ice floes, bill pointed to the foggy sky, head cocked to one side, listening into the silence for an answer. Listening for any sound at all, some proof that the rest of the world still exists. Is it only in our imagination that there was once wind and motion, sounds of water washing against the shore, or the persistent calls of numerous other birds?
I attempted many photos of this deprivation, some hard fast object in the foreground with the limitless depths of fog-gray-void behind. How does one record the lack of something to see? I’m not sure. If there is anything in these photos, any depth or contrast, any color, any motion, they will be stupendous indeed. In many ways this is the essence of my purpose here, to record that which is not plainly visible, to show that despite this seeming void, life thrives just out of view, and that there is usefulness in that which we cannot see and do not know.
Cooper Island camp
