by aramatzne@gmail.com | 2 Mar 2020 | Roads Taken
From Ny-Ålesund cemetery to Ny-London steampunk
We crossed Kongsfjord from Ny-Ålesund to Ny-London – a marble quarry that went bust. It is an island of marble, but the marble crumbled and turned to gravel by the time it got to Europe, and so, like so many other dreams, it was abandoned. Leaving the buildings, train tracks, and machinery was easier and cheaper than removing anything. Polar steampunk is born. We landed, and I walked, took photos, and finally swam. Well, I went into the water. I stripped under the cliff out of the wind. Walking in up to my waist, I stood for a long few seconds before dipping in up to my neck. I stayed there for another few long seconds and then walked out. My toes and fingers immediately lost feeling.
The water was amazing. Cold, of course, but also almost sweet in its saltiness. Hard to explain. I dressed right away again, and the clothes didn’t stick the way they sometimes do with salt water, though the beads of water froze on my skin. Yesterday, and the day before, were the coldest days, I think.
Steam engine
Spiraled steam power
The last shoe last
Hook and hut – remnants
Scaling the mast
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 17 Feb 2020 | Roads Taken
Blomstrandbreen
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
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 3 Feb 2020 | Roads Taken
Redemption song
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
10 October, 0111 hr. Blomstrandbreen at anchor
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
11 Oct Ny-Ålesund
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
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 6 Jan 2020 | Roads Taken
North
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.
