by aramatzne@gmail.com | 6 May 2019 | Musing
Purgatory Ice Present
Millennial. Annual. Tangible. Visible.
Advance – Water became ice. Masses of ice ranged from the north across oceans, continents, and islands; tongues extended from mountain tops to valleys, grinding through walls of stone, depositing sediments via meltwater. Sea level dropped as cold held water in its solid form. Earth’s crust deformed, depressed by the weight of ice, and its rotation shifted as the mass on the north side of the globe held sway.
Our time – Products of geologic time, humans found their way to the far north, ever expanding their range, ever devouring that which they believed to be rightfully theirs. The Cosmos, now in our hands, took a new shape. We moved mountains, tilled bottomlands, mined minerals, metals, and power. We tamed, maimed, and killed animals, plants, forests, and oceans. We harnessed fire and created ice on demand. We built new substances from the elements, exploiting natural structures to suit our desires, turning oil to plastic and coal to heat.
Retreat – Ice becomes water. Glacial ice, pack ice, shore-fast ice, it all melts. Sea level rises; shorelines drown. Our heat does not dissipate, but instead stagnates overhead, trapping us in our effluent. Hurricanes, cyclones, blizzards, forest fire, drought, floods, the Earth we manipulate responds in kind. We hide in our denials, in our superiority, in our arrogance. Our expectation that Earth is ours is flawed. The sun oversees all. Its cycles are unaware of our needs or our existence. It is fire not harnessed.
We are not rulers of Earth, nor conquerors or tamers. We are stewards. Our tenure will be marked not by our great deeds or structures, nor our mass upon Earth’s surface. Rather, we will be remembered for our refuse and that which was lost during our watch. In place of glaciers and polar bears, we leave pit mines and plastic water bottles.
We have agency, and we have created the untenable. A new equilibrium, not yet reached, is imminent. We of the Present, we are in Limbo, Purgatory.
Chaos.
Every empire must fall.
Disintegrate, v.: to lose unity or integrity by or as if by breaking into parts
“Would the last animal, eating garbage and living on the last scrap of land, his mate dead, would he still forgive you?” Barry Lopez
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 29 Apr 2019 | Musing
Barbara Crawford, a co-resident on the Arctic Circle, asked me to write three essays to introduce her exhibit opening this June in the Montefalco Museum, Montefalco, Italy. The gallery has three rooms one leading into the next where she is presenting her paintings and sculptures from Svalbard in a version of The Divine Comedy, each room will be introduced by an essay and will follow the themes of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Hell is explored through water and the past, Purgatory as ice and the present, Heaven in air and the future. If you happen to be in Umbria in June, be sure to visit. In the meantime, and with no further delay, here is Part 1, Hell.
Hell Water Past
Distant. Persistent. Resistant. Recalcitrant.
Immemorial time – Before there was Europe or Svalbard, the Arctic Ocean or coal, even before there was life, there was primordial soup – a steamy, overheated, water bath that covered the Earth. Whatever you believe about creation or evolution, there are undeniable truths: seafloors spread, mountains rose, life began.
Advance – Fire and brimstone greeted the first water-borne carbon-based biological beings. Across time, continents moved, an atmosphere formed, and life burgeoned. Shapeshifting was the norm, land masses stretched and smashed together; oceans mixed and remixed, and uplifted mountains washed back into the seas. Plants and animals diversified, flourished, lived, and died. Their bodies fell to the earth, to the seafloor, into the future in conglomerations of sediments and carbon reserves.
Mountain chains were spurned by wandering continents, eroded by unceasing weather, and churned by heat and pressure into new forms, into new mountains or no mountains. Carbon was compressed deeper, harder. Pieces changed position or were reworked, but the players remained the same.
Cosmos.
Time immemorial proceeded into the ages of the ancients, pharaohs, empires, and deities. What was once wild and raw and orderly in its state of natural fluctuation became fodder for the human dynasty.
Infrangible, adj.: not capable of being broken or separated into parts
“Eden is a conversation. It is the conversation of the human with the Divine. And it is the reverberations of that conversation that create a sense of place. It is not a thing, Eden, but a pattern of relationships, made visible in conversation. To live in Eden is to live in the midst of good relations, of just relations scrupulously attended to, imaginatively maintained through time. Altogether we call this beauty.” Barry Lopez
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 22 Apr 2019 | Roads Taken
The people, part 3
Last but not least, this rounds out the cast. Twenty-eight residents and 11 crew members set sail for two weeks on the waters of the North Atlantic. Tight quarters, snowy weather, and a boatful of ideas make for lively times.
Carson contemplates
Mary Ellen in the ice field
Andrea intensely focused
Rachel in waders
Lindsay at the rail; Dawn under the veil
Kristin at leisure
Nora seeds the Arctic water with ice cubes. Restoration.
Isaac in the Zodiac
Barbara C. in the white sea
The galley crew, Piet, Janene, and Jannah, after dinner calm
Crew member Alex climbs
Siegmund with walruses in sight
David in the middle
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 8 Apr 2019 | Roads Taken
People, part 2
As each person on this trip takes shape in my photos, I realize that they all held leading roles as stars of their own Arctic show.
Theresa in scale
Stina by glacier light
Christina belonging to the surge glaciers
John ponders exposure
Åhsild on watch
Kim ready to climb, photo-bombed by Captain Mario
Barbara L. at a standoff with an iceberg
Shirley listening
Second Mate Annet keeps order on deck
Emma, the rear guard
Guide/guard Kristin scouts
by aramatzne@gmail.com | 1 Apr 2019 | Roads Taken
A few characters
As a field biologist, I often said there was a reason I worked alone in the woods for so many years. Not quite a misanthrope, I don’t suffer fools lightly – though I spent many years as a fool myself, and fooling myself. Two weeks on a ship full of people from which your only escape is to get into a Zodiac with the same people and spend time on shore again with those same people, oh, that took some mental wrangling.
In the end, the people were as much a part of the success of this trip as the location. For someone who rarely takes photos of people, this group enthralled me. The crew each knew enough for twenty people. The crew and residents both were not diverse but rather were infinite in their stories, their articulation via a chosen medium, their creativity, and openness to the possibilities of art, design, expression, and life.
In the order taken
Sarah, the lead guide, and Nemo, the lead dog, above Esmarkbreen
Martina and Georgia attempt to see-saw
Lena blows bubbles
Max paints Arctic landscapes in the dining room
Max’s painting
Mario, the captain, with roasting fork out of hand, explaining the boat
Julie waves for the camera
Offer watches the sky from the Zodiac on deck
Dawn and Bonnie out of the wind against the wheelhouse