Torellnesset, Nordaustalndet, Spitsbergen
What a day! We began at an early hour (and I do mean early!) in the pack ice with polar bears: sleeping polar bears, prowling polar bears, polar bears reclining on their back in the snow, and a polar bear at a recent kill surrounded by glaucous and ivory gulls waiting to snatch any unattended scrap. Exciting, but not the picture of the day.
From polar bears we proceeded to walrus: a group of sixty or so males hauled out on the beach at Torellnesset, on the island of Nordaustlandet, piled into a thigmotactic heap, with additional walrus in the water nearby. These huge animals, seemingly so slow and sluggish on land, become remarkably agile, even graceful, in their true medium, the water. But, no, that is not the picture of the day, either.
The picture of the day honors the M.S. Endeavour short-walkers. Leaving the walrus, we separated into groups for a hike over the polar desert of Nordaustlandet. The “long-hikers” strode out resolutely, trying to match the long paces of Peter Carey (an impossibility, I must add.) The intermediate walkers sauntered off at a more leisurely, but still determined pace. And then there were the short-walkers, those who stop to “smell the roses”, and measure their hike not in distance covered but in intimate encounters with wondrous things. In Svalbard the wondrous things are often tiny tundra flowers, too small to be seen from a standing position. One has not been on a “short walk” unless one returns with dirt on the knees. Here the short-walkers pay homage to a tiny, delicate Svalbard poppy, flowering bravely in the gravel of an ancient beach, now elevated above the sea by post-glacial isostatic rebound. What appeared to be almost barren from afar was, in fact, anything but.
