Kong Karl's Forlandet, Svalbard Norway

Dawn brought the walruses in their blubbery magnificence. Squirming in massive mound, lost in a thigmotatic trance, tonnage of corpulence tangled in an orgy of thermal gratification.

Barely noticed, minutely present, on the gentle palm of an oily calm, a red Phalarope, shinning confidently in the colored beauty bestowed on it by evolution's paintbrush.

The one an improbable exaggeration of nature, the other a fragile beauty of the sea and sky, both thriving in a world where naked humanity cannot exist.