Storfjorden, Svalbard Archipelago
How strange it is to follow a season backwards. Ten days ago wildflowers blossomed beside the trails and trees sported tender new leaves. Today the wind cut through our clothing and winter was all around. At seventy-six degrees north latitude the midnight sun slips down glaciers and twinkles off floating ice. Signs of spring are few.
The day started under a dome of pale gray like an inverted bowl upon a pewter sea. Enclosed within this haze details that might have been ignored in usual circumstances entertained the mind. Patterns of wings mesmerized. Fulmars glided on stiff forelimbs. Glaucous gulls dwarfed dainty kittiwakes both utilizing flapping flight. A puffin looked like a fat bumblebee.
Ice is easy to find when clouds obscure the sky. It is as if the frozen sea gathers any lingering light and flings it high drawing a brilliant line across their base. Follow the "ice blink" it seemed to say. We did and there was the ice. The floes rose and fell with the motion of the sea. A push against the edge of one would send it spinning merrily and so it went transferring forces from one to the next, some subducting, some simply moving into a vacant space.
With the coming of the ice, came the sun. Blue skies were reflected in mirror seas as we moved from lead to lead. Snow trickled down the eastern slopes of Spitsbergen's mountains that gathered growing condensation as the day went on. Glaciers cascaded from valleys their fractured faces telling of the underlying contour of the land. Fast ice fenced off entry to the shore, its rough surface casting shadows that mimicked wildlife everywhere. We nudged our bow forward securing ourselves in this frozen sea for a "tail-gate party" on the deck. Hot dogs in one hand, binoculars in the other, we were on a mission searching for Isbjørn, the ice bear, the polar bear.
Guillemots swarmed along the edges of the drifting ice. A pack of seals swam by, silhouettes against the black water, their identity hidden from view. A patient bearded seal endured the attention of annoying gulls that seemed convinced that something amiss was about to occur. Elsewhere a harp seal slipped away to protect its solitude. But the ice bear, that magnificent symbol of the Arctic, where was he or she? Huge platter like footprints were imprinted in the snow across floe after floe and into the fast ice, leading us on all the day long. The quest continues into the night. Sleep might well be elusive this night.
How strange it is to follow a season backwards. Ten days ago wildflowers blossomed beside the trails and trees sported tender new leaves. Today the wind cut through our clothing and winter was all around. At seventy-six degrees north latitude the midnight sun slips down glaciers and twinkles off floating ice. Signs of spring are few.
The day started under a dome of pale gray like an inverted bowl upon a pewter sea. Enclosed within this haze details that might have been ignored in usual circumstances entertained the mind. Patterns of wings mesmerized. Fulmars glided on stiff forelimbs. Glaucous gulls dwarfed dainty kittiwakes both utilizing flapping flight. A puffin looked like a fat bumblebee.
Ice is easy to find when clouds obscure the sky. It is as if the frozen sea gathers any lingering light and flings it high drawing a brilliant line across their base. Follow the "ice blink" it seemed to say. We did and there was the ice. The floes rose and fell with the motion of the sea. A push against the edge of one would send it spinning merrily and so it went transferring forces from one to the next, some subducting, some simply moving into a vacant space.
With the coming of the ice, came the sun. Blue skies were reflected in mirror seas as we moved from lead to lead. Snow trickled down the eastern slopes of Spitsbergen's mountains that gathered growing condensation as the day went on. Glaciers cascaded from valleys their fractured faces telling of the underlying contour of the land. Fast ice fenced off entry to the shore, its rough surface casting shadows that mimicked wildlife everywhere. We nudged our bow forward securing ourselves in this frozen sea for a "tail-gate party" on the deck. Hot dogs in one hand, binoculars in the other, we were on a mission searching for Isbjørn, the ice bear, the polar bear.
Guillemots swarmed along the edges of the drifting ice. A pack of seals swam by, silhouettes against the black water, their identity hidden from view. A patient bearded seal endured the attention of annoying gulls that seemed convinced that something amiss was about to occur. Elsewhere a harp seal slipped away to protect its solitude. But the ice bear, that magnificent symbol of the Arctic, where was he or she? Huge platter like footprints were imprinted in the snow across floe after floe and into the fast ice, leading us on all the day long. The quest continues into the night. Sleep might well be elusive this night.
