Arctic Diaries: Week 1

Disappearing glaciers, a very fat bear, and a dash of COVID

Hello from the Arctic.

Our trip has hit the halfway point. Covid is on board. The ship doctor doesn’t have tests, though at least one passenger brought a test and tested positive. The doctor announced that if you feel symptoms, no need to isolate or wear a mask; come to the bar for a cup of tea.

So there’s that. There’s also a storm approaching. Unless the weather changes completely, which it might. Right now it’s sunny out and the water is calm.

As our trip leader likes to say: “Now is now. Later is not now.”

I’ve barely had time to jot down what I’ve done and seen. It’s easy to register the extraordinary nature of the landscapes. More difficult to analyze or integrate the sights and experiences into a meaningful narrative. That will come later, I’m sure. For now, a few scattered thoughts.

To say this is unlike any other place I’ve been is an understatement. Every day, a different awe-inspiring location.

For example:

This is the Hornbreen glacier. It is rapidly disappearing. There are 4 kilometers of glacier left. In thirty years, it will be gone.

We saw and heard ice breaking off the glacier many times - it’s called calving, and the sound is thunderous.

Blue ice = dense ice = old ice. The bluer it is, the older it is. There’s a glaciologist on board who estimated this ice to be between 1,000-2,000 years old.

During the days, we eat, meet (many meetings), and do shore landings or Zodiac rides around the area.

The Zodiac situation – specifically the question of what behavior is considered acceptable on a Zodiac – has become a hot button issue.

It turns out that a lot of artists want some kind of silence for their projects.

It also turns out that silence is hard to come by when you’re with other passengers on a small inflatable boat.

The guides have tried different methods for Zodiac assignments, from grouping us by where we’re standing in the boarding line to dividing by general interest (video, sound recording, photography), to, most recently: allowing us to create our own categories.

The instructions:

NEXT ZODIAC PROJECTS (GLACIER)

Please specify focus. Please write clearly. Please only sign up once. Please specify type of silence. P.S. “Nothing specific” is also an important project.”

The requested groups:

-       Drawing or photography and video with ice & glacier, no talking

-       No talking. Silence. Movement ok. No camera clicking.

-       Circle ice pieces to video quietly. No talking during video

-       GoPro

-       Photography, noise ok. Ice & glacier

-       Fully silent without movement for underwater and over-water recording

-       Photography Holga toy camera only

-       Zodiacs making drawing with waves & tracking with GPS

-       30 mins ish in front of  glacier, small group, short silent sound & video recording. Folk Singing.

-       Crazy lens, traverse glacier front (not bothered about ice blocks)

-       Nothing specific

-       Reading

-       Finding a glacial dropstone (camera & noise ok)

-       Playing guitar and saxophone to glacier or iceberg

I initially signed up for the photography, noise-ok boat but a writer friend encouraged me to join the reading Zodiac. He explained that the plan was to do brief readings of our work for each other. In the spirit of embracing the moment, and because I now have more photos of glaciers than I know what to do with, I said sure and pulled out the first pages of my new novel.

When I got down to the loading deck, I discovered it was raining. And cold. Colder than the preceding days.

I wore my standard Zodiac outfit, a super chic mélange of merino wool and waterproof…whatever material waterproof clothing is made out of. Many, many layers. With a mandatory life preserver on top.

There I sat, at the bow of an inflatable boat, reading the opening pages of my novel out loud for the first time ever. In front of a glacier. In the heavy rain and freezing cold. In the Arctic.

The passage felt unexpectedly and uncomfortably long. The subject almost absurd in its disconnection to my current environment. By the time I finished, my fingers and the lower half of my face were going numb and the two sheets of paper were soaked through.

As I returned to my spot on the side of the Zodiac, one of the other writers turned to me. “You could read even more slowly,” she said, encouragingly. “Really take your time.”

Walruses

I saw my first (and 2^nd-40^th) walruses the other day. These walruses were considerably less excited to see us than we were to see them, judging by their groans and hurried efforts to get off the land and into the ocean when we approached. They fled as fast as they could, which was not very fast, because: walrus.

I felt bad about our intrusion and soon retreated to a different part of the landing site, as did many others.

I later learned that someone subsequently went into the abandoned hunter’s shed next to the walruses and played them some music on the saxophone.

So, in one direction, walruses. In another, a field strewn with animal bones. Scattered throughout, dozens of artists, including, to name just a few…

A photographer taking portraits of people on a chair she carried with her from the ship.

A man wearing a white hand-knit sweater with a neck extending over his head and long past it, akin to an elephant trunk, flinging the trunk against some rocks.

A man in a full yellow HAZMAT suit acting out something for a camera.

A clown – complete with nose, makeup, and beret – doing what looked like interpretive dance.

On all sides: guides with rifles slung across their backs scanning for polar bears.

A Very Fat Bear

That afternoon, we navigated through uncharted waters off an island called Edgeøya and saw our first polar bear. We stayed so far away that to the naked eye, it was basically a white dot on brown. In some of my photos, it looks like a sheep. But in others, when I zoom in, it’s almost clear that it’s a bear.

Other people got better photos, revealing not just a fat but a very fat bear.

That is the official term, according to the Standardized Fatness Index for polar bears.

This morning, on our shore landing, I watched an artist in a polar bear costume walk - and crawl – around the landing site. The trip leader made an announcement a few nights ago, warning us not to be alarmed if we see a polar bear in our midst because it’s only a man in a costume.

So far, I don’t have covid – I don’t think. I am, to be honest, a little worried about getting it, given the number of times I’ve had it and the duration of each bout. I’m trying not to dwell. I’ve spent 7 days in close proximity to everyone on board – we all eat our meals together in a single low-ceilinged closed-window dining room and meet every few hours in the upstairs bar/lounge. I’ve been exposed. We all have. I’m staying hydrated and hoping for the best.