Woodfjorden, Spitzbergen, Svalbard
The Arctic has many faces. Every moment we build upon what we have learned before. Fog gives way to sunny days where not a breath of air stirs the mirror sea. And then when one has forgotten how close the frozen pole is, the winds begin to blow. The polar desert flows to shore to meld with gravelly strands but where the tundra thaws a flower garden grows. Yesterday was the calm and stark, today the blustery sea.
Winds stirred the clouds into mirror images of the waves as if they were being torn from their moorings in the sky. The frayed edges almost reached sharp peaked mountains still heavily patterned with snow. Between the two, horizontal streaks of pastel pinks and blues could have been a subtle sunrise except at this latitude the sun remains with us day and night. In places the mountains collected the falling threads and wove a blanket to hide behind. Lenticular clouds moved across the sky like space ships from alien lands.
Whitecaps danced the length of Woodfjorden as if to celebrate the magnificence on either side. Ice, the master sculptor has plucked at massive mountain ranges until skyward reaching fingers were revealed. It scooped out valleys and left immense ridges of rocky fragments waiting for the action of water to sift and sort it out. Softer red sandstone cliffs stood in sharp contrast on the other shore, their flanks dressed in verdant green. Here we were to discover a mass of floral colors. Pale green moss campion clumps were splotched in delicate pink. White bells daintily dangled from angular dark green stems of heather. Mats of crenulated tiny green leaves served up bowls of white dryas blossoms that once pollinated grow mop heads of feathered seeds. Two species of willows comprised the forest, all of an inch or two in height. Beneath our feet the tundra thawed and water pooled hiding within the vegetation and clay sized particles of soil. One must read the stories told by members of the botanical world to avoid the developing patches of “boot-sucking-mud”.
Deep in the fjord Monacobreen dominates our senses. Our eyes drink in the shapes and forms of tilting and slumping seracs as we marvel at the deep dark blues hiding in caves and crevasses. Katabatic winds slip down the river of ice nipping at our fingers and reddening exposed noses. Sharp retorts like gunshots echo through the air and periodically the glacier roars tossing house sized blocks into the sea. Kittiwakes and terns enthusiastically add their voices to the ruckus as they rush to snatch small fish and plankton stirred to the surface by the wave. Glaciers frequently reveal their secret selves and shock the unwary observer. Captured in the sediments, far from the glacier face and deep in the fjord bottom, dense indigo nuggets hide. One escaped today to the amazement of all watchers.
Tonight we’re off to investigate the patterns painted by the midnight sun for its presence certainly is one of the faces yet waiting to be discovered.
