Ship's Log: Day 11

October 16th

We left Ny-Ålesund at first light. Everybody was moving pretty slowly from the night before (including some of the crew). I slept through breakfast for the first time (missing any of Anna's meals was a real hardship). I finally popped out of my bunk around 10am. Aaron said that we would be reaching our new destination of Kongsvegen/Kongsfjorden, by 11. He said I could have an hour of kayak time before lunch. I really need to get some detail shots so I jumped at the offer. I first filmed Audun putting on his drysuit and then lowering the kayak off the ship's side.



I then climbed out onto the bowsprits (the pole that sticks out very front of the ship) so I could get some overhead shots of Audun paddling. I had to get the Captain's OK for this since keeping one's balance on the bowsprits can be tough without all the ice that had formed on the ropes.




After filming from the bowsprits I joined Jan in the Zodiac and we followed Audun who was paddling off towards a glacier. The water was dark, menacing and full of ice. The closer we got to the glacier, the thicker the ice. At one point I asked Audun to paddle out a few meters and then turn and head back towards us. He started paddling away and just kept going. I thought he misunderstood me when he came to a halt. He then magically stepped out of the kayak onto a flat piece of floating ice!!! It looked like he was walking on water. He stood there for a minute, getting his balance, and then raised his arms above his head and smiled! He then gracefully got back into the kayak and paddled towards me as I had asked.



Our hour was up so we went back to the ship ... just in time for lunch (meat plate, cheese plate, mustard soup, salad, sardine pizza, and pasta with cheese and ham). After lunch, we all lined up to go ashore. I was in the third Zodiac trip. Sebastian was driving. We all looked heroic with our Arctic gear and cameras as we started motoring off towards the shore. We had gone about four feet when I looked out over the front of the Zodiac and called out, "Iceberg!" just as we hit it! This caused fits of laughter as we picked ourselves up off the Zodiac's floor. The Zodiac was punctured! As the air hissed out, Katja repeated, "there's a bloody hole in the Zodiac!". Crewmembers Jan and Sebastian clung to each other saying "we're scared" ... which sent us all into new fits of (somewhat hysteric) laughter. FYI ... a Zodiac is made of multiple inflated cells. Any number can be punctured without risking the buoyancy on the vessel. This is something most of us didn't realize until later.

Kongsvegen/Kongsfjoden was the most rugged landscape so far! Once we reached shore, we were able to walk right up to the narrow inlet in front of a massive glacier.



The spit of land that we were standing on was covered with all shapes of ice. Jan told us that the ice was due to the glacier calving and warned us to run (and leave our equipment behind) if we heard or saw the glacier calving. If a piece of the glacier falls ("calving") a large wave would completely cover the piece of land where we were all standing. With this warning in mind, I set up to document another of Katja's performances. Jan and Audun hiked to the top of a hill to watch over all of us.



Once we were all finished with our work for the day (this was such an amazing and dramatic landscape, many artists wanted to work on projects here) we started to walked back to the Zodiac pick-up point. As we were leaving I stopped, put down all my cameras and looked around ... telling myself, REMEMBER THIS!



Before dinner, I downloaded the footage I had shot onto the external hard drives that I had brought along (downloading was a time-consuming daily activity). Anna topped off this incredible day by serving rack of lamb. After dinner, Katja, Willie Somma (who was filming on the ship and hadn't made it ashore that day) and I asked Aaron if we could stay here for one more day. This will be our last glacier of the trip and we weren't ready to leave the dramatic ice behind. Aaron said it wasn't possible as rough weather was approaching and the Captain wanted to be sure we would arrive back at Longyearbyen on time (this alone was enough of a reason for all of us to be sad, but the thought of no more ice and returning to civilization reduced us all to tears). I'm living in a confusing state of mind ... I'm so attached to this landscape that I'm mourning its loss even while I'm still here and at the same time I'm really looking forward to seeing Bob and home.



That evening I got all set for a nice hot shower (soap and shampoo all in place), just to find out that the water was cold! I refused to take a cold shower, so I abandoned the idea for the moment, got dressed and joined the group watching a sci-fi film in the lower salon. After the film and a quick test of the water temperature, I happily enjoyed a hot shower. I've adopted a strategy of wearing all three thermal underwear shirts that I brought every day. I layer them, moving the one closest to my body to the outside layer each day in the hope that this would keep them "clean". This is why hot showers were so appreciated by me and the others who have to share such close quarters with me.


Ship's Log: Day 7

October 12th

[click images to enlarge]

I woke up with only minutes till the breakfast bell. Anna, our amazing cook, is very strict regarding attendance at meals and enforces the "don't touch it till the bell has rung" rule with deadly looks. We all live in fear of pissing off Anna and missing out on her amazing culinary skills

Right after breakfast we took the Zodiac back to the same location where we were the day before to try and film Katja's performance ... this time minus the ice on the lens. The piece of land that we had crossed yesterday to get to the cove with all the bitty bergs was thigh deep in snow. We had trampled a path across the day before so the going was much easier today. As we were retracing out steps we noticed some yellow snow. Thinking it was probably an artist who had just had to go the day before, I didn't think much about it until Jan came striding up and said that it was from a polar bear, marking his territory. A little farther along we found HUGE tracks in the snow, complete with claw marks. A polar bear had checked out all the locations where artists were working yesterday. It was eerie knowing that our movements had been seen and explored by a bear. I spent the whole time looking over my shoulder as I was filming.



We went back to the ship for lunch. After lunch I joined the group heading out for a walk on shore. We landed at another location where we had spotted bear tracks from the ship. We all hoped that the tracks were old. Jan and David Rothenberg (a musician and composer who was recording the sounds of the Arctic) both had snow shoes so they struck out first. The rest of us without snowshoes slogged through knee deep snow. Hiking up and down steep slopes in knee deep snow was pretty tough. Occasionally we would just drop to our knees and just crawl. One of the scientists -- Dr. Yi-Ching Chung -- was short enough that we worried that we would lose her in the deep snow.


The going was tough, we were all sweating in no time. We hiked to a cabin called "Texas Bar" on the northern coast of Liefdefjorden. The hut was build by the Norwegian hunter Hilmar Nøis in 1927. It was in amazing shape and is still used by hunters, explorers, and recently, a BBC film crew. We had decided to heed the name and had brought a bottle of whiskey with us.

After passing around the bottle we scrambled up a few hills to see the view. It's hard to keep describing views -- adjectives like beautiful, amazing, and awe inspiring are starting to feel inadequate. We celebrated the amazing view with frozen Twix candybars! We spotted what Jan and Audun thought might be a bear on an island nearby that seemed to be tracking us so they decided to head back to the ship.



The going was much easier on the way home as we had already cut a path through the snow. We stopped for Leigh and Yi-Ching, two scientists on board, to collect samples. Once back on the Noorderlicht I just had time to warm up my cameras before heading out to film Tomislav Brajnovic's (from Croatia) performance. We have all become each others assistants on this trip. Tomislav is representing man's ego by wearing a custom made bodygear with lights that light up his face. Katja and I joined Sebastian in the Zodiac and circled the ship for the next half an hour, with both of us filming Tomislav's performance onboard.



Dinner was just being served as we returned to the ship. The sky was clear and the new moon was out. Katja is also working on a night sky piece so we loaded up new batteries and storage cards in all our cameras and hit the deck. The sky was full of stars with faint northern lights. Unfortunately, the cameras had a hard time picking up any detail in the night sky. We kept filming with my new Canon SLR (which doubles as a high-def video camera, and showed the most promise in catching detail). After about a half an hour or longer, the Canon shut down. I changed the battery and tried to take a picture. I heard sounds coming out of that poor camera no one should ever hear from a camera. With a great deal of panic, I put the camera to bed, under my covers and vowed to let it sleep till the morning ... desperately hoping that it would be OK tomorrow!


Ship's Log: Day 6

October 11th


We woke in the morning to a Caspar David Friedrich painting ... so many shades of white, pink, and blue. Just after breakfast we heard the ship's bell ring. The bell is used to call us to meals (we have all become some part of a Pavlovian experiment) and to alert is to exciting events on deck ... like polar bear sightings and the aurora borealis at night ... which we've saw last night!


Anyone who wasn't on deck ran up to see a young, thin male polar bear walking along the shore. These are the most dangerous bears. They are young and unpredictable and hungry enough to go after anything that might be a meal. The captain decided it was too risky to go ashore, but OK'd a kayak trip!

To my surprise another Arctic Circle Project participant asked to use the kayak to get an "on the water" perspective for one of his photographs. I was pretty hesitant to agree (actually I was downright disagreeable as he'd never kayaked in his life, which is dangerous enough in calm, warm water, but can be deadly in freezing water. I also view the kayaks as my art material which took months of planning to find and rent in Longyearbyen, and even more difficulty to get them on board). After a discussion with Aaron (read fight here ... that I lost) the other artist and Audun suited up in MY drysuits and set off. I waited impatiently for them to come back so I could go out in the kayaks and get some footage. I also felt bad for Audun who had to do double paddle duty ... although he didn't seem to mind. When Audun signed on as crew of the Noordrlicht he didn't know he was also signing on as a daily kayak paddler and star of my project.


When the other artist and Audun returned a thick fog had set in which created an amazing, otherworldly landscape for filming. I jumped in the Zodiac and filmed Audun first in the single, and then we pulled out the double. I sat behind and we struck out for the location where the polar bear was spotted (seems we both have a bit of the thrill seeker spirit). We couldn't find the bear so instead we headed towards the fjord's opening to the sea. Looking through the viewfinder, the image of Audun paddling hard looked amazing. I looked up from the view finder for a moment and found myself far from the ship, out in the bay with the waves and wind getting bigger by the minute. We had gone from water that looked like glass to white-capped waves washing over the kayak. To stop myself from freaking out I glued my eyes back to the viewfinder. It was a struggle to get back to the ship since we had the rudder up for better maneuverability. Eventually we had the Zodiac come alongside and Jan put the rudder in the water. I had to pop my kayak skirt to get to the rudder control cables ... something I was reluctant to do in rough water since I wasn't keen on taking in a lot of freezing water. Once we had the rudder down, Audun paddled hard and got us back to the ship safely.

Over lunch the ship sailed to Harnbaek polten/ Liefdefjorden. Anytime we sail or motor during a meal it's an event. Out come the sticky mats that help hold the plates and glasses on the table. Depending on how the boat is listing or rolling certain seats are tougher than others. On the downhill side, you have to hold on for all your worth and hope that the chair doesn't go out from under you. On the long benches, you prop one leg out to help hold you in place, which never quite works so you end up sliding up and down the bench. Meals usually have at least one or two crashes where glasses go flying. We also have learned that you can use bread to prop up one side of a plate to stop soup from spilling.


That afternoon Katja and I went ashore with a group of artists so she could perform another Fluxus instruction. We walked across a thin piece of land and found a beautiful cove full of ice and bitty bergs (bigger bitties than we've seen so far). It was an amazing location! A light snow was falling, which soon turned into freezing sleet which completely covered my lens. I tried to clean off the lens with a cleaning cloth, but it was more like using a scraper. After essentially chiseling the ice off the lens a couple of times we decided to call it a day and head back for the ship.