Oslo,
Norway
June
13
I’ve
been up for 27 hours. Two planes, two trains, two buses and a whole lot of
first-day-in-a-new-city flailing. Special train or regular? Why doesn’t my credit
card work in the ticket machine? Am I on the right bus? No! Yes! But no matter,
I got to see the Viking ships. Millenium-old oak carved with serpent heads,
spirals, knots. So much grace in the craftsmanship. Metal puzzles, remnants of
woven tapestries, bridles, jewelry. And to think that this most beautiful ship,
filled with riches, was the burial place for a Viking noblewoman (perhaps a
shield maiden). The actual burial chamber was there in the museum too, a
peak-topped tiny cabin of charred wood, reconstructed post pyre. I wonder if
the oils from her earthly husk infused those old beams and if she haunts this
place. Wood, copper, iron, stone. Woven sails, ships full of men each sitting
on his own sea chest as a bench. Moving silently through fjords to the open
seas. Rambling now just to savor this day. Turning toward the sea, welcome the
allies and ghosts of this journey. Rest in it, the woven shawl, the braided
rope, the metal and stone baubles.
Longyearbyen,
Svalbard
June
15
I
am here. Shale and snow patch. Barnacle geese, Svalbard reindeer, snow bunting,
glaucous gull. One small moss campion cushion glimpsed while walking back to
New Town. Passed a tipi full of people blasting the Jackson 5. So many children
here, playing outside in snowsuits. There is an Arctic Nature Guide school here…be
still my heart. Random coal buckets and mining infrastructure scattered across
town, and an old boarded-up mine high on the mountainside, hanging over this
place like a ghost. The landscape something out of myth – citadels,
battlements, precipitous heights. Rivers of shale flowing down and turning to
moss and then the sea. All of it beneath a thick overcast.
Longyearbyen,
Svalbard
June
16
Last
night I hiked to the abandoned mine. Up scree that changed from brown to red to
a soft black sand that must be coal. Above the mine little auks gave me a true
welcome to this place: their ominous, insane laughter mocked the human presence
here. My eye constantly travels up to these stone faces above me. I try to read
the expressions in pinnacle and crag. Many-faceted meaning many faced. You can
search those stone faces all you want, all you can handle for as long as you
can stand the mystery of unanswered questions. Inside the mine, treacherous
going. Would hate to break a leg before the trip really begins. I inched inside
for just long enough to sense jagged icicles and missing floorboards. Broken
equipment, graffiti in many languages. I’ll stay out in the perpetual daylight
instead. It’s 1 am. Time to head down to the valley and see what else is
stirring.
Isfjord,
underway
June
17
Yesterday
we boarded the good ship Antigua, which is a square-rigged barkentine and part
of the Dutch Tall Ship Fleet. I was met by three spectacular female wilderness
guides: Theres, Sara and Åshild. Purple sandpipers, northern fulmars, a puffin
and arctic terns. Standing at the rail, my heart full to bursting. My cohort is
amazing. Already conversations about ethereal Norwegian doppelganger spirits
who slip between different dimensions of reality, chapter 42 of Moby Dick, ravens. Everywhere I step I
trip over inspiration. The sea at first bordered on emerald and then shifted to
a strange, white-cast blue. As if the color intends to be friendly and yet
within the white opacity you sense only death.
Break
open preconception. Toss habitual modes overboard. How can I take a cue from
these improvisers, my companions? Some of them shipped supplies that did not
arrive in time for our departure. Some counted on a trip to the Longyearbyen
hardware store but it was closed. Mia rolling her tarpaper down the mountain.
Amanda collecting vintage ropes and spinning paper to rope like some patron
saint of seafarers. I hold my story, The
Gyre, in my cupped palms. It is time to lose my knowledge and move the book
forward into new territory. Listen: where is it?
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