Day 12, April 15
We see Svalbard.
I woke up this morning and went to see her from the deck.
The air was frigid cold.
The sea a deep gray and the waves rumbling.
We made it.
My fingers turn red and my skin wrinkles.
My body knows I am cold.
My toes sting, a feeling they don’t like, and barely know.
We have crossed into the High Arctic.
It determines the rules now,
no matter how much one might try.
This Land does not need anyone.
The mere fact that I am here,
goes unnoticed—not welcomed or shunned.
My feelings of sorrow and grief and despair,
felt so keenly at sea,
still reside here.
But they are quieted by the scale of the Land’s stories.
I feel my body becoming heavier, achier.
It is perhaps fighting off an outside sickness—
a virus of the body and mind.
I feel flush, tingly in my back and limbs.
My stomach unsettled, uneasy.
My whole body and soul have been disturbed.
Unsure where they are,
what happened to them,
why things are different.
This place is making its mark
on me,
in me.
Ahead of me are jagged mountains.
Ferocity herself scratched them with her black claws.
The sky is cloudy, the sea grey and rough.
Nothing about this place is gentle.
My thoughts are turning cold.
They are turning harsh and bitter
like the world outside.
This place, this Land, the Arctic
is a harsh and bitter place—
at first glance.
Yet there is so much more here.
There is so much more.
And perhaps,
the rough exterior is due to necessity.
The necessity of survival.
My fragility is on display in the Arctic.
The tears keep coming.
Feelings of homesickness and brokenness.
Old memories of sorrow and grief and loss.
These emotions continue to bubble up,
drifting in and out of consciousness.
Is it the place that brings them out?
Does this terrain demand a payment of these feelings?
I’m not sure what is happening to me here.
There is an undoing.
It is challenging me in ways I couldn’t dream.
My mind drifts off
to worries and fears.
Worries of sickness.
Fears of abandon.
My body is achy. My throat sore.
Tiny, fragile things in this harsh, dramatic place.
This Land is illuminating to me my own frailty.
I am so easily taken by fear and anxiety.
Please, please, help me find a way to release it.
Please, Land, show me your ways—
of how to live and be with the hard realities.
Day 13, April 16
I woke up feeling tired. My body heavy, achy.
Outside the ship the water is almost frozen. A slushy ice puzzle all around.
The ice seems to reflect my internal life—slushy, slow-moving, grey.
There is so much paradox here. All the plants are small with shallow roots. Usually, this would be a sign of weakness. Yet here their shallow roots and smallness is what makes them strong. That’s how they survive.
Their fragility gives them strength.
Perhaps I have been unfair in my reflections of this place. I think my bouts of anxiety and feelings of sickness have clouded my observations. I have made unfair judgements based on my own bias.
The Captain told us this morning that he went to sleep in the wheelhouse. When he woke, he saw paw prints in the ice next to our ship.
A bear had passed through in the night. No one saw him, but his tracks remained.
There is mystery here.
A feeling, a wisdom that isn’t fully discernible.
My human mind can’t quite grasp it.
Dahlbreen.
That is the name you were given.
To be in your presence I am stunned into silence—
for your very existence
is a mystery and a wonder
too astonishing to express.
I see you.
I am witness to your great power.
You are a life force.
A giant warrior.
A living creature that has survived centuries,
moved mountains,
changed the seas.
You have slowly been
dying.
You lose yourself
piece by piece
day in and day out
century after century
until one day
you will cease to exist.
There you stand.
Every crack and crevice,
every wrinkle has a story to tell.
Each time you break apart
there is loss.
How do you bear losing pieces of yourself
every day?
I saw you break.
I saw you lose yourself.
I heard the crack,
felt the rumble,
saw the waves swell in response.
I was there.
Who else has been here to witness your breaking?
Who else will be here to witness your breaking?
My heart is breaking.
It is breaking open.
As we sailed away from Dahlbreen today, I cried.
I thought of all the loss in the world.
The loss people endure.
The loss the planet endures.
The loss I have endured.
Are we connected through loss?
Losing my mother was like losing a piece of myself.
As if a piece of myself broke off,
drifted away to sea.
Dahlbreen knows of grief.
Someone once said we pay for wisdom with loss.
Being in the presence of this glacier,
it is clear she is wise beyond comprehension.
Waking up feeling congested, confined. The sea seems calm although she has kept me up with her rocking.
I miss my love. I miss the sight of green leaves and grass.
Today is Easter Sunday. A day usually filled with celebration, brightness, flowers, and joy.
I do not feel joyful here.
This Land is a living embodiment of loss.
Beautiful, powerful, and inescapable.
Day 14, April 17
I had a good long cry
as I stared at the sharp edges of the ice.
I realized, I am ok.
The snow falls quietly on the ice.
The clouds have descended to the earth.
The sea is gray yet calm.
A seal pokes his head above water.
He looks around,
taking in the strangers to his land with curiosity.
Ice floats in the distance—
earlier a few walruses used them as a resting place.
A glacier is barely seen through the haze.
But its presence is felt throughout.
The mountains hide behind the clouds,
overlooking the scene with quiet strength.
The ship ever so slightly rocks back and forth.
A little auk flies by flapping its wings frantically,
yet landing in the water with ease.
My toes tingle from the cold.
My throat itches from the virus.
My body, though tired, is here.
There is nothing to do.
Nothing to change.
Nothing to say.
This is all there is.
This is life.
I’m living it right now.
Day 15, April 18
Seven years ago today my mama died.
It is hard to believe.
On days like today,
I long to hold her hand.
Feel her flesh.
Hear her voice.
Be in her physical presence.
But life has a way of giving me what I need
not what I want.
Here I am at the top of the world—
sick,
often lonely,
mostly in awe,
and utterly humbled in the Land’s
presence.
Today, I will feel Mama’s flesh in the soft snow.
I will hear her voice through the wild wind and the roaring waves.
I will see her face in the crystal ice.
I will sense her presence in me as I walk through this life as her daughter.
Do I belong here?
Maybe.
Maybe I belong in the extreme.
Where every day is a struggle to live.
Where every day I am keenly aware of my place in the world.
Where every day I am witness to the dying.
I took a nap in an ice cave.
I watched the ice shimmer and shine with the sun.
The sun shines even when it’s hard to see.
It’s fitting somehow that I should feel a lightness and acceptance today of all days.
My mother walks with me. She is speaking to me through the ice, the sun, the water.
A small flock of ducks fly by.
The waves continue to sing.
The ice hangs like a diamond chandelier.
I am so thankful to be alive and in this place.
Day 16, April 19
I hear the auks in the mountains.
They are talking happily, fully.
A seal lies on the shallow beach—
she looks around, then vanishes.
The sun sits fixed in the sky,
painting the world below in a dusty light.
Snowflakes fall like feathers from the sky,
landing ever so delicately on the earth—
a gentleness I haven’t experienced.
A pair of walruses poke their heads above the water,
breathing heavily, noisily
before diving back to their underwater home.
Reindeer tracks are on the snowy beach,
wandering over the hills in rambling directions.
The polar fox leaves his prints on the ice sheets,
living dangerously at the sea’s edge.
All this life at the glacier’s cusp.
The winds they blow something fierce
up here at the top of the world.
They blow with abandon.
To walk outside in them is to feel the body
without any
control.
Day 17, April 20
I miss my nephew.
He turns one in less than a month.
The first of his generation in our family.
I look at this miraculous place in the world and think of him—
I hope he will always find wonder in the world.
The ability to imagine, to wonder, to be in awe of life is what makes us human.
Without the mountain peaks, how did we learn to imagine?
Without the depths of the sea, how did we learn to wonder?
Without the glaciers, how did we learn to be in awe?
Who would we be without this planet we call home?
Would we still hold our mother’s hand when she’s sick and marvel at existence?
Would we still imagine the lives our children will lead when they grow up?
We are connected to this Land—to all land on Earth.
Without it, who are we?
I wonder if my nephew ever thinks of me.
Day 18, April 21
Our last day on the ship. Later this afternoon we dock in Longyearbyen.
I’m looking out at the snowy mountains once again. There is a long sheet of ice in the water, and the loyal gulls are following our boat again. Very few clouds are out. I see a blue sky. Today blues are more prevalent than whites. Between the blue sky and the blue sea is the white snow and mountains. Impossibly, perfectly framed.
My head is hurting. I feel tired.
I’m looking out at a glacier made up of dead ice—ice that is no longer moving so its smoother on the surface. On the other side of the fjord are smooth, snowy hills. Not jagged like the ones I’m used to seeing but rolling.
Oh, what a world.
Where do I find faith?
Where do I find truth?
In the existence of Nature.
Bursting through the cracks.
A life force greater than I can comprehend
is pushing through.
I feel it in my complete being.
Like Dahlbreen breaking apart—
losing pieces of herself,
and engulfing all in her presence
in a wave of solemn grief.
Tears,
they keep coming.
A never-ending flow.
Can I give my tears to the glacier?
Can my tears save you?
Do my tears even make a difference?
What is melting inside of me?
What is falling away?
What is breaking apart?
I lose my tears as the glaciers lose their ice.
In your loss is our ending.
Am I afraid of death?
Most days, yes.
But then I look on at the bay—
I see whales in the distance
popping up for breath.
I see ducks flying in synchronicity
to a place unknown.
I watch the clouds lift off the mountains,
revealing indescribable peaks of beauty.
As I look on at the scene,
my heart feels a sense of belonging to the world.
How I belong to such a world—
I am not exactly sure.
But I do.
Somehow, beyond my understanding, I do.
It is in this moment I don’t fear death.
For it is just another part of this glorious existence.