June 18, 2015

            Awoke to the sound of ice scraping against the hull mere meters from my cabin porthole.

            Outside the ship is surrounded by ice.  Mountains border us on both sides and straight in front of us lies a gigantic glacier, ending at the sea and drifting off towards the horizon.
            It is gorgeous out: 4 degrees Celsius, no wind, and only four people besides myself taking in the view.

 

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            As I was eating breakfast we stopped because we spotted seals.  They are a ways off... perhaps 200 yards or more... little more than black dots, even with binoculars, like little specks of pepper dotting the ice fields around us.

 

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            Mountains reflecting down on a flat ocean, grays and whites and strange vibrant browns.  Everything is in doubles, the reflections punctuated with slushy ice that we cut through soundlessly.

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            Bigger ice now, blue upon blue, sounds like a shotgun in the distance as ice breaks apart.  We see an adult bearded seal lying on the ice, then a baby ringed seal, perhaps a few weeks old, maybe a meter long, lying on a chunk of ice hardly larger than his or her body.

            The sight is spiritual; it makes me physically warm.  I find myself smiling, making noises, cooing at the little seals cuteness.

 

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           We stop at a Kittiwake colony.  A rock face a thousand feet tall.  Every line on the face of the cliff, every crack where feet can find purchase, is filled w/ Kittiwakes.  It is a miracle that those in flight can find a free place to land.  It sounds like the opposite of thunder... constant high pitch undulations that fill everything.

            The land below the cliffs is a marine driven ecosystem -- birds eat fish from the sea, then they poop on the land, fertilizing the plants.  Algae and seaweed are swept into shore to decompose.
            There is no soil -- the ground is like a sponge.  The grass grows like a carpet that can be pealed away, examined, then put back, a web of interconnected roots over barren rocks, all fueled by bird poop and the corpses of Kittwakes.
            We see an arctic fox in the distance.  S/he blends in perfectly with the talus fields below the cliff.