It's Radical!
And by that I mean: surreal, beautiful, bizarre, grotesque, poetic, and a bit sketchy.
When we embark on our daily mission to a sea ice floe everyone going is giddy and eager because of the sensational response one gets when standing on a 1 meter thick slither of ice over a 2 kilometer deep ocean of freezing cold water what will surely kill any human within a few minutes of immersion. The beauty along with the danger makes the experience more appreciable.
Every time we find a suitable sized sheet of ice the rifle-loaded safety/polar bear guard is the first off the boat to stab through the thick snow down to the solid ice to check for any large cracks that may be hiding there; he usually finds one and we just pick which side of the crack we want to work on. By the way - these cracks are by no means stable structures, sea ice floes can be highly dynamic and break apart at any minute. Anyhow, as we all start to work, the guard stands with his rifle at his side and binoculars to his eye scanning the area for polar bears that may be interested in what we are doing in their neighborhood.
It's a good thing the guard is there because it is easy to get seduced by the landscape into thinking that we are experiencing nirvana in a heavenly place where nothing could possibly go wrong. That being said, in the midst of all of the work we have to get done, nirvana is the best way I can describe the feeling I get when doing that work. Looking around the floe, the view is an endless flux of amazement and bliss; frozen sheets of sea water drifting about like scattered pieces of an Arctic puzzle, the land deserted horizon spanning all angles of sight, the sun that has not set since we arrived in Svalbard and yet seems to still provide alluring light shows through the clouds, the massive ice-strengthened ship floating 100 meters from the floe, seen from a point of view of marveling scale, and the team all working diligently in the name of science and humankind to understand the world on which we live.
Is there a better office on this planet?
Not for me…
-CL
P.S. I figured out the drone problem, see video.
Comments