We are now in August. This is the sixth month since I returned to US. What is it like? Strange. Both my country of origin and myself have changed in the years I’ve been on Svalbard. I don’t feel like I’m part of this culture, and there are many parts of what this culture has become that I want no part of. So it’s not always comfortable, like putting on old shoes and discovering they’re too tight.
Other things remain familiar. I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for almost forty years, first in Portland, then in Seattle. I know these shores, these forests, these deserts. There’s a familiarity even in places new to me. Cedars look and smell like cedars. Vine maples are vine maples. Slugs and elk and the ubiquitous Sasquatch signs and t-shirts and sculptures are the same. I know the major peaks of the Cascades from southern Oregon to the Canadian border and can recite them like a prayer.
But it’s hotter and dryer now. Even in the short time I’ve been back we’re having high summer temperatures, and for longer, than what I remember. A/C is now a way of life. Climate change is everywhere, and here it’s in fire season. When I left for Svalbard fire season wasn’t a thing yet. It’s too late to stop it, (though we could mitigate it, but we won’t), so we adjust and don’t think about it, or try not to.
As an artist I’m still rooted in the Arctic. I have work to make I didn’t have the time to do caught up in the Spitsbergen Artists Center as I was. I have ideas and plans for paintings that will keep me busy for years. I have books to put together, and images to sort, and texts to write and edit. I have a major revamp of my website to do. A big chunk of my creative life remains in the far north.
But I’m now photographing this place, and trying to hear what this landscape has to say. I walk the 5 Acre Woods where my studio is, and photograph what I see. I explore the local wild spots and trails. When I can, I go further off. I’m old enough I know I’m not immortal, so my willingness to hike out alone is less. That makes me slower to explore, but I am going out, and I do find things that delight me. The glorious tide pool life. The number of abandoned towns and mines to explore. And in a few months the snow will come back to the north Cascades. I hope to get up there before the roads close. So I work to accept what is, and to adjust.
It is strange to realize I lived more years on Svalbard than I did in Seattle. And yes, I miss it. I made the right choice in moving back. I have no regrets. But I am still grieving its loss, and expect I will for a long time if not for the remainder of my life. But as they say, be here now, or more seventies-ish, if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with. And I am trying.
Oh, my, I can relate to so much of what you say. Yes, life here has changed so much — and so distressingly — over the last few years. The oblivion about dealing with climate change when drastic measures really need to be taken NOW is beyond belief. I love your cute little studio. Bravo to you for making the most of life in the present. And may revisiting the arctic via your work be a blessing.
Thank you for the kind words. it’s a strange place to be in.
I don’t know what to say other than welcome back, even if’n it’s not as it was. At least you have good people here (as well as abroad and all around), which’ll make whatever’s Next easier to bear. Meanwhile, your art continues to inspire and amaze me, so thanks for that.