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.
Many of us who have never left this country now find ourselves living in a strange new land and culture, so I can very much relate to what you say. I also am advancing in age and now am cautious about where I venture on my own. This is a long way from hiking up Lassen peak on my own nearly 50 years ago. I’ve also found that photographing little miracles in my backyard can be as rewarding as photographing the landscapes that used to beckon to me. I have long welcomed the quiet hibernation days of deep winter and the beauty of long shadows creeping across the snow-covered landscape outside my window, but now a warming winter here in the NE also brings the threat of icy steps outside my door. So much to acclimate to in these times…
At 1:04am here, I just noticed the time stamp (2:40am) on the post I made a few hours ago (at 10:40pm EDT). It appears I either time traveled without realizing it — or your blog is on Icelandic time!