Frozen frogs in Spitzbergen: Friday 2007/06/29

Ny Ålesund 21:38
T°C: 6°C/42.8 F
T°C plus wind effect: -3°C/ 26.6 F
Relative humidity : 80%

The house is empty : Maarten is supplying our geese's counters at the tip of the fjord, Bas is preparing his lab, Ricardo must be somewhere spying at tourists and Stefan somewhere enjoying his last days at London2. No goose at the end of the path this evening, the 7pm-freezing rain compeled them to sit on the tundra. The computer is free.

So we are in Ny-Ålesund for almost two weeks. Life follows geese's rythm on the tundra and sun's run above the heads. Strange feeling to arrive here so fast, in the arctic polar circle, on a ground where you needed several days in a boat to step on, in a village where numerous polar expeditions started from and sometimes didn't come back to.

The first days in Longyearbyen had been strange: arrived too fast on this island, I felt like walking on clouds, incapable of assimilating the shift of civilisation. From the era of schedules and punctuality to the one of sun and waiting. Bas asked me why I wanted to come here (or there): to arrive somewhere where one doesn't control everything and has to be humble in front of nature.
This Sunday, as a birthday present, my mind still foggy from mid-summer party, I've had a good right bustle: the polar bear had been seen at Storholmen, and island in the fjord. The polar bear, the biggest fear of Northern Norvegians with the fear that the sun doesn't appear again at spring. Guns grew on shoulders, one spoke about one, then two, on said that it was at two hours from the village, that the current would make it go faster, that there were arriving from North and South, soon East and West. The rumor is always faster than its object... The bear went away to more quiet shores; we don't leave our .308 bolt gun now though.

Gun and telescope, both buddies of the field working ornithologist

It's a strange feeling to feel weaker and smaller than an animal, and it's a pity that our relation with it is only defensive: however in 98% on the encounters, the bear only wants to know which kind of animal is on its way, and turns back as soon as it knows. The gun is a placebo, unfortunately sometimes necessary.

Svalbard poppy (Papaver dahlianum)

1 moist, 1 hole, 1 egg (Branta leucopsis)

Since the arrival of sun, life starts again, snow melts, flowers pop up, eggs hatch et biologists ring, observe, note and bustle about, hurried by births like squirrels by the return of cold. For the moment, we're just checking the nests, noting the rings of the parents and the number of their goslings, but those birds don't wait before jumping to the sea: from the first evening, the chicks stumble around their parents.

Meanwhile, glaciers grumble and bewail the arrival of spring. Their tears float in Kongsfjord waters, among the steelboats that scatter towards the islands and the ocean. I sit at the bow and watch for icebergs; one movement toward a direction and the boat follows my hand.