On a Frozen Sea, the two of us, April 14, 2013, near Point Hope, Alaska. This is about two miles from the village of Point Hope on a trail broken through huge chunks of ice, as seen, and marked here with a hook.Sea ice here is several feet thick – safe enough, but several of our local friends had stories about getting temporarily stranded when the ice they were on ice broke free from the main sheet. The gun is a precaution against Polar Bears.
I’ve enjoyed going back through photographs from our four years in Arctic Alaska. Although there are a number of additional pictures I’m reasonably happy with, the truth is that most of the images we made in those years constitute memories rather than art. As self-taught photographers, we still had a lot to learn about light, and how cameras interpret light, and composition, and optimal camera settings, lens choices and technique. Moreover, the images we made in those early days have a somewhat random feel about them as we hadn’t yet developed a vision for how we wanted to shoot and what we wanted to make images of… what stories we wanted to tell. We’d love to go back and revisit those scenes, and from time to time we discuss the possibility… but as Frost warned, way leads to way.
When we left Point Hope in the spring of 2014, we traveled to Mongolia where we lived for the following two years. We’re looking forward now to revisiting that collection. So, we hope to see you “in Mongolia!” JD
Looking out across the Chukchi Sea from the very tip of Tikigaq Peninsula. Near Point Hope, Alaska, August 12, 2012.
It was a two-and-a-half mile walk from our home in Point Hope to the terminal point of Tikigaq Peninsula where it hooked into the Chukchi Sea. Cape Lisburne lay to the north; other rocky sea cliffs lay to the southeast. Dense colonies of seabirds – murres, puffins, various ducks, gulls and other birds – nested in these natural sanctuaries, and if you stood at the tip of the peninsula you could watch the adult birds fly back and forth all day long in the summer, in one direct bills and bellies empty, on the return their bellies crammed full of food and what they couldn’t fit in their bellies hanging from their bills. Sand Lances and other fish to be presented to nesting mates and offspring. It was a difficult hike out, a good bit of it along a pebbled beach. At that time in our lives we hadn’t yet made a study of wildflowers, but they were abundant and brightened the path. And you never new when you might come across an Arctic Fox, a Snowy Owl or something else of interest.
Hiking for any distance along a sand beach becomes work, and If you’ve ever walked far along a pebbled beach you know that pebbles make for an even more arduous hike. The ocean breeze was almost always cold at that latitude above the Arctic Circle.
Wishing at times to travel light, we did not always take camera gear.
Which was, of course, a mistake.
One morning in early fall, we arrived at the point and – not knowing what we were in for – found ourselves looking out at more birds than we had ever in our lives seen. Quite probably, more than we will ever see again. Wave upon wave of puffins, murres, kittiwakes, shearwaters and I don’t know what else were streaming out from the cliffs and capes, chicks fledged, the season over. Most of these seabirds would not return to land again until the following spring when they would begin a new nesting season. We had seen films depicting African migrations of wildebeests and other ungulates, and in Alaska of great herds of caribou, and those films were called to mind. I once, in Kentucky, found myself amidst a late spring migration of Box Turtles; I pulled my car to the shoulder and assisted over a dozen of them safely across the country road I was traveling. If I had that to do over, I’d have stayed for as long as it took and helped more…
Surely that morning on the tip of Tikigaq, Barbra and I were witness to one of the world’s greatest migration events. We felt, suddenly, a deep connection with… something… overwhelming. Thoreau’s contact, or a final couplet from Wordsworth:
To me the meanest flower that blooms can give Thoughts that lie too deep for tears.
Polar Bear tracks disappear into the other worldly landscape of ice and snow on the frozen Chukchi Sea near Point Hope. The great bears continuously roam the ice in search of seals and the remains of whales that have been caught. By average weight, Polar Bears rank as the world’s largest bear. However, the Coastal Brown Bears of Kodiak Island and the Chignik River drainage on the Alaska Peninsula can weigh as much and stand taller. April 26, 2012
Engraved with a cross and reaching into the sky, the jawbone of a Bowhead Whale stands sentinel over a grave buried in spring snow at Point Hope, Alaska. April 12, 2012
Artist and boatwright Henry “Hanko” Koonook at work on an umiak in his shop. The keel, thwarts and each wooden rib is hand fashioned and precisely fitted. When the frame is finished, it will be covered with the stretched skin of an ugruk (bearded seal). This will be the boat’s hull. Traditional skin boats such as these are still used by Inupiat whaling crews in Point Hope and other villages of the far north. Long may it be so. Point Hope, Alaska, March 21, 2013.
This umiak – a traditional whaling boat, the hull made of Bearded Seal skin stretched tight and lashed over wooden ribs – was positioned on a rack, allowing me to make a photograph of the inside, upside down. Point Hope, Alaska, March 27, 2012.
Ghost village ruins of an Inupiat home constructed from ship timbers, sod and the bones of Bowhead Whales. Tikigaq, Alaska September 3, 2011
Saltwater inundation caused by an encroaching sea forced the people of Point Hope to relocate further inland down Tikigaq Peninsula a few decades ago, but I am told that as recently as the 1970’s a few people still inhabited homes such as the one above. In fact, on at least one such structure we saw, there was a junction box for electricity. Along with these igloos (a term which refers not just to structures made of ice, but to any dome-shaped Inupiat dwelling), there were other more familiar-looking homes in old Tikigaq, but those too have long been abandoned to decay back into the Arctic tundra.
Three miles out on the frozen Chukchi Sea, 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle, thick fog lifts to reveal slabs of ice positioned by Inupiat whalers to serve as a hunting blind along the edge of a slushy lead. Both Bowhead and Beluga Whales are taken as they migrate through these open lanes between sheets of ice.Near Point Hope. Alaska, May 3, 2012
Inupiat whaling on the frozen Chukchi Sea near Point Hope, Alaska. April 26, 2012
As Bowhead Whales go, this was a small one – perhaps 10 tons or so. We had hiked approximately three miles from the village of Point Hope across the frozen Chukchi Sea to the camp where we had heard a whale had been caught. Locals had traveled by snowmachine and honda (snowmobile and ATV). There is always the danger of encountering a Polar Bear in this environment, and so we were armed. After snapping this picture I handed the camera to Barbra and took a place on the rope.
The open water in this picture is called a lead – an opening between two sheets of ice. You can see, across the water, the jumble of ice along the edge. Sea ice is often not the smooth sheet of white one might imagine. It continuously buckles, pushes up along pressure ridges, drifts apart and then presses back together. In a way, it behaves like the Earth’s tectonic plates, buckling, heaving, colliding, lifting. And so in order to make a whaling camp, trails must first be made through these places where jagged ridges of ice, individual chunks the size of cars, some much larger, must be broken through and smoothed out.
The Bones of Tikigaq Whaling Festival Site, Point Hope, Alaska. The larger bones presented as arches are the jawbones of Bowhead Whales. Traditionally, the skull is returned to the sea so that the whale’s spirit is properly released. Point Hope, Alaska, August 12, 2012
CutterLight 