1 August 1997

Jack, New Zealander

VISIBILITY

It seems to me every now and then, the natural environment will offer an opportunity in the way of a brief and sometimes profound momentary glimpse. Something that can inspire or serve as a reminder.

Your eyes always seem diverted downward in this place, not at your feet but habitually scanning. Maybe your eyes are a little like the mind that in moments of isolation are always in need of relief. Thick fog allows a minimal view, all of thirty feet around me. It distorts my perception, making the undulated beachline take on a lunar look bathed in a subtle hue of bright grey.

I make my way down the south side of Egg Island towards the west. The base camp, only a stones throw behind, is already swallowed whole as it sleeps, Tom's snoring the only indication of life.

I cross an unseen line, an invisible boundary, for I am the ignorant intruder. Gulls seem to have a rather limited but somewhat comprehensible vocabulary accompanied by a strong body language. I make my way out to a small spit to sit and be quiet, but they won't let me. I sympathize with them and imagine what I must appear to them from their dive bombing vantage. I am forced to the very tip of the west end of this mile long strip of gravel relief and sit at the waters edge, barely tolerated by the resident wildlife.

I listen to the deafening silence, a piercing ringing not from outside my head, that accompanies a pulsing micro surf crashing at my feet. I feel an inherent need to impose myself on this place. The sound of velcro rips through the silence as I pull out my panflute from my jacket pouch. I lift the flute to my lips and play a long low note out into the big white in front of me. The earthly sound is absorbed. And all that returns is a gull's far off alarm call.

I fill my lungs with the chilled morning air and purse my lips for another blast. My eyes involuntarily fix on a very slight movement in front of me, and I play on with a low reverberating note that stops as two seals appear. They crane their heads high out of the water to get a good look at the source of what to them must be a very unusual sound. The seals sink back with just their large dark eyes exposed against the mirror surface and submerge without leaving so much as a ripple.

Gulls scream and all is disturbed, indicating for me to move on. Walking back I contemplate this subtle morning and remember a quote, "the lips cannot give the voice it's wings alone it must seek the either." I arrive at the conclusion that maybe we surround ourselves in the illusion of security that is addictively gained by the way of convenient imposition. I have scanned the horizon and have seen hypodermic oil infrastructure and think of the inevitable track marks that it will leave behind and it saddens me.

This place of wilderness and ice may give an ignorant a feeling of uselessness and isolation, but as I walk I see raw, vibrant displays of vitality in process. And I realize that I am part of that machine.

Jack
Greenpeace Arctic Base Camp