July 25, 1997

Greetings from the most northern Greenpeace Office...

Liz Carr here, one of the seven members of the Arctic Base Team writing to you from Egg Island part of the Return Island chain lying just west of Deadhorse, Alaska in the Beaufort Sea on the edge of the Arctic Ocean.

The landscape that I look out on has been chisled by time, wind, ice and light. Here on this barrier island there is the absence of vegetation or tundra. There is silt, fine sand and a mixture of gravels. Today glaucous gulls fly over. Along the shore phalaropes with their twiglike legs spin in the shallow water creating a vortex which brings up larvae and water fleas for them to feed on. A flock of common oldsquaw nestlel in the bay where the Simpson Lagoon meets the Beaufort on the western part of the the Island. On the horizon to the south we can see tundra with its low growing plants and mosquitoes.

There is 24 hours of light now. The Arctic summer has a mosaic of moods. Somedays it takes form as a gray misty cacoon held down by a vast sky. On those days the sea and sky become one, there is no horizon line. Today the island is alive with light. The rains of the last 24 hours have receeded and we are free to walk around without full proctective clothing.

This expansive landscape invites reflection. As you have read in the previous diaries by Mel and Doug, we are here to protest oil exploration and expansion in this area because of the direct assault this type of continued exploration has on both climate change and more intimately on the Arctic landscape itself. The landscape also invites hope, it is still truly wild and we observe its nature as the days go by. It gives me hope that we can actually stop the encroachment of offshore oil exploration.

Best Wishes,

Liz