July 26, 1997

Hello from Egg Island, Alaska. It is blowing about 15 mph right now, hovering just above freezing and might be doing so for a few days. Not too bad considering where we are. The ice pack is about 5 or 6 miles north of us right now and you can see it with a pair of binoculars. On clear sunny days there is a consistant mirage effect which makes the ice appear like white cliff bands on the horizon.

This island is really amazing. About a half mile long and 100 yards wide near camp, it is smaller than Stump but better situated for our action purposes. Not much more to it than gravel, sand and driftwood, but you'd be amazed how much that can offer by way of diversity. Little tidal pools and jetties with shore birds and bugs. There are quite a number of nesting eiders (arctic duck/geese) and glaucous gulls up and down the island.

The eiders are very quiet and camoflaged, the hens laying patiently for days with their long homely heads flat to the ground hiding their tiny accidents of a nests made up of barely more than a few sticks and feathers. The gulls on the other hand strike quite a contrast to the eiders. Their nests are built-up statements of difiance; piles of shit and sticks and last year's detritus as much as 8 inches off the ground - a proud throne for these noisey birds who watch their chicks, like tiny balls of fluff tumble down the beach. Walk by a nesting area and suffer the wrath of their shrill terradactyl heritage as they swoop and dive bomb, screaming Alfred Hitchcock obscenities all the way.

There are tiny sharp-tailed sandpipers which twitter about the jetties near camp, old squaw ducks which I've never seen before (kind of a cross between a pin tail and a buffle head in appearance), the occasional male eider, and a pair of elegant yellow-billed loons which grace the end of the island quite often in the late evening light. And all this just here on our doorstep.

Camp is quite a sight. With our sleek domed tents and conical communication center (complete with wind generator pole and radio antenna) the only contrast to the flat gravel bar island and expansive sea around us, we look like some sort of remote experimental bio-station. When you add to that our matching orange jumpsuits and green helmet-like bug nets we really look like a bizzare research party commissioned to the far moons of Saturn.

We have good views (if you can call them that) of much of the Pruhoe Bay industrial petroleum complex. First discovered in '60s and developed in the 70s it is clear the oil boys have been busy over the last twenty years keeping the go-go juice flowing. There are pump staions and drill pads and smoke stacks for "flairing off" natural gas everywhere you look across the flat tundra plains south of us. There are any number of bright orange flares and black smoking fires burning on the horizon at any given time, which makes for an amazing amount of air pollution; a consistant yellow haze and long brown streaks in the air, depending on the wind. All of which surprised me at first considering how remote and empty a place it seems.

We are not three miles from a giant 150 foot tall CIDS (Concrete Island Drilling System) perched in the shallow waters north of us. With it's massive deck, cranes and helicopter pad it hovers over our island like a massive aircraft carrier just off shore. They are planning on moving the CIDS to a location some 75 miles East of here off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a move we plan to protest. We've done two photography visits in zodiacs so far and imagine keeping plenty busy in the days to come. With the stark contrast of the natural beauty and industrial development all around us, there is no lack of motivation for the weeks ahead.

Wish us luck!

Woody.