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Spitsbergen Report No. 9
May 1st 2002
Iron horses and polar bears
It's all about scooters and rifles. And who's where with whom out for a trip. And how many polar bears
you have seen already. Absolutely essential, too: is your snowmobile still working like it should?
Generally, this is not the case. But in moments of intense bliss it can happen.
No place seems too far away, when the sun is shining and the scooter purring.
But, from a more realistic point of view the following perceptions are dominating.
It's ear-deafeningly noisy. At least two parts of your body are so cold that amputation seems
a suitable solution. Stopping to take care of the freezing parts would require you to get out of your gloves.
This means to expose another limb to the biting coldness and later to be punished with ten minutes of pain.
Moreover, the scooter goggles are foggy so that you perceive your environment as amorphous grey porridge and the
scooter in front of you as blinking lump.
After a couple of kilometres the bad shock absorption begins to invade into your spine to create stinging pain.
After some time (quite soon) the infinite thirst needs to be paid attention to, into the tank.
Then you notice that your jerry can had opened quite some kilometres ago and poured its load mainly into your backpack.
Finally, you're constantly confused by the likely danger of a sudden, unpredictable and definite breakdown of your scooter
somewhere out in the wilderness.
In case you manage to get back home you sink down with empty pockets, hurting back, deaf ears, several frostbites
and stinking like a petrol station.
And the next day you will be on the road again.
Because it wasn't that bad, somehow. Scooters are not that noisy. And the weather is also a lot
better than last time. And to stay in Longyeardalen all the time is quite boring, too. In addition,
I'm not here to infinity and there, where the others will go to is an unknown place for me anyway. A white spot
on my personal land map to get rid of. And what about polar bears? I haven't seen a single one so far!
There are hundreds of thousands of reasons to do it again.
You can't just let it go after you once were one with your iron horse and your endeavour to explore
the wide and empty wilderness.
The wide land tempts in its unfathomable emptiness. Merciless and magical. There must be something out there.
Anything that gives you anything, answers maybe or even something bigger, with all this powerful hugeness.
Further and further you dare to travel, hoping to glimpse the invisible and loudless
arctic sirenes, at least for a fraction of a second.
Can it be spotted on the ice of the fjord? Somewhere in the distance? Or is it merely the sculpture like pose of a peerer and discoverer hunting
for enlightment that you look for?
Here it seems to be a bit more concrete. With teleobjective and monocular the incomprehensibility is supposed
to be caught.
And like the sleeve of the Desired you suddenly see good old master bear on the verge of the horizon.
Here it is a female bear with a cub that browse through Van-Mijen-Fjorden for seal meat.
It isn't quite unpleasant to be sure about the presence of rifles and scooters around you that moment.
But in fact you are more limited in your struggle. A little happy snowman (here Bollfried) helps already to make the world
fraught with sense. But do you really know what you deal with there?
During the night the dear little dwarf turned evil, took position to attack Pluto (Pluto is a cabin) and had called
all his evil compatriots. Even a giant had come to threaten us.
The Arctic is a cold place, but it isn't blind for good and evil.
One day later the keepers of justice raided on pluto. After investigating the whole place and our equipment thoroughly, they crushed Bollfried.
His bonbon mouth couldn't stop them tearing his fallen heart out of his breast.
At least us, the polar bears let go, after we had clearly pronounced our good soul
with a signal pistol shot.
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Maybe it is somewhere hid in the fjord ice what we are looking for. With saws and drills we tried
to get closer to the secrets of nature. And if the ice has just slackened due to strong tides and
begun to move in the wind, she begins to tell.
But in unscrutable sounds from distant ancient rumbling up to the tv-set like squeaking it seems to deprive you
perception more than making you gain it.
The investigation on land seems safer there. A glacier doesn't move that fast. At least not on humane
time scales. So you can innocently dig holes into the snow and enjoy yourself.
The Russians have found another solution. In Barentsburg they've just brought
the world they knew with them as a picture, to make the environment easier to bear.
This is truly the northernmost forest in the world.
The game of colours of the constant sunset in the end of march invites you to follow the sun.
But by now it would fool you decently. If you follow her after April 17th you'll describe a circle
with 15 km radius, at common pace.
But as you steadily run wilder and wilder, you are kept you away from doing too stupid things.
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