By honoring wilderness, we honor beauty. Beauty is not peripheral, but at the core of what sustains us. Awe and wonder ignite our imagination. We are inspired. We witness the magnificent and miraculous nature of creation. We are humbled. Wilderness becomes soul-settling: a home-coming: a reminder of what we have forgotten—that where there is harmony there is wholeness. The world is interconnected and interrelated. Wild nature is not only to be protected, but celebrated.
—Terry Tempest Williams, Erosion: Essays of Undoing
PROLOGUE
FRAGMENTS FROM THE ARCTIC:
A Journal of Meditations on Grief in the Norwegian Arctic
WRITTEN by Lisa KitchensIn December of 2020, nine months after the world’s initial lockdown due to the Covid19 pandemic, my partner and I were in a life-threatening car accident. I broke my neck, fractured my skull, and hurt my brain—bad. I don’t remember the accident as I lost consciousness. So as I began the winding path of healing, my existence became a voyage of assembling together pieces of my life—searching through the fragments to begin again.
Before the accident, I was devoting much of my work as an artist and educator to finding ways to connect with our planet to help drive meaningful change. I thought going to the Arctic would be an opportunity to continue this work. But after the accident, I found it to be so much more. This place—that is considered the “ground zero” of the Climate Crisis. This place—that is undergoing enormous change and devastation. This place is where I found healing. Even now, months after my time spent there, the Arctic continues to teach me about life and loss.
This digital journal is a collection of some of my writings and media while onboard Tallship Antigua as an artist-in-residence with The Arctic Circle Residency. As we sailed through wilderness areas in the Norwegian Arctic, fragments from my life drifted in and out of my consciousness as fragments from the planet’s life floated in and out of my understanding.
What follows are personal accounts of my internal and external world for the 18 days I was at sea. This is my attempt at assembling together these fragments to make a new story. One that embraces brokenness as part of existence, and one that knows healing is a communal act shared even with the melting ice at the top of the world.
Thank you for coming along for the journey.
Part 1TROMSØ
Part 1: Something Stirring
Day 1, April 4
I arrive in transition. I arrive from the air.
I wonder how it is that I landed somewhere like this. I wonder how I became so lucky?
Snow falls outside my window. There is a looming mountain just beyond the trees. The sky is a white-ish grey matching almost perfectly with the white snow and ice that covers the earth’s floor. The only other noticeable color is brown–the thin, small, short trees with their delicate branches making ever so slight movements with the wind.
This Land stirs something deep inside of me. A feeling I’m not sure how to name or if there is a name. An impenetrable grief mixed with awe. Awe for the drama of the landscape, awe in the ability of life to survive here, awe in the beauty so deeply, keenly felt in body and soul.
How is it that life has led me here?
Somehow, somewhere along my life’s path, I was called by this place.
An instinctual p u l l to the edges of the Earth. To the freezing cold places where snow and ice bury the long-lost secrets of the world alive. Led by my heart’s desire to know the world and myself, I feel the wisdom buried in these mountains and glaciers.
And somehow, miraculously, I feel a kinship.
The past several years of my life have been full of uncertainty and fear.
Not just the sickness felt around the world.
Also, the never-ending grief of my mother’s death, the car accident that is erased from my consciousness and alive in my body, the brain injuries that eat away at my every semblance of assurance.
And through it all, those I love most have been by my side.
Yet now, here, I find myself on this grand adventure without any of my loved ones.
I’m so scared and so ready.
So excited and so anxious.
So doubtful and so sure.
Life is full of paradoxes and unanswered questions.
I want answers.
I want certainty.
Yet life is teaching me that it has its own way.
I must trust it.
Embrace it.
Day 2, April 5
My heart hurts when I think of all the pain and loss that dwells just below the surface.
The permafrost is melting.
The glaciers are melting.
Snow and ice are melting.
Life here is melting.
With it, perhaps, there is wisdom to be revealed.
Wisdom to be listened to.
Wisdom to learn from.
There is great terror, horror, and sorrow in this part of the world. The Land speaks of it.
Yet it also speaks of its strength, its power, and its will to survive.
Full of paradox, this Place. A reflection of all life on Earth?
This Place holds within it a power I am not used to.
The ice contains and preserves millions of years of history— organisms, matter, life that has never been broken down fully.
This Land wants to hold on—
this Land doesn’t forget.
It knows what we are doing to it.
It will remember our transgressions.
Part 2FJORDS
Part 2: At Odds
Day 3, April 6
What mystery lives in these mountains?
What wisdom is frozen in the ice?
Here lies the history of the world.
Centuries of all-knowing.
A quiet, divine power resting peacefully in this frozen land—
And it is waking . . .
It is melting . . .
What will become undone?
What will be revealed?
Day 4, April 6
The splashing of the waves against the boat.
The low creaks and moans of the vessel.
It has our trust.
It has our faith.
Despite its inability to even remotely stand against the Sea.
This ship—humans—
we think we are invincible,
we think we can overtake,
power up,
bend You.
You, mighty Sea, the child of Mother Earth.
From up above the clouds on a mountain top,
I look down—
I get a glimpse of my utter insignificance compared to You.
This ship is a tiny speck of nothingness in the world.
It has begun.
The trek across the Arctic.
White mountains speckled with brown trees surround me.
A few houses here and there painted red.
The water a deep blue—dark, full of depth.
The clouds blend with the mountain tops.
I am trying to simply listen.
To give myself over to this Land.
What can I learn from it?
How can I be a vessel for its stories?
There is a heaviness, a weight.
Is it a projection?
Or is it real?
I feel the weight of the last several years. Losing my mother, the car accident, the brain injuries, my loved ones’ depression, my family’s past, the pandemic. Even though I am thousands of miles away in the wilderness, I can’t run from them. They follow me, live in me. And this place— this Land—and Its painful, striking beauty somehow absorbs all my pain. It holds the pain within its frozen rocks and icy floor and snow-covered Earth.
Day 5, April 8
The waves splashing against our ship.
The mountains in the distance.
Sounds of creaks and moans coming from the boat.
Gurgles coming from the Sea.
I wonder how it came to be that I should be here.
How did I find my way here to this spot,
seeing these views,
hearing these sounds?
I’m in a giant bathtub, being shaken about
every
which
way.
my brain going one direction,
my stomach the other.
This is a struggle I wasn’t prepared for.
My body has been through so much—
broken neck, broken skull—
I’m so sorry to put you through something else.
And my soul—
my soul is trying to remain present with the Land.
My soul is trying to listen.
Body and soul are at odds.
How can I care for both?
How can I be present for both?
I wonder—
Are the mountains friends?
Do they speak to one another?
What do they say?
Do they know their other inhabitants?
Do the mountains speak to the trees?
To the ocean?
To the rivers?
To me?
Day 6, April 9
The grey sadness colored the Land and Sea.
I jumped in the Arctic Ocean. Only for a few seconds.
I found abandoned fish eggs on an abandoned island.
I collected trash from which I will make something. How can our waste be found even in the most remote places?
Still there are signs that humans dominate. Still there are signs that humans destroy.
Other life is emerging.
As we get more remote, animals are showing themselves more often.
They are curious—
They haven’t learned what monsters humans can be.
Is trash replacing life?
Our trash will be our legacy.
Day 7, April 10
Clouds floating by
for a moment, a blue sky.
Beyond the mountain top,
There,
is Divine.
In an instant
—a blink—
the clouds return,
shrouding the skies.
But now I know
what is beyond.
It is—
Trees growing on rocky cliffs high above.
Snow falling down the steep slopes.
Wind piercing through the Arctic cold.
I am alive here amidst this Land.
And there is no doubt this Land is also alive.
I wonder what she thinks of me,
being here in her space?
I come with sorrows and struggles of my own.
Her presence somehow absorbs it all.
This Land is bigger than my human mind.
It is hard to grasp—this place.
Day 8, April 11
The ocean is breathing.
My breath is in sync.
I get lost in your motion,
your body,
your Being.
Is there another such force
that is so generous,
so powerful,
so embodied,
so eternal?
As I stare into your depths
I cannot find the words—
only feelings,
sensations,
divine.
Even in my frail state
the wildness of Her still astounds.
Perhaps in my nakedness,
I can only appreciate Her wonder.
Day 9, April 12
She woke me with a jolt.
Her power flung me from side to side.
She wanted me to hold my breath.
She wanted me
to dive
into
her essence.
THE
Part 3BARENTS
SEA
Part 3: All Her Might
Day 10, April 13
I move with the sea.
My internal organs aren’t prepared for the instability below my feet.
Yet my body adjusts.
How miraculous it is that this body should bend its limits.
Rocking,
rocking,
ever so slight.
Rocking,
rocking,
with all her might.
The sea sings
crussssh
crussssh
The wind rings
whirrrrr
whirrrrr
When we will make it,
I do not know.
But I will sit
in faith in the sea.
Who can say they own the wild places of the Earth?
Who can say they rule the sea?
This wild, mighty ocean has no laws
no rules
no owner.
She runs free–her currents navigating the globe.
Her winds blowing at will.
Her life knows no boundaries.
So why do we–those who need to dominate and claim power–why do we try to tame Her
knowing she can never be tame?
If only I could be like the gulls.
They fly far from land,
soaring over the sea–
up and down,
dashing in and out of the water.
Their wings a part of the wind.
The wind a part of them.
Here I sit,
in the safety of the wheelhouse
during a Squall.
Waves crashing,
snow falling,
wind picking up speed
and the gulls–
the gulls, they dance.
In and out of the waves
against and with the wind.
Wings spread—
their movements, a work of art.
She lulls me back to the darkness of my mind.
There I sit– waiting to be rescued.
My thoughts have turned against me.
My body aches from the rocking.
My heart longs for the comforts of home,
the embrace of my love.
Does she know her effect?
Does she mean to lure me into despair?
Or is she telling me of her own despair?
Is she reminding me of mine so I can begin to
understand hers?
Her waves hit the boat with vehemence.
I suppose we had it coming.
We react to her with violence,
our games of dominance,
conquering, power.
We become cruel.
We disconnect to our relation–
our kinship with one another.
We cause irrevocable harm to our home
as we rejoice in our trivial gains.
Of course she curses us,
resists us.
And yet,
she still calls to me.
She calls to Us
to understand,
to witness
Her.
Day 11, April 14
The dolphins are swimming alongside our ship.
Every so often, they jump up in a seemingly
orchestrated leap. There is so much joy in their
movement.
So much play.
The dolphins are teaching me about life.
Part 4SVALBARD
Part 4: Breaking Open
Day 12, April 15
We see Svalbard.
I woke up this morning and went to see her from the deck.
The air was frigid cold.
The sea a deep gray and the waves rumbling.
We made it.
My fingers turn red and my skin wrinkles.
My body knows I am cold.
My toes sting, a feeling they don’t like, and barely know.
We have crossed into the High Arctic.
It determines the rules now,
no matter how much one might try.
This Land does not need anyone.
The mere fact that I am here,
goes unnoticed—not welcomed or shunned.
My feelings of sorrow and grief and despair,
felt so keenly at sea,
still reside here.
But they are quieted by the scale of the Land’s stories.
I feel my body becoming heavier, achier.
It is perhaps fighting off an outside sickness—
a virus of the body and mind.
I feel flush, tingly in my back and limbs.
My stomach unsettled, uneasy.
My whole body and soul have been disturbed.
Unsure where they are,
what happened to them,
why things are different.
This place is making its mark
on me,
in me.
Ahead of me are jagged mountains.
Ferocity herself scratched them with her black claws.
The sky is cloudy, the sea grey and rough.
Nothing about this place is gentle.
My thoughts are turning cold.
They are turning harsh and bitter
like the world outside.
This place, this Land, the Arctic
is a harsh and bitter place—
at first glance.
Yet there is so much more here.
There is so much more.
And perhaps,
the rough exterior is due to necessity.
The necessity of survival.
My fragility is on display in the Arctic.
The tears keep coming.
Feelings of homesickness and brokenness.
Old memories of sorrow and grief and loss.
These emotions continue to bubble up,
drifting in and out of consciousness.
Is it the place that brings them out?
Does this terrain demand a payment of these feelings?
I’m not sure what is happening to me here.
There is an undoing.
It is challenging me in ways I couldn’t dream.
My mind drifts off
to worries and fears. Worries of sickness. Fears of abandon. My body is achy.
My throat sore.
Tiny, fragile things in this harsh, dramatic place.
This Land is illuminating to me my own frailty.
I am so easily taken by fear and anxiety.
Please, please, help me find a way to release it.
Please, Land, show me your ways—
of how to live and be with the hard realities.
Day 13, April 16
I woke up feeling tired. My body heavy, achy.
Outside the ship the water is almost frozen. A slushy ice puzzle all around.
The ice seems to reflect my internal life—slushy, slow-moving, grey.
There is so much paradox here. All the plants are small with shallow roots. Usually, this would be a sign of weakness. Yet here their shallow roots and smallness is what makes them strong. That’s how they survive.
Their fragility gives them strength.
Perhaps I have been unfair in my reflections of this place. I think my bouts of anxiety and feelings of sickness have clouded my observations. I have made unfair judgements based on my own bias.
The Captain told us this morning that he went to sleep in the wheelhouse. When he woke, he saw paw prints in the ice next to our ship.
A bear had passed through in the night. No one saw him, but his tracks remained.
There is mystery here.
A feeling, a wisdom that isn’t fully discernible.
My human mind can’t quite grasp it.
There you stand.DahlbreenThat is the name you were given.
To be in your presence I am stunned into silence—
for your very existence
is a mystery and a wonder
too astonishing to express.
I see you.
I am witness to your great power.
You are a life force.
A giant warrior.
A living creature that has survived centuries,
moved mountains,
changed the seas.
You have slowly been
dying.
You lose yourself
piece by piece
day in and day out
century after century
until one day
you will cease to exist.
Every crack and crevice,
every wrinkle has a story to tell.
Each time you break apart
there is loss.
How do you bear losing pieces of yourself
every day?
I saw you break.
I saw you lose yourself.
I heard the crack,
felt the rumble,
saw the waves swell in response.
I was there.
Who else has been here to witness your breaking?
Who else will be here to witness your breaking?
My heart is breaking.
It is breaking open.
As we sailed away from Dahlbreen today, I cried.
I thought of all the loss in the world.
The loss people endure.
The loss the planet endures.
The loss I have endured.
Are we connected through loss?
Losing my mother was like losing a piece of myself.
As if a piece of myself broke off,
drifted away to sea.
Dahlbreen knows of grief.
Someone once said we pay for wisdom with loss.
Being in the presence of this glacier,
it is clear she is wise beyond comprehension.
Day 14, April 17
Waking up feeling congested, confined. The sea seems calm although she has kept me up with her rocking.
I miss my love. I miss the sight of green leaves and grass.
Today is Easter Sunday. A day usually filled with celebration, brightness, flowers, and joy.
I do not feel joyful here.
This Land is a living embodiment of loss.
Beautiful, powerful, and inescapable.
I had a good long cry as I stared
at the sharp edges of the ice.
I realized, I am ok.
The snow falls quietly on the ice.
The clouds have descended to the earth.
The sea is gray yet calm.
A seal pokes his head above water.
He looks around,
taking in the strangers to his land with curiosity.
Ice floats in the distance—
earlier a few walruses used them as a resting place.
A glacier is barely seen through the haze.
But its presence is felt throughout.
The mountains hide behind the clouds,
overlooking the scene with quiet strength.
The ship ever so slightly rocks back and forth.
A little auk flies by flapping its wings frantically,
yet landing in the water with ease.
My toes tingle from the cold.
My throat itches from the virus.
My body, though tired, is here.
There is nothing to do.
Nothing to change.
Nothing to say.
This is all there is.
This is life.
I’m living it right now.
Day 15, April 18
Seven years ago today my mama died.
It is hard to believe.
On days like today,
I long to hold her hand.
Feel her flesh.
Hear her voice.
Be in her physical presence.
But life has a way of giving me what I need
not what I want.
Here I am at the top of the world—
sick,
often lonely,
mostly in awe,
and utterly humbled in the Land’s
presence.
Today, I will feel Mama’s flesh in the soft snow.
I will hear her voice through the wild wind and the roaring waves.
I will see her face in the crystal ice.
I will sense her presence in me as I walk through this life as her daughter.
Do I belong here?
Maybe.
Maybe I belong in the extreme.
Where every day is a struggle to live.
Where every day I am keenly aware of my place in the world.
Where every day I am witness to the dying.
I took a nap in an ice cave.
I watched the ice shimmer and shine with the sun.
The sun shines even when it’s hard to see.
It’s fitting somehow that I should feel a lightness and acceptance today of all days.
My mother walks with me. She is speaking to me through the ice, the sun, the water.
A small flock of ducks fly by.
The waves continue to sing.
The ice hangs like a diamond chandelier.
I am so thankful to be alive and in this place.
Day 16, April 19
I hear the auks in the mountains.
They are talking happily, fully.
A seal lies on the shallow beach—
she looks around, then vanishes.
The sun sits fixed in the sky,
painting the world below in a dusty light.
Snowflakes fall like feathers from the sky,
landing ever so delicately on the earth—
a gentleness I haven’t experienced.
A pair of walruses poke their heads above the water,
breathing heavily, noisily
before diving back to their underwater home.
Reindeer tracks are on the snowy beach,
wandering over the hills in rambling directions.
The polar fox leaves his prints on the ice sheets,
living dangerously at the sea’s edge.
All this life at the glacier’s cusp.
The winds they blow something fierce
The winds they blow something fierce
up here at the top of the world
up here at the top of the world
they blow with abandon.
they blow with abandon.
to walk outside in them is to feel the body
to walk outside in them is to feel the body
without any control.
without any control.
Day 17, April 20
I miss my nephew.
He turns one in less than a month.
The first of his generation in our family.
I look at this miraculous place in the world and think of him—
I hope he will always find wonder in the world.
The ability to imagine, to wonder, to be in awe of life is what makes us human.
Without the mountain peaks, how did we learn to imagine?
Without the depths of the sea, how did we learn to wonder?
Without the glaciers, how did we learn to be in awe?
Who would we be without this planet we call home?
Would we still hold our mother’s hand when she’s sick and marvel at existence?
Would we still imagine the lives our children will lead when they grow up?
We are connected to this Land—to all land on Earth.
Without it, who are we?
I wonder if my nephew ever thinks of me.
Day 18, April 21
Our last day on the ship. Later this afternoon we dock in Longyearbyen.
I’m looking out at the snowy mountains once again. There is a long sheet of ice in the water, and the loyal gulls are following our boat again. Very few clouds are out. I see a blue sky. Today blues are more prevalent than whites. Between the blue sky and the blue sea is the white snow and mountains. Impossibly, perfectly framed.
My head is hurting. I feel tired.
I’m looking out at a glacier made up of dead ice—ice that is no longer moving so its smoother on the surface. On the other side of the fjord are smooth, snowy hills. Not jagged like the ones I’m used to seeing but rolling.
Oh, what a world.
Where do I find faith?
Where do I find truth?
In the existence of Nature.
Bursting through the cracks.
A life force greater than I can comprehend
is pushing through.
I feel it in my complete being.
Like Dahlbreen breaking apart—
losing pieces of herself,
and engulfing all in her presence
in a wave of solemn grief.
Tears,
they keep coming.
A never-ending flow.
Can I give my tears to the glacier?
Can my tears save you?
Do my tears even make a difference?
What is melting inside of me?
What is falling away?
What is breaking apart?
I lose my tears as the glaciers lose their ice.
In your loss is our ending.
Am I afraid of death?
Most days, yes.
But then I look on at the bay—
I see whales in the distance
popping up for breath.
I see ducks flying in synchronicity
to a place unknown.
I watch the clouds lift off the mountains,
revealing indescribable peaks of beauty.
As I look on at the scene,
my heart feels a sense of belonging to the world.
How I belong to such a world—
I am not exactly sure.
But I do.
Somehow, beyond my understanding, I do.
It is in this moment I don’t fear death.
For it is just another part of this glorious existence.
Whatever evaluation we finally make of a stretch of land, however, no matter how profound or accurate, we will find it inadequate. The land retains an identity of its own, still deeper and more subtle than we can know. Our obligation towards it then becomes simple: to approach with an uncalculating mind, with an attitude of regard. To try to sense the range and variety of its expression—it’s weather and colors and animals. To intend from the beginning to preserve some of the mystery within it as a kind of wisdom to be experienced, not questioned. And to be alert for its openings, for that moment when something sacred reveals itself within the mundane, and you know the land knows you are there.
—Berry Lopez, Arctic Dreams
EPILOGUE
I’m writing this a little over three months since I left the Arctic.
I only spent a month there and of that month only 18 days at sea.
Seemingly just a blip of time in my life’s journey,
yet it was actually a doorway to a new way of living.
My experience in the Arctic was a journey through grief,
guided by the Land and Sea.
The glaciers, the water, the wildlife, the wind, all of them—
took me on a journey through fragments of brokenness.
They touched pieces of my soul I never knew existed,
and reminded me of that eternal, profound connection
we all share with each other.
I have come to believe that through loss there is wisdom.
At this moment in history,
when degradation, devastation, and loss are all too common,
my hope is that we may learn to listen—
to listen to the glaciers,
to the mountains,
to the sea, to the trees,
to all the elders of the planet.
For I believe They are where our healing resides.
Thank you for joining me on this journey.
AcknowledgementsThank you to the generous donors whose contributions and belief in my work enabled me to have this extraordinary experience.
Thank you to the Captain, crew, and residents of The Arctic Circle Residency. I continue to be blown away by your artistry, your dedication, your sense of place, and your hearts.
Thank you to my family whose love and support have nurtured me into the person I am today. I can’t imagine life with y’all.
Thank you to Paul for being my companion, my partner, my compass.
Thank you to my mother for instilling in her children the value of curiosity and for loving us fiercely even beyond the grave. I carry you with me always.
Thank you to the Sami people who have been stewarding and caring for the Land in Northern Norway for centuries.
And finally, thank you to the Land, the Sea, the Wildlife, the Air of the High Arctic. You broke my heart wide open.