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

In 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.