“The awe one feels in an encounter with a polar bear is, in part, simple admiration for the mechanisms of survival it routinely employs to go on living in an environment that would defeat us in a few days” - Barry Lopez
Recently back from tour-leading in the high Arctic of Spitsbergen (and Dylan was also there in June), our many encounters with Polar Bears inevitably made a huge impression upon us both – to say nothing of the land on which they ceaselessly wander. For me, three days spent negotiating the seemingly-endless pack ice was a reminder that “scarcely a substance on earth is so tractable, so unexpectedly complicated, so deceptively passive, as sea ice." This photo is of a male bear out hunting on the frozen sea near Kong Karl’s Land, where there’s the greatest density of denning Polar Bears on the planet, a simple image that reinforces the notion that we can scarcely comprehend the world of the Polar Bear: the patience; the loneliness; the attentiveness; and the power. Just as with the Blue Whales of Baja California, or the herds of Common Dolphins in Spain, we scratch the surface, gaze in wonder, peer through a keyhole to catch an incomplete glimpse of their lives.
“For the animals shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear - Henry Beston
Recently back from tour-leading in the high Arctic of Spitsbergen (and Dylan was also there in June), our many encounters with Polar Bears inevitably made a huge impression upon us both – to say nothing of the land on which they ceaselessly wander. For me, three days spent negotiating the seemingly-endless pack ice was a reminder that “scarcely a substance on earth is so tractable, so unexpectedly complicated, so deceptively passive, as sea ice." This photo is of a male bear out hunting on the frozen sea near Kong Karl’s Land, where there’s the greatest density of denning Polar Bears on the planet, a simple image that reinforces the notion that we can scarcely comprehend the world of the Polar Bear: the patience; the loneliness; the attentiveness; and the power. Just as with the Blue Whales of Baja California, or the herds of Common Dolphins in Spain, we scratch the surface, gaze in wonder, peer through a keyhole to catch an incomplete glimpse of their lives.
“For the animals shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear - Henry Beston
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