From Poppies to Paddington

I decided that I was long overdue for a blog post (I’ve even stopped coming up with excuses) so decided to focus on autumnal tales... starting with the ceramic poppies that filled the moat the Tower of London, an art installation entitled “The Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red Where Angels Dare to Tread”. With 888,246 poppies created to honor the same number of British soldiers (including those from the colonies) that died in WWI. The installation was created for the 100th anniversary of the start of the war (although the last poppies were installed on Armistice Day... never quite explained), but grew into an amazingly popular installation piece to commemorate all wars. I had an excuse to visit in early November, when I went to London for a Middlebury gathering. I arrived in the late afternoon, along with thousands of others (what I didn’t know was that there was a celebration at sundown). I managed to work my way around part of the moat for some views before escaping via the Tube before the crush of the hordes. But it was a truly amazing site, as the daylight faded and the lights around the Tower emerged from the fading light.
And light is the key word for this time of year, as the days so rapidly shorten. I notice it particularly on sailing Saturdays, first as the stunningly beautiful low angle light on the sails and the water (most typically when the sun finally sinks beneath the persistent cloud ceiling to illuminate the harbor against the dark backdrop), and then the fading light and growing chill as we haul out and de-rig the boats - before 4pm!  No photos I’m afraid, but I do have photos of Pumice which, I’ll confess, is a sailboat - a GP14, to be exact - that I share with two others. Which cost me all of £33! Boats get handed along in the club, and I couldn’t resist. My co-owners are Adrian, a documentary film maker who started sailing with the club this summer, and his friend Dan, a musician. For all of you prospective visitors, Pumice [the boat that floats - Adrian suggested the name, not me!] is much more guest friendly than Aeolus, being larger and more comfortable. I’ve also discovered that co-owning a boat means that I have someone to sail with, and that little things are taken care of when I’m not there. What a deal! I still crew for Ben on Saturdays, but it’s fun to have a friendly cruising boat...

Light was also the theme of today, when Alison, Mark and I went to Stonehenge. The motivation was a decision to go to an opening at the Rabley Gallery, where my artist friend Emma often shows her work. The exhibit included one of Emma’s paintings - a spectacular monochrome night iceberg scene - but also lots of other prints. I’m taking another printmaking class, so now I pay particular attention to the type of print, and the way it was made. But since we were in Wiltshire, we decided that we’d spend the rest of the afternoon at Stonehenge, as Alison had never been there, Mark hadn’t been there for a long time, and I was interested to see the new visitor center, which opened this year. It is very nicely done - removed by about 2 km from Stonehenge itself, and designed to evoke both Stonehenge and the older Woodhenge that has been discovered at the site... the curved roof and the pole motif actually work well, and the building and associated parking areas are nestled in a low point in the landscape, out of sight of the monument.

There are buses from the center to Stonehenge, or two different walking routes. One goes along the road, one takes off across the fields and traces the path of the “cursus” and quasi-linear row of round barrows. The cursus was named by 18th century archaeologists who found the long (2.7 km x 100 m) straight “runway” and decided that it must be similar to the Roman racetracks. It is defined by low trenches and raised berms that are fairly subtle now except when seen from the air... no one knows what it was actually for, although it is assumed to be ceremonial, particularly as it is aligned E-W toward the sunrise on the equinox. The ditch and berm construction appear similar to that of the “avenue” that leads to Stonehenge from the north.

It was a gray and chilly afternoon - we had the Cursus route to ourselves - and time to ponder. The Cursus was constructed in the early Neolithic (pre-Stonehenge); the round barrows that parallel the Cursus to the south are, in contrast, early Bronze Age (that is, post-Stonehenge) burial sites. And in between lies Stonehenge... still rather a mystery. But at this time of year it made sense to me. It lies on a local high, but is surrounded by slightly higher rolling hills (many of which are rimmed with barrows). Stonehenge is, of course, famous for its solar alignments (and nouveau druid cult that assembles on the solstices). But today I could see the attraction of the site during the winter season. The large bowl of rolling grassland occupied by this site is meant for low angle light. And just as the sun often emerges beneath the clouds to illuminate the harbor, today the sun appeared in the 30 minutes before sunset to highlight the henge itself. From our limited vantage point (part of the track around the site was closed because of mud... but that had the advantage that it was easier to take people-free photos!!), the sinking sun highlighted not only the arc of clouds over our heads, but also the east-facing stones of the monument. And this place as recorder of the seasons made sense.

On the drive home we discussed the layers of history. The Stonehenge site and environs have been occupied for at least 10,000 years. Construction lasted for at least 1000 years... which puts things in perspective! Just think where the western world was 1000 years ago. Or even 100 years ago (the poppies)... or 50+ years ago (1958, to be exact), when the first Paddington Bear book was published. Now I acknowledge that to be a rather forced segue but oh well. Because Paddington Bear has also been a theme of the fall... not because of a significant anniversary but instead because of a movie release date (27 Nov in deepest darkest Peru; 28 Nov in the UK... and for all you Americans, I’m afraid that you have to wait until Jan 16). BUT in the lead-up to the film, there’s a “Paddington Trail” in London that is similar to the Gromit trail in Bristol in 2013. It starts, quite naturally, at Paddington Station. I was in Paddington Station on Friday, en route to give a seminar at University College London (the big university in the center of London). I took an early-ish train from Bristol and had some extra time when I reached London in the morning. 

So I picked up a Paddington Trail pamphlet and pulled out my iPhone and explore the Paddington Basin (behind the train station) with Paddington as a guide. Which was actually delightful. For those of you who have been to Paddington Station, you would never guess that right behind the station is a series of canals that occupy a hidden section of London known as Little Venice. Well, that may be a stretch, but when strolling along the canals I would never have guessed that I was within a few minutes walk  of a major train station.

And it turns out that literature was the subtext of the day. I mentioned the Paddington tour to my UCL host Chris Kilburn, who then took the literary (well, loosely) theme to heart. SO - the first stop on the tour will only resonate with those of you who are into modern TV culture (specifically, those of you who are PBS Mystery afficionados). Right across the street from UCL is the filming location of the new (Benedict Cumberbatch) adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, the series “Sherlock”. As you will see, the apartment (“flat”) designated in the TV show as 221B Baker Street is now for rent (“to let”) - anyone interested? The second literary note of the trip was a view of the University of London (UCL) Senate House, an imposing (read domineering) building that was used by the Ministry of Information during both World Wars and apparently was the inspiration for George Orwell’s Big Brother in his novel 1984. Which leads back, in a strange way, to Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Alan Turing (of the WWII Enigma code breaker) in the newly released movie The Imagination Game (which I saw last night - well worth seeing).

Hmmm ... so this has been an exceptionally rambling blog and now I am trying to figure out how to tie it together. But I guess the overarching theme is WWI and WWII, which we really only grazed in the US but which still permeate the culture of Europe... and explain the very piecemeal architecture of Bristol. Another blog in concept!

A Saturday Outing - Iceland-style

My blog has been dormant too long, so I decided to start it up again with the story of a single day - last Saturday - when I joined a group of Icelanders for a Saturday outing. I have now been in Iceland for 2.5 weeks, with most of the time spent with my PhD student (plus an undergraduate for one week) working in NE Iceland. But I decided to take a little bit of time off before returning to the UK, so invited myself to stay with my friend Snævarr, who lives in SE Iceland (which I think is the most beautiful part of the country). His boss Christine invited me to join a Saturday outing that she was coordinating.

The recipe for an Icelandic outing: start with a sunny Saturday. Join a friendly community group and drive west from Höfn í Hornafirði for one hour along the southern margin of the Vatnajökull glacier.  Along the way you pass several glaciers tumbling off of the large Vatnajökull ice cap, with the mountains dividing them reflected in still pools of water that dot the fields. To the south is the ocean, beyond the large lagoons that border much of the SE coast. On the way Christine’s husband Sæmund told me stories... of why there were no early stories of this region, and thus why the origin of many place names are uncertain.  The largest collection of early Icelandic manuscripts belonged to Árni Magnusson, a scholar who lived in Copenhagen in the early 18th century. Tragically, his house burned in the large Copenhagen fire of 1728 - apparently he was able to save most of his manuscript collection but not all. He had arranged his collection by region rather than alphabetically, and it was his manuscripts from the SE that were lost. But new stories spring up, such as the large boulder field that contains the stones known as the troll woman and the troll man (although the locals refer to the troll man as Winnie-the-Pooh, to which he does bear a resemblance). Which illustrates the human tendency to read shapes into rocks, as seen in the sleeping giant who appeared later in our day.

We drove past the always amazing glacial lagoon (Jökulsárlón) with icebergs drifting out to sea and then around to another glacial lagoon (Fjallsárlón), where we turned in toward the mountains on a (typical Icelandic) gravel road.  At the end of the road we parked by the first excitement of the day, a sort of hand-pulled cable car that would allow us to cross the glacial river. The cable car, and the land beyond it, are privately owned, and the owner (Gisli) has decided that he does not want his land flooded with tourists, so he opens it up only on special occasions for Icelandic groups. Our group was about 40 people (with many small excited children). The cable car could hold three grownups (or four adults + kids), so it was a task to ferry everyone across the river, kids shrieking with delight on the downward glide (like a flying fox), and the men hauling the last upward bit from ropes on both sides.

Once everyone was across, we set off across the mossy plain. One goal of the outing was berry picking, the target berries being crowberries, small black berries that grow in low-lying plants (and are apparently also common in Alaska). It soon became clear that the Icelanders were serious about their berry-picking, as they came armed with large plastic buckets and berry pickers: fork-like metal scoops with attached cloth bags (old style) or red and black plastic scoops (modern). To our disappointment, however, it was not a good year for berries - apparently they had a very wet July, so the speculation was that the plants did not get adequately pollinated. But that didn’t matter. The kids ran around, climbed boulders and investigated waterfalls off the steep cliffs of the mountain Breiðamerkurfjall while the adults made their way across the flats to the marginal moraines of the glacier, an area that was covered in ice just ten years ago (the glaciers are receding rapidly in Iceland, as elsewhere).

On the way Sæmund told me another story... about Baldur the White, a Norse god (son of Odin and Frigg), the best and fairest of the Norse gods. In a variant of the Achilles story, Baldur’s mother Frigg made every object vow not to hurt Baldur, except that she didn’t demand this vow of the mistletoe. According to Wikipedia: “When Loki, the mischief-maker, heard of this, he made a magical spear from this plant (in some later versions, an arrow). He hurried to the place where the gods were indulging in their new pastime of hurling objects at Baldur, which would bounce off without harming him. Loki gave the spear to Baldur's brother, the blind god Höðr, who then inadvertently killed his brother with it (other versions suggest that Loki guided the arrow himself).” This then set about a series of events that led to Ragnarok, the end of the gods. Baldur is in the underworld (Hell), where according to Sæmund he will stay until the whole world weeps for him. This story lasted until we arrived at our lunch spot, a monument commemorating a true story about the place. In 1936 a young farmer - Sigurdur Bjornsson - from a nearby settlement had gone into the mountains with others to round up sheep in the autumn. He was swept into a crevasse by an avalanche, where he stayed for 24 (or 36) hours, keeping himself awake by singing hymns. Eventually rescuers heard him and were able to get him out of the crevasse. He died only a few years ago. His story has been used, in part, in a modern novel by the Icelandic writer Sjón, in his novel Skugga-Baldur (translated into English as The Blue Fox).

The afternoon passed pleasantly - I hiked a ways up toward the glacier Breiðamerkurjökull before heading back to the cable car around mid-afternoon. 

 Just as we were gathering to be ferried back across the river, we got the (erroneous) news that the volcano Bárðabunga had erupted. That statement was made on the basis of seismicity and was later retracted when there was no evidence of subglacial eruptive activity. But it made for some afternoon excitement, Iceland-style.

Once we realized that there was no call for alarm, we made our way back to the main road, with a stop at Fjallsárlón, a lovely iceberg-jammed glacial lagoon.

 
As I write this, the volcano still hasn’t erupted, although the seismicity remains high, and the national protection group ´borða hraun og drekka gos´... an in joke which means that they are eating ‘lava’ (an Icelandic chocolate bar) and drinking ‘eruptions’ (fizzy drinks).

Blue Ice

I returned to Iceland again... motivated in part by the new Easy Jet service direct from Bristol to Reykjavik, in part to touch base with colleagues, and in part to see Iceland in early February. Ironically the weather in Iceland was quite a bit better than the weather in the storm-battered UK. I have to share one Bristol photo, of my local pub The Pump House, with a waterfall that doesn’t belong there - a combination of a very high tide and lots of water in the Avon River.

The winter dark in Iceland is not nearly as dark as I’d expected - the low sun angle means that the light arrives and departs so gradually that it stretches the day, by more than an hour on each end of official sunrise and sunset, when skies are clear. Reykjavik was icy but not snowy, although the snow-covered peak of Mount Esja dominated the skyline to the north.

I spent much of my time in the lovely Askja building, home of the earth scientists at the University of Iceland. But I took most of my photographs over a long weekend that I spent in SE Iceland (in Höfn í Hornafirði, to be exact), visiting my glaciologist/astronomer/photographer friend Snævarr, who treated me to a wonderful photographic tour of the myriad glacial lagoons fed by the southern glaciers of the Vatnajökull glacier.  

Winter glacier ice is very BLUE... the glacial tongues were startling blue when seen from the air, but even more blue on the ground. I arrived in Höfn on a Friday morning... spent the rest of the morning at Snævarr’s office, a friendly and light building that houses 'all of the University-educated folks'. Snævarr works with a meteorologist (Kristin) in a newly established ‘nature center’, which is responsible for coordinating scientific research in SE Iceland. It is part of a larger push by the Icelandic government to encourage people to re-settle in smaller communities.

 After lunch we headed for the closest glacial lagoon, that of Hofellsjökull. The day was gray but not precipitating, and the partly frozen lagoon of blue ice was striking even in the dull light. I particularly liked the contrast between the angular lines of thin gray ice slabs and the smooth blue curves of the larger icebergs (ísjaka, in Icelandic). Behind the lagoon, the blue source of the icebergs emerged from under the white snow cap.



The next morning we ventured farther to the west, stopping first at the most famous glacial lagoon, Jökulsárlón. The lagoon is always fascinating, no matter how often visited, but even more magical to me was the jumbled display of glistening ice bergs on the black sand of the beach. We stopped there four times in three days - it is not only beautiful, but poses a good photographic challenge. I struggled to capture the essence of the place... I think I need a lot more practice! The amazing ice forms, the variably sculpted surfaces, the range of surface texture, color and internal clarity. Some of the ice forms refracted the light so that they seemed lit from within. Others clearly supplied the inspiration for glass crystal.

From Jökulsárlón we went to the ice source, the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier. The ice was glassy smooth, so I didn´t try to follow Snævarr as he disappeared up the glacier to change out weather station batteries. Instead I stayed on the lower dirtier ice where it was possible to use embedded pebbles in lieu of crampons. I entertained myself by photographing ice and small surface step-pool streams flowing over the ice.

We then drove back past Jökulsárlón for more iceberg photography. Snævarr collected a piece to cool drinks that evening  - apparently very old and very pure water. Our next stop was at Heinabergsjökull. We didn´t make it all the way to the lagoon because a sudden shower interrupted the sun. 

 But as we retreated the skies cleared and we had a glorious drive back to Höfn, with ponded water on both sides of the road reflecting the sky and clouds and mountains. It almost gave a sense of vertigo, with the water so still and the reflections so perfect. The light reflecting and refracting and gradually sliding into gold and pink during the extraordinarily long dusk of Icelandic evenings.

On Sunday morning I was awoken by wind... and informed by Snævarr that I had missed a good aurora at midnight. We headed east and north, intending to hike near Vesturhorn, but were deterred by the wind and saltating sand. So instead we continued to the east... we entertained ourselves by counting reindeer (before this trip I had never seen a reindeer; by the end of the day I had seen well over 100... although a professional reindeer surveyor apparently counted more than 300 that day on the same stretch of coast - clearly we need to improve our reindeer counting skills!) and stopping for photos.

The coast is spectacular, snow-covered mountains rising up from the black sand beaches and brown faded grass. We stopped for awhile at a small lighthouse perched at the end of a long curving steep black sand and pebble beach. We watched as the waves lapped ever higher up the curve of the sand - didn’t quite make it over the top while we were there, although a strand line of shells showed that the waves do make it over at high tide.

We then stopped at Vesturhorn, Snævarr’s favorite climbing haunt. The wind discouraged a long hike but we did walk past a herd of friendly Icelandic ponies and visited a constructed, and now weathering, Viking village that was designed as a movie set (the movie has yet to be made).

Although the day had been gray, the western horizon was clear so Snævarr suggested that we make a short stop at Höfn for gas and hotdogs before heading back to the west, this time to Fláajökull. We walked along the edge of the glacier to a small ice cave - more photographic exploration. Again, I found it surprisingly challenging to capture the ice in all its forms and shades of gray to turquoise. As Snævarr had predicted, the sun sank gradually beneath the clouds and provided a nice alpenglow on the snow-covered peaks. We drove back in the twilight, toward the clouds over Höfn that highlighted the white peaks against the deepening gray.

Monday was a semi-work day as I drove with Snævarr and Kristin to Kirkjubærklaustur to talk to people at the Katla Geopark. But it was only partly work, as the day was glorious and sunny, and Kristin was happy to accommodate more photo stops. Jökulsárlón again, in both directions. The ice forms always fascinating and changing with the changing light.

Then back around the volcano Oræfajökull, with its summit Hvannadalshnúkur (which means the peak of angelica valley; clearly it was the angelica that was important to the locals, not the peak). We arrived back in Höfn in time for Snævarr to make a couple of stops before delivering me to the airport 15 minutes before flight time... it turns out that we really only needed to be there 5 minutes before the flight, here where traveling by plane is easier than taking a bus (no ID, no security, no waiting in lines).

Back in Reykjavik I joined my friend Malla and two of her friends for dinner and a wander around, to admire Vetrahátið, the winter festival of lights. The light displays were of varying quality, but I liked the jellyfish, and enjoyed seeing the central pond (Tjörnin) completely frozen and skate-able... later in the evening the kids swarmed like moths beneath streetlights that illuminated the urban boundaries of the lake.

Christmas season

I think of December as the Christmas season... here are some snapshots of Christmas season 2013. On the water, sailing continues as usual, except that the Saturday races start a bit earlier, the wet suits and dry suits come out, and post-sailing beer is more likely to be inside the pub, rather than outside.  

I do love the light at this time of year, however. The low sun reflects off the clouds and the water in the morning and the evening, often drawing me outside with my camera to try to catch the atmosphere.

Of course, there are also days like today, when the rain blows through in sheets on the back of the strong winds from the south. The “earth wind map’ of the UK today shows this quite impressively! [For those of you who don’t know the earth wind map, check out http://earth.nullschool.net/]

The rain bouncing off of the sidewalk and the gusts of wind on the water make my Christmas week in Arizona seem very far away. The family decided on a sunny Christmas this year, so we all headed to Tucson... which was, indeed, sunny and warm every day. We rented two houses on the north side of town, at the foot of the Santa Catalina mountains and a short distance from Sabino Canyon and numerous hiking trails through the desert vegetation - most of it prickly, and the saguaro, in particular, amusingly human. The canyon itself hosted cottonwood trees that still clung to their fall color, and a dam on Sabino Creek provided a watery touch to the dry desert environment. 

Christmas day was split between the two houses, with stockings and breakfast at the Trexler house and presents on the sunny deck at the Kelsey house. Each house had a small cardboard tree and plentiful Christmas cookies!

Christmas dinner was traditional, from turkey to pumpkin pie. Christmas crackers and golden crown provided a festive (and British) touch to the celebration. A cross-generational discussion of music (Lorde, specifically) led to some father-daughter dancing. Other meals ranged from Mexican to Georgian (as in the country). The latter was a fabulous meal that Chad cooked, complete with supplies that he had brought from Georgia after his field season there: three bottles of (bright green) tarragon soda, three bottles of different kinds of plum sauce, and two bottles of Georgian wine (no wonder Chad’s bags were so heavy!!). The dinner ranged from home made cheese bread to walnut-stuffed eggplant to pomegranate chicken...

Boxing Day was our day to be tourists. First Kartchner Caverns State Park, where we went on a tour of the limestone caves. The caves were discovered in the 1970s, but not developed as a park until 1999. The development was done with the goal of attempting to maintain the pristine cave environment, and includes air-lock doors and misting misting devices to humidify the tourists before entering the cave. It was really quite spectacular, with an amazing range of stalagmites and stalactites and other limestone features. No cameras allowed in the cave, so no photos here.

The next stop was Bisbee, a small mining community near the Mexican border. A cute little western town that now hosts an artsy community amidst the relics of the Old West.

Then onto a mining town at the other end of the tourist spectrum - Tombstone, home of the OK Corral with its famous shootout, and now a rather Disneyland environment, with stagecoach rides and hourly re-enactments of the shootout. But an entertaining place to wander around, and fun for those of us who hadn’t visited before.

The remaining days were spent hiking, biking and jogging in the sunshine before we all dispersed to cloudier and cooler climates.