Alaska

Two days before the summer solstice (which is tonight) found me across the arctic circle, at Point Barrow, the northern most spot in America. It was midnight with the full summer sun shining down, and a polar bear ambling towards us, about 200 yards out. It may have been my closest experience to the sublime.

photo 1 - I was with a great group of birders lead by fieldguides.com, a birding tour company that I highly recommend. Here we are looking out at the pack ice towards the North Pole.

photo 2 - Barrow landscape

photo 3 - Polar Bear

photo 4 - Long tail duck

" It is the transience of gale birds, their seeming frailty in the toils of wind and sea, that stirs me most. To see a lone petrel arc across some desolate reach of ocean, as fleeting as the spray blown from the wave crests, is to risk innumerable intuitions of mortal solitude and transcience, ones own swift passage towards the void." - Peter Matthiessen