LIVIN G & LE ARNING
In the dark womb
of the world I found my rebirth
Journeying to the high Arctic, to the land of the polar bear where blizzards and snowstorms are only matched by four months of darkness, August Cyr finds the strength to start again.
text and photography by August Cyr
ANOTHER YEAR AND THE WORLD returns to darkness. Up here, in this snowed over desert high in the Arctic. Up here, where I have sought solace amongst the mountains. Imagine. If you can. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. The darkness. The light. A depth and colour so inviting. A
green that moves snake-like one minute, an angel stepping down sky-stairs the next. It constantly
6 JULY 2015
weaves and shimmers, like a curtain, or fingers upon piano keys. And they aren’t just green. They are blue, white, pink. And combinations. Like so much of the natural world, photos cannot quite capture the truth of the Aurora Borealis. Not because the colours are a poor rendition necessarily, but because the static image can never convey the profound connection one feels with the space, and with the darkness, and with the light that comes from seeing the waves move.
But it isn’t just the northern lights that brought me here. To the island. Spitsbergen. Longyearbyen.
At 78 degrees North, Svalbard is one of the most remote outposts left in the world. This town on the island of Spitsbergen, the largest island of the archipelago of Svalbard, is where I spent a year of my life. An Aussie in the Arctic. Up with the trappers and hunters and miners, people from another time, another place, who no longer fit elsewhere. Drifters. People who’ve become unstuck, and sort of move on the
currents of air and wind. Until they find themselves up here, near the North Pole. With the raw, the vital. Up here where the landscape sucks you in, bonds with you, and leaves you feeling a little bereft when you are not with her anymore. They say it’s the light, that draws and captures. There is something about the
light and the spaces in the light that you cannot quite see-the minute you try to stare at them they disappear. The yellow pixels in the low-riding sun drench early morning mist. Blind you.
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