Amphibian Adventures

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Immanjarok and the Shaman's Ghost
2008-02-19 18:45:00
The other night, lights on a crane reminded me of Alaska's "Immmanjarok", the little people who trick you into disaster by luring you with lights (Mom tells me that in Germany they're called "irrlichter" or "mad lights")...After posting a blog about it here (see earlier post) I expanded the story to include the episode of the shaman's ghost, just as I was trekking back into Barrow, right around this time last year...I've submitted it at Traveling Stories online magazine, if you're interested.http://amphibianadventures.blo gspot.com/
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Immanjarok
2008-02-13 21:24:00
In Alaska last winter I asked a native hunter what I should worry about, out on the land, other than polar bears."Immanjarok," he said, "The little people. They trick you. It's dark this time of year, right? So they trick you with lights. You see a light out there and then you follow it out on the sea ice and then the ice breaks and you drown.""Huh.""Yep. Immanjarok. Little people that trick you. If you see a light out there, don't follow it."Back here in Oregon I see lights in the sky at night. The other night one was on a construction crane, easily 200 feet up. After 15 years of mountaineering, I can't look at a tall object without thinking how to climb it. Seeing the crane I immediately thought "How could I get up that thing, and climb out to the end and then jump, and then open a chute and try to land? Where would I land? There are power lines everywhere!"But I'm not a parachutist, and I had to push the ideas down. It's just a light up on a crane, I thought, a lure.Just a l...

Native Elvis and the Walrus
2008-02-01 20:23:00
A year ago today I was flying to Alaska for my first winter expedition on the North Shore. During my stay I experienced 'Kivgiq', the Inupiat native "Winter Messenger Feast", which I write about in my forthcoming chapter in The Best Travel Writing 2008. An excerpt is below, followed by a short video clip of two dancers (but remember, the dancing went on for three nights!); the first dances a walrus, the second, Elvis moves fused with native mimes...Not to be missed! If you watch the video, be sure to crank the volume to maximum, as it was really, really loud! "A thousand or more natives from across Polar Alaska and Canada had gathered: children, adults, teens and the elders, who told the legend of the Messenger Feast:""When the Inupiat were young and learning to live in this place, life was hard and they hunted all the time. But when they knew how to live, Eagle Mother taught them to drum and sing and dance, and how to build a large feasting house. She told them to invite neighbor...
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The Great Polar Bear Swindle
2008-01-22 17:57:00
Everyone loves polar bears. Nobody wants them to go extinct because of climate change. But as currently worded the current US Fish and Wildlife plan to list the bear as "threatened", the category that's normally followed by listing as "endangered", will do nothing to save the polar bear. I believe that listing the bear is just a swindle, a "feel-good" measure to reassure people of the Lower 48 that yes, the government is concerned with the polar bear and is somehow "protecting" it...but there's nothing in the current wording of the proposal to protect the polar bear. Not a word.Below I describe why. Unfortunately, while my descriptive narrative of visiting the polar bear's habitat last Winter is being published as a travel piece later this year, I haven't been able to get a single newspaper to print the article (2,400-word version or 785-word version) from which the following is excerpted. No publisher, it seems, can be seen to take the position that the bear shouldn't be liste...
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It Doesn't Have To Be Cold To Be Cold
2008-01-15 04:27:00
It was 37F this morning, and I just about froze solid waiting for the streetcar. Although I've lost track of the time I've spent in subzero temperatures, shivering through days and nights, feeling cold is feeling cold. I don't care if it's 50F; if I'm in a t-shirt and it's 50F and it's raining, I'll go hypothermic in a few hours like anyone.The sensation of deep cold is that of a vast absence, the Earth's blanket stripped off, the void of space reaching down to sear and to cripple. Cold is not malicious, but these are its effects on the human frame.Last winter on Alaska's north shore the cold almost crippled my hands; after a day of hauling my sled, wearing an experimental insuation system (photo above; it didn't work so well in this case), my hands were no better than claws, and I was barely able to set up my tent and crawl inside to set up the stove and rewarm. I'd broken the first rule of staying warm, which is to stay warm; if you feel a little cold, do something abo...

Toppled Giant
2008-01-09 21:45:00
I love living in a place where people mourn the passing of good old trees. An email from Linfield College, where I'm setting up an archaeological field class for Summer 2008, about the fall of a grand old giant (photo above).From: Fred Ross [mailto:fross@linfield.edu]Sent: Tue 1/8/2008 4:51 PMTo: all-macempl@linfield.edu; all-ptdempl@linfield.eduSubject: The Old OakDear Friends -I am writing with the sad news that, today at 1:35 pm Pacific time,Linfield's Old Oak tree just toppled over. We in the President's Officeheard a loud crash sounding quite a bit like thunder, but very quicklycould see that the sound was the falling of this venerable symbol of ourCollege. As you have probably heard, some pruning had been done recentlyto the Oak to cut out diseased wood, and plans were under way to add newsupports for its lower limbs. We've had very wet weather with lots of windand some snow, but today was a typical McMinnville winter day - gray andwet, with light winds. What final...
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Hunting Transcendence
2007-12-21 03:30:00
A fragment I'm working on as I think of the past, and the future. Like many of the things I post here, it's an idea, a speculation, a seed. Above, I'm desending from the flank of El Capitan in December, 1996. Photo by Chiu Liang Kuo.Acres of glaze ice slid off the summit slopes of El Capitan, two thousand feet above our two-foot wide perch. White flakes launched gracefully into the frigid morning sky, expanding as they twirled down at us. Chiu yelled “Ice!” and I shouted an expletive as I pressed myself to the metal-cold granite wall, squeezing in my shoulders and trying to hide under my puny helmet. My gloved hands death-gripped the sling connecting my climbing harness to a bolt imbedded in the rock. Slabs of ice rained past us with the sound of immense whirling blades. Jet-engine whooshes sucked at my innards.We were 1,200 feet up the vertical cliff. Chiu started arranging his rappel and I helped in a frenzy of clipping and unclipping, tying knots and backups. Without a wor...
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Going East
2007-12-12 01:06:00
A poem about a trip last summer, written by someone dear to me. GOING EAST(c) 2006 by ccelk, wandering through amber waves of grain.amber waves of grain.bald, hay-harvested hills.hawks. several. unsure of what type.cow birdsmorning doveshouse finchgolden finchsparrowsquail (but no quail babies)deer drinking from river.deer grazing in meadow.baby deer. full-on bambi, by side of highway.chipmunk.rattlesnake (possible. sleeping.)other lovely snake in middle of road. delight to watch it slide intothegrass.las vacas. siempre.los caballos. !que guapos!emma, the spazzy.ellie, the insistant.billie bob, the constant.heron. blue. on deschutes.seagulls.sun-silver wings of unknown flock of birds, flying against shadow ofdarkcliffs.a prosperous spider on a sage bush.many moths. one on buddha's eyebrow.a desert sage called johnny.a turn-of-the-centry trash heap.baby cows on the side of the road to heaven.lone trees on lone hills.pony butte with ribbons of ash and algae skeletons.horse heaven gho...
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Ice Ghost
2007-11-29 19:32:00
I'm thrilled to say that my narrative of spending February 2007 on Alaska's north slope will appear as "Ghost on the Ice" in The Best Travel Writing 2008 (you can see the 2007 volume here). Some excerpts below:Sometimes I crossed frozen lakes, the black ice, six feet thick and hard as bottle-glass, screeching under my crampon spikes. I often knelt to examine shapes that seemed to move beneath the surface. Through the thick, irregular lens of frozen water, spectral gray bubbles seemed to wobble if I moved my head from side to side, and I did this to keep them in their surreal, drunken motion. Some were big as balloons, others like marbles. Deeper forms were blury. In some places, multitudes of star-white points clustered like rising soda fizz. And there were isolated specks, lonely as interstellar dust. The surface of the space-black ice was often broken by inch-wide cracks that shot and jagged like lightening bolts hurled from the sky and caught int he ice. Most of the cracks were...

Moonlight Levitation
2007-11-22 04:51:00
There is something extraordinarily primal about being lifted. Tonight I took a paraglider wing to a park and pointed the inflation ports into the wind. The wing inflated and stood above me, towered twenty feet above me, striving upward; it pulled at me, straight up, lifting me off the ground. Drawing on the correct lines I dropped to the ground with a light bump. With a gust I was up again; the feeling of suspension from an array of lines was deeply familiar. I felt a great calm as something ancient in me whispered Yes, this is right.... When I looked up I saw stars racing past the leading edge; I was flying, just a few feet above the grass, but flying forward. Below my boots the grass was black and shining with moonlight.http://amphibianadventures.blog spot.com/
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Oregon Bluster and the Shrimp Army
2007-11-19 18:26:00
I love Oregon ; it's raining now, our 'Liquid Sunshine' streaming off waxy fir boughs, turning elm arms a slick black, wet wind blowing yellow-white leaves off the trees like snow, whirling in the wind until they slant down and stick to the pavement. Beautiful. The other day, with Greg Baker and Bill Cornett, I took a dozen students from Linfield out to Parrett Mountain to find a lost archaeological site. What can I say; 30mph wind, clouds blowing across the fields, so dark in the woods that we couldn't even do basic paperwork. For the first time in seven years, my GPS couldn't even acquire a single satellite; this was Oregon bluster at its finest. Picture above of my intrepid students :) And below, a sketch of the Shrimp Army , seen a few weeks ago on a night dive seventy feet below the surface of Puget Sound, Washington (click to enlarge).http://amphibianadventures.blogs pot.com/

Sarcophagus on Skis
2007-11-16 16:42:00
A feature on the sled-hut, which I called the 'sarcophagus on skis' in my Iceland expeditions (photo above is copyright 2004 by Halldor Kvaran). Below, an excerpt from my book manuscript (tentatively titled The Frost Giants), on what it was like to live in this contraption. This is an experiment written in second-person.Life in a Telephone BoothFlesh, bone, and mind tell you “That’s it,” and you take last step of the night. It’s been blowing a stiff 30mph all day from your right side and since you’ve stopped moving the chill of the ice cap leaps at your body. Slabs of skin on your face harden in the wind. Super-cooled wind pours into your hood like a pitcher of ice-water dumped down your shirt. The chilled air mass settles in your clothes and your sweat starts to freeze.As you unbuckle from the harness, your fingers freeze and tighten. They’re like metal pincers worked by cables and pulleys. Your hands feel a thousand miles away by the time you’re out of the harness...

New Yawk
2007-11-11 20:28:00
I spent the last few days at the Explorers Club in New York City (46 W 70th), promoting a book, which means wearing a nametag that says 'Author Cameron M. Smith', drinking sparkling cider and wandering around signing books for the 200+ crowd with 20-odd other authors (or 20 other odd authors; as you please). Thanks to all who came! The Explorers Club is a crusty old place, five stories (well, I'm not sure, really; one floor plaque said 'Floor 5 1/2') of odd artifacts, fading framed pictures of polar explorers (one above), and heavily-carpeted, squeaky floorboards. I could imagine ghosts there, or a little old man in a forgotten cublicle, scribbling away on some impossible, endless Tome since 1909, a forgotten, little, immortal man, a kind of Burgess Meredith tucked away forever in the narrow spaces of the Explorers Club...You know, the grey little man who might smile mildly in a Twilight Zone episode and say 'Well, I suppose I have always been here. Yes...Do you know I can't ...

Explorers Film School
2007-11-07 19:20:00
On a recent diving trip my buddy and I were able to view our pictures, and even video footage, within minutes of getting out of the water. Saving images and video to flash drives, and having them instantly available, is strange. I'm used to carefully planning out each shot of 35mm film, and biting my nails for a week or so--after returning to civilization--for the results; maybe a handful of saleable shots in one 36-frame roll, maybe only two. It's all changed, though, and I'm going digital. A professional photographer friend of mine, who owns and operates PhotographersDirect said it the other day: 'Film is dead.' RIP, film! I'll miss you. Speaking of expedition videography, here's a link to Andrew Miles' new Explorers Film School (it's in England); Andy has filmed in Antarctica, the Himalaya, under Arctic pack ice, in the Candian Rockies...you name it. He shot supplemental video of my 2000-2004 SoloIce expedition to Iceland for the film 'The Deadly Glacier' (National Ge...
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Another Dimension
2007-11-05 14:05:00
This weekend of diving left me sloshing with the waves, whirling and surging upwards with the bubbles. I felt these as I drifted to sleep, but at 3am I woke with an overwhelming urge to move, to keep moving. I went out and ran three miles east, towards the edge of the Earth where the sun would rise, but I found no light out there. Finally I turned for home, knowing I'd been right to go; there was little logic to it, but I didn't care. I had to go, I still have to go. I have to keep going. There is another dimension to plunge into, to explore, and it is just over there, towards where the sun rises.http://amphibianadventures.blogspot .com/
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Plumose and Sunstar
2007-11-05 00:53:00
Eight hours ago I surfaced from the waters of Hood Canal, Washington, with my dive partner, Todd Olson. In our dives, day and night, we saw an army of shrimp marching across an undulating, muddy, moonlike plain seventy feet down; a fat, happy ling cod gilling in the wreckage of an old fishing boat; a billion phosphorescent motes whirling in slow motion through a medium 800 times denser than air; a confused young wolf eel; waving and swaying plumose anemones, and prickly starfish. Unfortunately some of the plumose anemones were wilted, and some of the 'sunstars' (like starfish, but with more arms) were exposing tender, orange tissues, also indicating poor health. These are due to low dissolved oxygen levels, at least partly a result of sewage and other pollution being dumped into the water. Once again, humanity uses the oceans as a garbage dump. The good thing is that we're aware of it, and today the canal is being cleaned up; divers are encouraged to report signs of poor aquatic ...

Adaptation
2007-11-02 20:27:00
Neither flying a ten-pound fabric wing, nor breathing air through a mouthpiece under dark water, are intuitive. Suspended by an array of lines from a flexing, surging airfoil, or dropping slowly into a strangely passive blackness, you have to focus and rethink what you can and cannot do, and what you may and may not do. Disaster can transform your bliss in a moment, in a single decision. If you're lucky, you'll have the opportunity to regret what you've done, to learn from your mistake. To survive, you have to adapt; to learn, to rethink yourself from basic principles. That requires stripping away ego, and that's not always easy, but if you don't do it, you're finished.

The Mighty Sled-Hut
2007-10-30 05:53:00
A little thing about the sled-hut; I'll be following this up, later this week, with an article on self-contained Arctic exploration sleds. For the moment, there's a video clip of the sledhut in use on my YouTube page.
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Escape
2007-10-25 01:42:00
Below is an excerpt from my recent expedition narrative, "Esca pe from Darien", in "They Lived to Tell the Tale: True Stories of Modern Adventure from the Legendary Explorers Club". I'll be in New York City on the 8th of November for the book launch, and to discuss my Iceland book with a publisher.Escape from Dariencopyright 2007 by Cameron McPherson SmithAnother big Pacific swell came up fast and silent, moonlight flashing on its face. Hurrying east, it lifted and then dropped our sixty-foot raft with the smooth motions of an elevator. I caught my stomach and adjusted a steering plank. The glowing compass revolved slowly as the raft pointed back on course. I marveled at how quickly it responded, and in perfect measure.But I didn't marvel for long. My mind was following the Eastward-driving swell, thinking on where it would end up. I knew exactly where it would end up, but I didn’t want to believe it. I knew that eight miles East the swell would rise and then curl and crash ...

Life Raft=Bad
2007-10-25 00:39:00
Four Things You Must Know if You Find Yourself in a Life Raft, by my buddy John F. Haslett. He's been there and he knows.

Fish People
2007-10-23 07:21:00
Holy Smoke! Israeli inventor and diver Alon Bodner has devised a SCUBA system that, rather than supplying the diver with a container of compressed breathing gas (air, or a mixture of gasses), separates air from water with a centrifuge! The upshot: divers' under-water time won't be limited by the amount of gas in thier breathing tanks. Revolutionary!
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Watertight
2007-10-22 19:57:00
The 'watertight' casing on my digital wrist-top camera is, so far, watertight, but the buttons used to shoot and control modes are made of a very soft plastic that continually 'grabs' whatever you might bump into. One such bump ripped a small hole in the button seal, allowing in a few drops of water. The camera still works, but the LCD display now displays gibberish. I'm trying to repair the breach with silicone sealer (white button covered with clear goop, upper right on the pic above). Not sure if it'll work. I hope it lasts long enough to get some photos of my monofin. What's a monofin? Think of swimming like a dolphin...or that old TV show, 'The Man From Atlantis'. Photos soon! In the mean time, a forward inflation at Sauvies Island the other day. Video by Mo Morales (handheld) and my 'belly cam'. So very close to flight here...just a few knots of wind coming up the beach would allow some levitation...still, it's good practice.

Dive
2007-10-21 00:52:00
For me, scuba diving is about descent, darkness, cold...immersion in an environment completely alien to a terrestrial primate. You breathe air from a canister. On descent, you purge air from your vest to drop to the sea floor, thirty, fifty, seventy, ninety, a hundred feet down. You land with a gentle bump and the muffled crunch of sand under your neoprene boots. Check your guages: all's well. Explore. Finally you ascend, eyes on your guages again as you come back to the light, rising slowly and carefully as your body adjusts to the decreased pressure. Surfacing, cold water pours off your hood, disturbing the stars reflected in the black water. You are speechless. Above, a drawing of a recent night dive in Puget Sound, Washington.
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Ego Check
2007-10-20 00:21:00
Am I really going to bite off another slab--another website, another activity? Yes. I fly now -- a paraglider. I swim now -- with SCUBA gear. I climb mountains, ski on the frozen Arctic Ocean, squirm through caves. Only in the last few generations have these experiences been available for the common person. A generation ago an Arctic expedition was something like a space shot, requiring a massive inter-agency effort and national support. Today I can fly to the frozen ocean for $1,000 and drag my sled loaded with a month of lightweight supplies. What does all this get us? It gets us closer to the natural worrld we feel so disconnected from-- and not in some virtual reconstruction, but right down on your knees in the snow, examining individual crystals. It strips away our defenses, forcing us to look within. It converts the priceless worlds of the Arctic in Winter -- or the sea floor, or the clouds, or a hundred other places -- from being the exclusive province of a few to places we ...
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