North to Alaska - not quite
High latitudes are becoming a bit of an obsession with me. In January 2017 I went with my friend Peter to Svelbard and we went together in March 2018 to the Antarctica Peninsular. I'm booked on a trip up the Norwegian coast from Bergan to Kirkenes in January 2020 and now into this archipeligo well within the Arctic Circle.
Regular readers of my blog will know about my fascination with Antarctica and I had thought about going back. The thing is penguins aren't in the Arctic and I've had my fill of those delightful comic characters. Also there is something about isolated islands that attracts me.
Looking at places I'd like to visit I thought of Tristan Da Cuhna, Pitcairn Island and New Zealand's Sub Antarctic Islands
You see the attraction! But I like ice and snow and whales. All these are volcanic islands rising out of the depths, witnesses of the enormous changes in geological times. I don't know how old are the extinct volcanoes of Franz Joseph but not that long ago they would have been permanently locked in sea ice allowing polar bears and foxes to reach them. I wonder if in the dim past they were like those other islands, warm, full of vegetation and strange song birds.
Every time I think about all this, our planet, the almost infinite combinations of life forms I am overwhelmed. The universe is large, it is complicated but in comparison to life on Earth it is so simple. Think about you, what makes you; what keeps you alive. The millions of chemical reactions that work perfectly to initiate a chain of events that breath life into a mass of chemicals. The complexity of all our organs, the liver, the eye, the brain and the organisation that is us.
It's evolution. A cosmic ray impacts on a string of DNA, which creates a successful variant, which means a vague unfocused image at the back of a cell over time becomes an eye and that primitive receptor evolves into a complex mass of neurons capable of colour differentiation, depth of vision and comprehension.
At times it seems to me far too much weight is placed on evolution: but what else is there? Certainly not a master builder.
And all this mystery, majesty and sheer evolutionary hard work we risk. We cut down, in the name of our humanity, the cradle of our birth. If evolution had a purpose, a goal, an aim, it most certainly would have stopped long before we emerged. We are the antithesis of diversity, creativity and sanctity.
Marvel at our vanity. Billions of selfies as if we were so important that our faces have to preserved. That we are so important we can obliterate, build over, kill, eat, abuse, degrade everything that is not us.
We need to reach an accommodation with this planet of ours. Otherwise, we'll poison, kill one of the Universe's greatest wonders.
But then maybe that won't be a bad thing. Reset life and evolution. See if it can get it right next time and throw up a creature that is in tune with all its fellow inhabitants.
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