So was this the point where we could all declare victory and go home? Had the fat lady sung, or was the cacophony that had serenaded us on Hornøya Island equivalent to some diva’s final solo in an opera? Depending on your opinion about opera, that could be either a “yes” or a “no”. I will always suspect that there were probably a few people in our group whose target bird – or target experience, for that matter – was to have some kind of intimate bonding experience with a puffin, and now that that had happened they’d achieved nirvana or completed their spiritual quest or at least now had many great pictures to show the folks at home (hopefully showing more than just puffins), and really how do you top that? (answer: you don’t).
Actually there turned out to be one more truly grand puffin on the docks back in Vardø, though this one was made of wood and packed into several large crates and was yet unassembled. Whatever plans there were for it was a mystery, as was the case with so much about that town. The fact is we’ve could’ve spent an extra day or two wandering that island, and in the end it might’ve proved as fascinating as Hornøya, though in some totally different way, no doubt.
Of course the truth was that our little jaunt’s time had not quite run out: tomorrow was an entire day’s journey back to Ivalo and the airport, and even on this day there was still lots of daylight left. Ha ha; as you know, there was always daylight left, and one wonders if some indigenous northern tribes had been telling versions of this joke for millennia. It turns out Gerard and Matti had another excursion available for the last hours before dinner, but emphasized that this one was truly optional, just a run north up the coast on roads we’d not yet traveled. And the fact is, on a birding/nature trip there’s always something great out there not yet seen that could turn up at any time (given it was the proper habitat) and of course one always hopes for a good look at a creature that up until now had only been seen briefly or at a great distance or by somebody other than oneself. And this could have been a smew or a wolverine, it really didn’t matter. By the end of any trip my list in this category is always quite long, so opting for a museum or shopping or a nap is never a question. It is also true that there were moments every day since we’d arrived when a nap would’ve made sense, but who has time to nap on the journey of a lifetime to the end of the earth? You want to risk missing something?
And venturing further up the coast held much promise, as it seemed that on the road beyond Vardø – most folks’ destination on this road – the world became even more remote, and who can resist the temptation of journeying even further into nowhere when one seems to have reached nowhere already? The allure of this was self-evident as most of us headed up the narrowing highway that became pretty much a single lane along the water’s edge, and the scenery took on a rocky and craggy aspect unlike any of the wild landscapes we’d previously encountered, inhospitable-looking in a new way. Being right there next to the sea along that coast clearly appealed to a few people in the way that waterfront property always tends to do, as there were any number of humble dwellings and agricultural buildings. Okay so most of them might be called shacks, but they were sturdy Norwegian shacks, at least. No people in sight, of course, which had been the case for so much of this trip, even on these splendid days at the end of the Arctic spring.
The pictures hopefully do some of this justice – you can see my best reindeer pic, a couple of guys with big racks out on their afternoon seaside stroll – and there was some colorful and slightly bizarre roadside art work that was unexpected and a sign that people do live here, at least some of the year, and just maybe those peculiar figures were inflicting upon us an ancient Viking curse. Birdwise we got some good looks at ocean ducks and shorebirds which included the only northern gannet and brent geese we were to see, but the best part was getting views of this wild and exotic part of the world that offered yet another unfamiliar flavor and whodathunk there was anything like that left to see?
The other images are of the odds-and-ends wrapping-it-up variety: open-plan Finnish hotel bathroom and its squeegee; crazy huge Viking-boat-with-whale-backbone just outside Vardø with no plaque or marker or anything (maybe that wooden puffin on the dock in town was headed out here?); Finnish road sign with impressive Finnish place-names; nice birch fungus; fish-drying setup on a house in the prosperous part of Batsfjord, and more on a larger scale on the other side of the peninsula; yet another truly excellent high class bird feeder in a country chock full of well-crafted structures dedicated to feathered friends, further testimony to the Finns’ closeness to nature, at least north of Oulu. Or so I wanted to think.
The next day was a long drive back to Ivalo, though Matti put in a heroic last-ditch effort to find smew, at least so it appeared. It is a not uncommon feature of the last day of these trips for a guide to seek “special” birds the trip has missed (though two of our group had seen the bird back at Airport Hotel) and we had an extended diversion through a neighborhood of ponds connected by dirt roads with no luck (the timing of this trip was not the best for smew, as many had left already) until finally the unexpected happened. The birds (smew!) were quite far away and a frantic setting-up of scopes allowed a few more of us to get a look before they flew, but as for myself and several others smew will have to get counted on some other future trip, maybe in western Alaska or Europe at a more likely time, such as winter. Or Jamaica Pond, if I get really really lucky.
Which we were on this trip in the best possible way, as Gerard and Matti summed up at the end: no endless wind-driven rain and no large-scale assaults by hordes of biting insects, for starters, which they assured us had been real possibilities as things had got underway. Hell, it never even got that all cold (those on the trip from Arizona and Alabama might dispute this) and did I mention we were in the Arctic? Of course it is redundant but still a pleasure to take a mental look at the highlight reel: all those owls, the ruffs having their rumble on the leks, so much June breeding action: birds displaying and sitting on nests (arctic terns, red-throated loons, black-legged kittiwakes up the wazoo, tufted ducks and arctic redpolls and that dotterel and what about all that breeding action on Hornøya and surely I am forgetting something?) and of course there was that small matter of the US covid-test requirement getting lifted mid-way.
This turned out to be more telling than we might have realized, as two days after flying out of Ivalo several of our number saw their luck run out, coming down with covid symptoms, an unfortunate development which at least was well-timed. The whole “what if?” parlor amusement game of history is mostly silly, but in this case the lifting of that covid test requirement, timed as it was, turned out to be an incredible stroke of luck or fate. Had everyone in the group earned that much good karma? or does God just play dice with the universe, as quantum physics suggests? “If” that covid test had still been required, how calamitous would it have all played out, really? Do mental gyrations like this wear you out, as they do me?
One could make the case that any disaster that doesn’t result in permanent damage or injury is just a good story one tells afterwards, which is sort of a gentle interpretation of “that which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” as Friedrich Nietzsche so bluntly said it (and which popular culture has perverted in endless ways). It is also true that most of us want our unfolding story to be as uneventful and stress-free as possible, always, and why are we so insistent on that, and are there costs? Of course there are, but figure that one out for yourself, please.
As for stories, here’s the state of just a few ongoing, one month after:
- Covid morphs on and on into more “benign” varieties, while some health officials worry and more and more people say to hell with it and take their chances, having run out of any reason to care anymore about whatever fate might befall them (or others). Russia inexorably hammers Ukraine in the war of attrition all had predicted, with the failure of “sanctions” and the world’s need for fossil fuels providing enough resources for them to keep it up until the “job is done”, the meaning of which changes every day; with the West’s ongoing military aid to Ukraine, especially that from the US, it appears at this moment there is no end in sight, a modern-rhyming revision of WWI, which most might recall did not end all that well
- Southern Europe and Britain endure new record-setting heat waves along with much of N America, where in the west they have unprecedented drought; the new changes caused by disruption of Russian supply chains leads the European parliament to redefine natural gas as a “green” fuel (and goodbye to Paris climate accord commitments) to help them deal with energy shortages, and Americans who wish to buy electric cars find them in extremely short supply (lack of computer chips and other key materials); the weather in Ivalo this week is in the 60s with rain most days
- The airline industry’s cutbacks in staffing due to covid has led to chaos at the airports as travelers return in droves; delayed luggage numbers hit 30% and Delta sends an empty wide body jet to Heathrow, epicenter of these problems, just to fill it with luggage that never made it onto connecting flights – our original plan when we thought we’d need covid testing was to get it done at that most dysfunctional of airports, another bullet dodged
- It is not clear if the puffins and all those other breeders on Hornøya Island have finished with breeding and gone back to sea, along with all those kittiwakes spread around Vardø, as without a nest-cam (and which nest would one monitor, among the thousands?) a person living far away can only wonder; here in MA shorebird migration along the coast kicks into high gear
- After having a half dozen friends over to look at pictures from our trip, the licorice supply is down to one skull, three leaping fish, three mushrooms and three hard candies, three of the super-salty gray slug-like things, nine cars and sixteen jujubes; it is shocking how few people like licorice and how many consider red licorice twists to be an actual licorice product, which it is not, no way, and one wonders if this leads to the occasional bar fight in Finland
- Speaking of which I happened to listen to a college radio station playing “metal” don’t ask why (heavy, doom, thrash, whatever) and about a third of the bands were Finnish! if you are a fan you already know that this harsh brand of rock music is a thing in that country, for which it has a worldwide reputation; could there be a band out there with a name like “Death Puffin” or something? and what could be cooler than that?
The story in these parts is that New England is also in a drought; longterm forecasters suggest relief is coming, at least by October. The Red Sox are in another so-so season but that story is only half over as it is just the all-star break and hope springs eternal against all odds, same as with the greater Story of the World. In Jamaica Plain we are having one of the best raspberry and basil crops in years, and may the ongoing story of your life be equally blessed with delicious things.
