Each Day is Completely Different

29 November 2012
7:18 AM

Sunrise at	10:15 AM	in direction	147°	South-southeast
Sunset at	3:03 PM	in direction	213°	South-southwest

Duration of day: 4 hours, 48 minutes (5 minutes, 27 seconds shorter than yesterday)

The moon, 111/28 at 9:27 AM, circling around to the north east.  It
did set that day, but not for long.

I watched a film documenting the experiences of British artists who made trips to Cape Farewell, on the island of Kujalleq in Greenland.  The purpose was to present the impact of climate change via art.  A paradox was highlighted by one of the artists whose chief goal was to walk in the arctic wilderness.  She observed that the extreme cold, lack of readily available food, and predatory bears contributed to it not being an environment one would consider hospital to humans.  It could take your life in an instant; yet the crystalline beauty that they saw was extremely fragile in the face of climate change. 

I walk through the winter months and appreciated her willingness to get out into the day and experience cold.  It changes your view of life to interact with cold and accept it.  Today was another day out in the cold for me; I was making the most of it.  Earlier I had persuaded myself that since a very strong cold snap had set it, and I had walked Monday - Wednesday, I really did not need to walk today.  But sometime after 1:00 PM, I looked out at the sun light that was moving rapidly across the southern horizon and decided I could not miss being out while the sun was.  You develop a tolerance of the cold and walking briskly helps along with dressing appropriately.

Another artist, a photographer, commented that the light changed so rapidly that you could take a photo at the same time, in the same location each day, and it would be totally different view of the world.  I appreciated that as well as I speak about that often.  The winter time accentuates the rapidity of change most, when the contrast between day and night is so apparent.  I will take time to post photos frequently as we near solstice when the sun skims across the Alaska Range, just breaking above those peaks for 3 1/2 hours.

Just about 30 minutes after sunrise - 10:41 AM on November 28

One of the artists, a sculptress, was pessimistic when considering whether humans would make the requisite change in order to preserve ice and glaciers.  She articulated that as a species, humans could not conceive of change on the scale scientists predict and so would chiefly ignore it and continue in the pursuit of pleasures and comforts that warmed the planet - even if London were under water in 40 years.  By the recent election results within the Fairbanks North Star Borough, it seems regulation of emissions is not desirable to locals - even though we have had Air Quality Alerts every day this week.  To change, to plan, to think ahead seems to be out of the grasp of people when global scale changes are the issue - especially if it means any degree of deprivation or sacrifice now.