Red Dawn of the North
Posted on January 28, 2007 @ 3:40 PM
SPECIES
We have no real idea how many species of plants and animals
we share this planet with. We have identified and named
roughly 1.5 million of them, but it’s thought there could be
anywhere from 5 to 100 million species. However, the actual
number is irrelevant, because it is thought that by the year 2050 we humans will have put a million of those species at
immediate risk of extinction, and by 2100 half of all species on
Earth will be extinct or seriously threatened. Yes, you read that
correctly: half of all species of plants and animals.
It seems we’re rolling the dice against forces and
consequences infinitely more powerful than we, and Lady Luck
isn’t on our side – not anymore. Today, there are more people
on this planet than there ever have been, and the number
is growing at an alarming rate. Every child born grows up
expecting a better, more comfortable, and more materialistic
life than that of his or her parents, but unfortunately the world
can’t afford it because these desires almost always involve an
increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
Greenhouse gas emissions are what the people we met on
our surf trip to Arctic Norway were anxious about, despite the
fine weather.
STREAMS
Our surf trip had begun in the city of Tromsø, on the west coast
of Norway, home of the most northerly Burger King in the
world. Even the temptations of such an obvious symbol of
civilisation couldn’t keep us in town, though, for way up above
us a tight little low pressure was curling across the top of the
country and folding into the Barents Sea – and with it, we
hoped, swell for the surfing world’s least-known stretch of water.
The Barents Sea squats across the top of Arctic Norway and
Russia, but beyond that its boundaries are a little hard to define.
To the north are the floating ice sheets of the North Pole and
the Arctic Ocean. To the west is the Atlantic and the warmer
currents of the Gulf Stream, and to the east the Barents gradually loses its liquid form and turns to an ever shifting, crashing and
changing ice pack that works its way across the top of the globe.
You would think it would be impossible to surf the
Barents Sea, what with its high latitude keeping most of the
water totally ice-bound year-round, but even up here the Gulf
Stream comes into play. A branch of this warm, Caribbeanborn
current chases the tails of low pressures along the west
coast of Norway, over the top and into the Barents, and in the
process keeps the waters ice-free for much of the year. This
same current also helps to generate a predominant wind from
the southwest, which is straight offshore for the Barents coast.
That same current also encourages low pressures to follow
it into the Barents, and when this happens (and it does on a
regular basis), north swells are created. The results break on a
myriad of beaches, points and reefs, all of which remain (so
far) completely untouched by surfers.
WAVES
We were inside the Arctic of my imagination: a frozen desert
of largely lifeless, featureless tundra sheeted in snow drifts that
glowed ice-blue in a wispy northern light. It was frighteningly
barren and beautiful, inspiring, but above all there was the
sense of being on another planet altogether. In the temperate
zones to the south where most of us live, we have people,
features and places surrounding us in all directions of the
compass, and time and light govern every move in our lives.
We sleep in the darkness and eat in the brightness, but up
here everything we call familiar is in one direction only and
time becomes irrelevant. To sleep at three in the afternoon is
no different than playing games at three in the morning, for
outside the window nothing has changed.
It was after three days that we found a frozen glacial valley at the mouth of which sat a sandy beach full of lively waves
peaking up across its length. On one wave I pulled into a tube
and found myself surrounded by water with a cold blue glow
that left me feeling as if I were captured inside an iceberg. When
the swell grew bigger, further Arctic barrels appeared at the foot
of desolate headlands and rocky pinnacles, and it could truly
be said that, for those undeterred by the cold, we had stumbled
across a surfer’s winter wonderland. But remember, we were
lucky. We were here during an unusually warm winter period.
It’s normally too cold to enjoy these waves.
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