This next album is a bit of a reverie. I took the photos to marvel in the landscape, so I guess the album is meant to be enjoyed, looked at quietly, contemplated. If you can get the pictures bigger (by clicking on them so they aren't thumbnails) I'd recommend doing so, especially the long shots of the snow-covered tundra. And if you'd like, imagine the small bits of hail trickling off of tense shrub leaves, or the fluffs of powdery snow alighting on spiny tussocks, and the cold that is the same cold that stretches for miles and miles. I'm not saying its good or bad. In fact I'm pretty remote from the actual weather, sitting in a lab- I won't be out much today beside short walks because I think I pulled a muscle. But enjoy the album, let me know what you think!
-Jonathan

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2163257&l=d7eaa&id=116335

New Post New Post!

Hi all, and sorry for my absence in posting. It has been a foggy few weeks at Toolik, alternating between dim misty clouds that go on for miles, near cloudlessness, and a pervasive cold thin wet whiteness that limits visibility to twenty feet. For the first day of being fogged in, I have found that everyone is happy- let me explain. When it's this foggy there about about twice as many people in camp at lunchtime because fewer people can do fieldwork, and there's a general cheeriness to the amount of free time people have. By the second day, the gloominess of the situation sets in and it is no fun. Also, there is a general decline in cheeriness, apparent on a monthly and not a day-to-day scale, because everyone who works on plants is getting progressively farther behind schedule.

Two friends of mine went on a colossal hike yesterday. I met them again at 10 pm in the dining hall as I went to get my before-bed tea. They were sitting back in their seats, or at least it seemed that way, and eating large meals. They had that post-adventure robustness that feels like haughtiness to jealous onlookers, or maybe that's just me. The scope and beauty and danger of the nature here make for emboldening, enlivening recreation. Some of it borders on the "character forming" experiences so lauded by the boy scouts, and revered by many proponents of environmentalism

I wonder a lot lately about the contrast between here and the city, whether one is better, whether I can really make a fair comparison from my northern oasis. I probably have about an equal carbon footprint here because of all the shipping of food up here, but that's only because my summer residence in the NYC environs doesn't have AC. In terms of character defining experience I do feel I've gotten a chance to come to terms with myself and settle into my own skin and enjoyments in a way that I haven't had in the city. But, as evidenced by the focus of vibrant hip-hop culture on city life, there's much to be said about the vivacity of cities.
I am in a strange position. I have always loved nature and yet in my stay here I have often found myself missing the city. Yet now, as the pendulum swings to the end of my stay, I am not, as a whole, looking forward to returning. The activities and culture of the city draw me, but I dread the shattered serenity and the claustrophobic nature of the walking. All those people were once exciting to me, I missed them, but now I'm starting to view them as distractions; there is so much joy and depth and greatness to most people that I have come to see in the close-knit, limited sample of humanity here at Toolik. I can't help but think that similar to the jaded-ness of a culinary connoisseur, a general numbing to the essential greatness of humanity occurs when bundled-up human figures swarm by all the time in anonymity. Here I'm using humanity as that which gives you joy when you get to know a single person, and this distinction is perhaps instructive. Because a Metropolis like New York City will give you a different humanity, a sense of the great collective and egoistic power and drive of people. A humanity where each human is like one atom in the powerful muscles of Atlas over at Rockefeller center, humanity as a collective entity continually achieving its glory.

Anyway I'm posting another facebook album. This one is shorter, hopefully pretty, definitely less person-y than the last two, which I'd say are uncharacteristic of my landscape-heavy photography anyway. That's changing, I think. I hope everyone reading is wellish and healthy if not hellishly wealthy.
Love,

Jonathan

Atlas and buildings

Ben and mountains

Yesterday I took a hike down a glacier-cut valley to check out some fossils and geode-like formations. What I was not told was that the fossils reside in the crumbling shale of a 45 degree steep hillside! That was a good time.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2163015&l=dd744&id=116335

"icy depths"

This is a piece I wrote, a week or two ago, about a swim that I took. I've been swimming for ten minutes a day in the lake lately, and it has over-all been great. That first swim, though, that was something else:

Almost like a robot, my body felt as I climbed up from the dock, stumbling and halting a bit, wet and in my boxers with the wind blowing over me. I had missed the ladder on the first spin upwards with my legs, grasping with my hands and pulling. I walked up the stairs and into the screened-off room attached to the wooden lakeside sauna. I was slapping at my arms and stomach, half expecting for them to look purple. The lake I had been swimming in was cold, and for the last five minutes a brisk wind was mixing the frigid water up from the bottom where warming light does not penetrate. It was when I started to dry off that the shivering kicked in, and for the next fifty minutes I would not have complete control over my body.
Right before the swim started I was halted on the deck, hesitant to dive into the cold water. I pushed myself to dive in, and from the first cold shock I was having a great time. A lake does not end like a pool. A lake does not feel like a limited experience like a pool does. Sure, it has boundaries. I wasn't swimming in the ocean after all, but I knew I could keep swimming for what felt like forever. When the bottom dropped out from under me, when the lake got deeper, I began to hesitate. I imagined mass murderers and sea monsters rising from the depths. I quavered with a general foreboding reminiscent of how I would feel when above the unknown deepwater of the Mediterranean ocean outside Tel Aviv. But I pushed on, mind over worry, and felt liberated as I glided through the water.
I don't know how to describe it other than silver flowing over my skin. That's how the cold water felt. I could feel each of the muscles in my back, I imagined I could feel the energy released from muscles keeping my body warm. The lake wasn't remarkably clear and I had been told keeping my eyes open would leave them stinging from algae. I could see the mountains rising over the tundra to the south and the rolling hills all around. I was in the tundra in a new way, interacting with it and at its mercy.
"Twenty five minutes?" exclaimed Chad, the camp manager. "Twenty five minutes? You should only swim for about ten if you haven't got a wetsuit. Now you know what it feels like to get close to hypothermic." And I guess I did. It was fifteen minutes after I had stumbled to my tent, grabbed my sleeping bag and crossed off my name from the "out of camp" list in the dining hall, ten minutes into my spastic stay in my sleeping bag shivering, that I remembered to take off my damp pants and my soaking boxers. I don't think I was being illogical when I decided to swim for an extra five minutes; I was having a great time and my body felt great. But walking around with a constant jitter in my jaw, my chest, and each of my limbs, not being able to feel warmth for half an hour, that was impairment.
Luckily I had notified people I was going out swimming and had also made myself known to the scientists doing samples on the lake.
Those last thirty feet to the dock were the hardest. When the momentum of the experience ended and I had to finish the slog was also when the wind kicked in. Scientists call the separation of water according to temperature a thermocline. I could tell you something about a thermocline first hand. My body was heavier, and my calves started to do something that felt like a painless cramp.
I don't regret the swim because it was a great time and because I turned out all right. I learned a bit about caution and plan to keep swimming in the lake for the exercise and for the rush. I'll only be swimming for ten minutes at a time though.
Today I sat at a table that by chance was arrayed with long-distance athletes. Marathon runners, triathlon and Iron-man athletes, and combinations of the two, all devoted recreational runners. I could understand their zeal a little bit, but pushing that hard for a goal that far away and that abstract is a bit strange to me. I’m more used to the short-term rush, although I might be starting to be able to understand that long-term physical and mental drive.

hello people of the internet!

Shalom and welcome to an abbreviated post. More on my situation and general musings later. For now I have albums, albums, and, well, actually just two albums. One is of a long hike through the tussocky tundra. Tussocks are knobby tufts of land made by the dead matter of many generations of grass, and these clumps uneven cover millions of square miles up here, making the walking "interesting", which is an east-coast word for crappy. There is live grass growing on the surface of them- that's why it's green! But the hike was great. And the other is of das auf ice, well actually just auf ice, which is a German term that I like to mock/jest about by putting das in front of it and speaking in a German accent in my mind as I type it. Ya, ees goot. Ees ver ver goot.
enjoy das photographen.
das eisenhoffen
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2161564&l=00c91&id=116335
unt das tundrawalken
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2161521&l=961be&id=116335

foreign family

She has large blue eyes and a pretty face that is a bit too earnest. She has blond hair and a perfectly fit body, beautiful and not beautiful for that very reason. She's probably around thirty. When I tell her the news offhand she rattles off an almost disappointed epithet;
"You're moving out of tent city?"
In her brief parting utterance before she made our walking trio a walking pair, I sense notes of curiosity, pity, disdain, and banal smalltalk. These emotions are anchored in the context of Toolik Lake field station, Ecological Observatory and general science playground. The tent village, nestled along the lake and insulated from the tundra by the water and the various trailers and roads that emanate behind the village, has a kind of rustic mystique to it.
The tent people are the hard-core people in some regards. Many of the most extreme hikers, those who sally forth from the field station to traverse the peaks that populate the mountain ranges rising 10 or 15 miles south on the oil road, live in tent village. It looks like a pockmarked area of the tundra (there are pictures of it in my album "babycakes and toolik), distinguished from your average plotted-out campsite by the lack of roads and the proximity of the nylon hovels to each other. To some extent the mystique of the tents is equal to the myth of the Alaska beard; the men at Toolik often grow beards that connote a rustic, a wild, yes, a difficult experience, especially to the awed loved ones who great them at the airport. Yet we at Toolik eat great food and are met by most of the amenities a pampered westerner cries out for. Your current entertainment, or entrapment, is facilitated by high speed wireless internet that I access from my laptop. Case in point. Anyway, her remark was like those snake venoms which are used to kill people and to cure snakebites. I was moving out of tent city. In some senses I was acknowledging realities that will hopefully allow me to "move forward, to be more happy and more productive, and in some senses I was retreating from an important goal. I was both stung and made pleasantly self-conscious.
I don't sleep well in my tent, at least I'm pretty sure it is tenting's fault. The light gets in more than in my 'weatherport', which is essentially a permanent tent arrayed with identical tents to form a makeshift planned-out city on the other side of camp. The real clincher was the uneven ground under my borrowed foam camp mattress. That contraption was designed to leak at the ideal rate, just slow enough to be inevitable and imperceptible. It was born to mock my awkward attempts at blowing into the large valve, doubtless meant for an electric pump, at its nylon-ensconced bottom left corner. I enjoyed the mystique of the tents, looking out on the sun after unzipping my rain fly, I even enjoyed the high pitched clamor of the mosquitoes around the thin mesh of the inner tent on buggy days. But it was time to leave. In fact with my indecisive lug of a self it has been time to leave for two weeks, and for the last week I've awkwardly checked the housing list in the main office, off of the cafeteria, just briefly enough to leave before the manager can spit out an "are you looking for something?" But two nights ago I woke up at three a.m. after climbing into my nylon sleeping bag at midnight, and embarked on a ragged march of half-sleep that barely differed from the day that followed. My repose on the chubby mattress of the weatherport was far more favorable, despite the fact that it was accompanied by the snoring of a very large man, a sound something between a saw and a freight truck.
And, given the semi-journalistic tone of the first few paragraphs, now the speculation about ideals and ideas. A sidenote: speaking about ideals and ideas is not necessarily "philosophical." The word philosophy means love of knowledge, so thoughtful historical writing could be just as philosophical as speculation about the nature of life. Yes, the nature of life is a traditional field of philosophy, but that is because the philosophical method of rigorous thought is oft-employed to explore fundamental questions like that. Calling all talk of ideals and ideas "philosophical," especially if it is not abstract, if it is grounded in images and stories, seems to me a problematic modern tendency that cheapens philosophy and lends false credence to sloppy speculations. That perception of philosophy landed me in many a class where perhaps I didn't belong. Then again perhaps I did, and I probably learned some worthwhile things, or at least picked up some novel habits. Anyways, back to the pseudo-philosophical part of my assay on the twin cities.
To move from one place of high repute to another place of what appears to be personal gain seems to be a trend in my life, perhaps life in general. I often doubt the choices I have made, less in the case of leaving Tent city, more in the case of leaving other things more deeply embedded in my identity and my routes to happiness. All along the way there are people telling me to move in conflicting directions, people listening to me, people talking to me. There's also the obsessive back and forth swaying of my own inner scythe, processing and overturning decisions at a faster rate than they're made, often at a deeper level than I feel my five senses. Sometimes the benefits of decisions do not begin to accrue until long after the poison of withdrawal has had its day. Maybe it is in those tortured intervals that the posture of character allows one to continue moving. Words are scary things, because they conjure meanings that lend their swords to inner combatants, to armies engaged in battles where I believe only my mind and my best interests should determine the victors.
The mystique of tent city seems very overdone. I mean, lets be serious. We at Toolik live in Artctic wonderland. There's something to be said for taking benefit when benefit is available. Good services mean lots of good work is demanded because there's more free time, and that I have high standards for myself. Why live ragged in a tent when I can enjoy the arctic more by living in the rival city of half-cylinders just down the road, and left at the cafeteria? Maybe I've made one of those clarifying decisions that help on the road to good papers and books on the environment, one of those "to realize limitation is to strike at identity" moments. To talk less abstractly maybe I've come to a wellspring idea like "to be human is to alter the environment," ideas that have inspired many authors, including Alan Burdick, an author and journalist who is currently up at Toolik on a journalism seminar. He recently wrote a book about invasive species that I assume is in the Michael Pollan-y genre of sciency popular novel. It's called "Out of Eden." Pick it up maybe, and let me know how it is. I think this Burdick dude might be someone to maintain touch with.
All right, bedtime on my large mattress across from the freight train marathon snorer beckons. If you're in the mood for a laugh and are beset by being so well acquainted with me that you know my gmail, shoot me an enquiry and I'll relate to you the funniest and most appropriate namings of a person that I have ever heard.
best wishes.
love,
Jonathan

albums new and old

new: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2160015&l=0a0f7&id=116335
and old: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2127362&l=76fe4&id=116335
and very old: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2005741&l=8f0ea&id=116335

Today I had a pretty long talk about Israel in the Toolik cafeteria. I think I'm in denial about how much I care about Israel and Judaism, or at least how much they define me currently. I get paranoid about being seen and heard talking about those subjects, and I feel like I talk about them a lot. I feel that on this blog I can't, or shouldn't, but depending on parameters those could be the same thing, say what I think about Israel.
The long discussion occurred when I found out that the two ladies sitting across from me at the dining table had both worked on kibbutzim in Israel. The silver-haired, blue-eyed, and remarkably alert seventy year old lady said it was the place that allowed her to become vegetarian, and the stocky, excited fifty year old lady described it as part of her evolution away from Judaism. She said it was a nice place, where she worked, a kibbutz up north near Lebanon and bet she'an. The attitude of the people there, however, convinced her that Israel would eventually fade away. A loose quote: "the attitude just wasn't sustainable- I mean, anyone Arab was like a second class citizen, almost sub-human. The size of the divide between the populations, both in terms of socioeconomic position and demographic growth, mean that there'll just be too many Israeli Arabs eventually. And it's such as small country among larger antagonists, and living off outside support just isn't sustainable. I think it won't be there, it's just a matter of time." She said that she had once identified with Judaism and Israel more, but had realized some time ago that she is spiritually budhist with some cultural connections to Judaism. All the while the silver-haired sevent year old said nothing. I don't think she spoke for the rest of the conversation after relating her culinary experience on Kibbutz. Maybe she agreed more with my slightly more supportive views of Israel given her positive reviews of the Israeli tradition of salad and dairy for breakfast, contrasted by the Buddhist lady's strong aversion to that meal format. She said she favored even the European custom of cold cuts for breakfast.
I will now skirt the argument. Giving a description of how I responded to the "dissenter" and what I think of Israel is not something I'm ready to do, not something that I'm sure it would be wise to do. For one, I have some criticisms but often they come from a mindset that assumes a lot of points of praise that I can't articulate in one go, maybe not at all. One thing I can say is that although her point of view has merit I had to point out the small size and extreme nature of her sample population. Bet She'an is not the most populated or Arab-friendly area, and her kibbutz was probably an embattled hamlet up north. Maybe there doesn't have to be a solution to the Arab Israeli conflict, to any conflict. Maybe it's more valuable to realize that the budhist lady has a point of view that should be respected and that I might gain from trying to understand. Hopefully she'll do the same for mine. I think that looking for a solution is different from addressing individual situations in a pragmatic matter. Maybe within Israel's borders Arabs are Israelis, Israelis are Arabs, and it's largely the names that are causing problems. I'm still thinking about it, although now I'm going to move on to other parts of my day. Talking about Israel and Judaism feels different up here. I think it might be easier to form my own opinions when I'm separated from the very Jewish atmosphere I've been in for the past three years. Don't quote me on that.
best,
jonathan

photos!

New album up on facebook, of antics and watermelons. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=
2158616&l=24b17&id=116335

Hello everyone,
I wrote this email a while back and figured I'd edit it and send it. After about two weeks, here it is, relatively unchanged, in a new medium that helps to justify the semi-anthropological dimension it has acquired as a "vintage" email. I don't necessarily feel the same way I did then, especially about the first and last paragraphs, but it's a good attempt at a picture of what arriving in a place like this is like. Here goes:

I'm sitting in "my" lab and I don't want to plow through a science article so it's time to write, to narratively or just discursively explore the alter-world I'm currently living in. I'm still pretty much the same person, presumably, but I've encountered a bit of a role reversal. In the city I'm often the active one, the adventurous one. I feel like a lazy guy here. One of my favorite activities is sitting in the cafeteria, which is a wooden slant-roofed structure built onto the side of a trailer, and reading national geographic and talking to the people who wander in and out in between meals. On days off many of the other young people here go on back-breaking, or at least very high altitude hikes up mountains and through the dramatic alpine valleys that abound just ten or fifteen miles away, where the mountains rise up from the small rolling hills of the tundra. Not that I can't or don't do those hikes; I did one last Sunday. But there's a difference between me and people like Joanna, who came with me yesterday on what was supposed to be a short paddle across Toolik lake, for which the field station is named, and then a jaunt up to a large hill nearby. She did not care about the thunder that started to rumble above us and that eventually rolled into lightning. In fact she was excited by it. I, on the other hand, was more than slightly perturbed by being the tallest upright object for miles around, in the middle of an electric rainstorm. Don't get me wrong, the people are great and nice and she was quite happy to turn around, but this place, it's different and difficult and fun.
The twenty-four hour sun and the buzzing clouds of mosquitos that often engulf your body like an itch-causing carpet are not fun. I walk around in my waterproof sun hat and I wear a goofy torso-suit of mesh netting when I go out to collect samples. I also use bugspray that says it's 100% DEET- it's a heady feeling to see my high-pitched tormentors hovering and darting back and forth a good three inches from my body. But the protection lasts only about 10 minutes, after which the bolder mosquitos deign to endure the pain my spray causes them. They're not like a solid cloud, the mosquitos, more like gangs of noisy kids that accumulate and won't go away, especially in areas of open tundra near water. Well I guess kid's don't get blown away by wind or grounded by rain, but you get the picture I hope. But this paragraph was supposed to be optimistic, the mosquitos a brief detour into pessimism. But they're so much fun to talk about!
Toolik lake field station is a permanent research facility that is also a well-run village. It reminds me of a summer camp for scientists. It has lots of sharp minds, prominent researchers, nature enthusiasts, as well as a staff that is friendly, devoted, down to earth. I think that having the scientists and the staff live and dine in the same general area creates a very good working relationship. Being hundreds of miles from most other human places helps too. Besides the distance thing, Columbia could take a page out of Toolik's book, possibly connecting their big inefficient bureaucracy with their academics.
The science atmosphere pretty much pervades- it is the goal of much every-day activity and intention. Other things, like friendships and eating, are important and focused on. But I'd say they're like the connecting tissue of a body, like the metabolism of that body, while science is the motion towards which the sentient brain sets itself. It is such an interesting and different atmosphere to be in. I could small-talk with most people, but with all the scientists I merely need to broach the topic of their research or any science to set them off on a discourse about data and theories. It's like uncorking a keg of wine, or, if you don't like science, something less pleasant.
The hikes here are interpretative. It's so different from the east coast where hikes are an extension of guided lives daily lived, with their set trails, known routes, relatively safe courses. Tundra and mountain hikes in Alaska are, to a larger but not complete extent, walks in the wilderness. They are better if people look at a map beforehand, but there are few trails and it's basically just walking in the wilderness wherever there is beauty and relative passability. In the arctic national wildlife refuge (anwr,) visitors are actually advised to walk in a horizontal formation, not a vertical line. By walking spread-out over the landscape as opposed to single file, like one would do on an east-coast dirt trail, you can minimize your impact on a wild and "pristine" area.
I have a few theories about why that is. Maybe there's just too much developed area in the east coast, but then again Adirondack state park in upstate NY is one of the biggest public parks in the world. I think there's also a bit of the west coast/settler mentality mixed in. Perhaps that is represented by the fact that my lab-mate Heather is always criticizing east-coast regimentedness and my own conditioned or endemic obsessiveness. Maybe she's just too critical. It's interesting to note that despite the freedom of hiking, people at the field station still congregate around certain hikes and few people go off hiking on their own.
More news soon. I'd love to here what other people are up to this summer.
Love,
Jonathan