The stories we tell ourselves. . . Anadyr is the urban heart of Chukotka. It’s home to 15,000 people, but with the apartment buildings, administration centres, a cultural complex, swimming pool, movie theatre, supermarket, mall, and some hotels, it feels like a city. It’s a city in the middle of the tundra on the edge…
Office time can happen anywhere. And hey, at least here I can do some ironing. Mostly, I tell you about the action, sometimes the emotion, rarely the straight-up behind-the-scenes, office-style elbow grease to make it all happen. I’ve just spent an hour writing about that stuff, and it’s just too boring to share, so I’ll…
Night time is getting longer and longer. Ice begins to take over the ponds and the snow line creeps down the hills. Tonight, the aurora begins at dusk, before the light is completely gone, and it just keeps building. The shimmer of green running back and forth across the sky reminds me to the caribou…
Making beauty. Taking whatever you have to work with–whatever your life gives you–be it the memory of a polar bear or a pile of worn out tires, and getting to work. Making our houses into homes. If they can do it out here, in the villages of Russia’s Far East, then we can do it…
I was pretty homesick by the time we got back to the apartment. It was Thanksgiving back home, and my mind kept traveling around the world to my friends and family in Canada. I gave myself a few minutes to sulk (not many, I promise), then put on some music, unpacked our bag of groceries,…
It’s Thanksgiving in Canada today, and I’m really far away from home, so here’s a toast to Eric Guth, my companion for Thanksgiving: My team mate and dear friend doing what he does: making photographs and sharing them every way he can. The process and the moment. Eric’s cameras show up in odd places. In the…
Every trade has its tools and for every reindeer herder in this brigade that means binoculars and a good knife. We love to look for details that carry us toward a larger theme. Tools, an outfit to match the tundra, hands the same colour as the reindeer they work with. Experience that incorporates what it…
Some types of beauty can only grow in complete stillness. Any turbulence will disturb their symmetry. A breath is too much. I did not expect to find this perfection here, deep underground in a permafrost cave that preserves one community’s supply of whale and walrus meat. The walls are lined with ice blocks and the…
Russian. Learning this new language feels like searching for a shoreline through the fog. When shapes begin to emerge, they come slowly and all at once. The meaning is fuzzy, but I’m on the approach. More and more often, I have small and exhilarating moments of clarity. (His dog! He’s talking about his dog!) Sitting…
Breakfast on the tundra = boiled reindeer with salt, black tea with sugar, broth, and the ever present (ever delicious) fried bannock (кавкав). Food can always be a point of connection, no matter how deep the divide. So remember dear travelers: eat what you are given and sleep where you are told. There ain’t no…