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…
The herd. Grunt, click, whoosh, clack . The herders have brought them together, past the river valley, headed towards camp. Out on the tundra, Eastern Chukotka, Russia. Photo by Eric Guth.
We’ve only been in town an hour when someone knocks on the door. It’s the local English teacher, who is the last messenger in a long line of connections that began back in Canada. “The dancing will begin in an hour,” she says. When we arrive, women and girls are pulling on their tunics while…
Arriving at night. Silhouettes of the camp that will be our new temporary home, but the camps are always temporary out here. These reindeer herders move every season. In each new place, the yuranga’s roof poles, the outline of their shed, and smoke from the fire stand out against the sky. I love arriving to…
Here in Chukotka, I have so many unanswerable questions each day. Stories–sometimes disguised as wreckage, litter, or a closed door–play hard to get. How many questions from this one extraordinary scene? A torn up fuselage perched beside the road, its story lost to local memory. Maybe the ravens know what happened here. Maybe they can…