Thursday, February 26, 2015

50 Shades of the Arctic

There are colors north of the Arctic Circle that I did not know existed. Colors that I still do not have names for even after logging nearly 1000km across snow-covered landscapes.

There’s a shade of blue that looks as if we melted silver onto a late night summer sky. It laps the shores of the Norwegian fjords as the sun reflects off the mountains rising up out of nothingness.

There’s an orange that is pink. Or a pink that is orange. As if cherry blossoms were painted with the orange from a Colorado aspen in September and then strewn across the peaks of mountains so steep that only trolls would dare traverse the landscape.

There’s a white so bright that it burns, fading from white to blue to pink to orange. A fickle color palette that plays with our senses depending on where we’re standing. Where we’re looking. What we’re thinking.

There’s a different shade of blue. A blue so soft it’s as if we dipped our favorite gray sweatpants into a clear sunlit winter sky. It sneaks up on us, slowly, quietly, conquering the daylight just as the sun has disappeared, bathing the world in a melancholic color that reminds us that it’s still winter.

And there are at least 46 other shades of the Arctic that will inspire someone else to try to put words to experiences that are best left to memory. Left to those fleeting moments of recognition years later, of inward smiles, of sights and sounds and colors that take us back to a time when we were younger. When we were artists. Poets. Writers. Philosophers. Talking about what is and what could be.

Lofoten Islands, Norway - Photo Credit: Marcus Cederström
That's a real picture. Of a real place. 
Welcome to Sweden. And Norway. And the Arctic Circle.

4 comments:

  1. Great picture! Where exactly is it? We hope to get further North on our next trip to Sweden. Relatives are in Ullanger.

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  2. That picture is from the Lofoten Islands way up north on E10.

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  3. What a beautiful post! You should be a poet (too)!

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