Iceland
Photographer: @tothewonderblog
Iceland has long been a destination for wayward travelers, those hell bent on adventure, isolation, refuge, or the unknown. Long before Vikings first hauled there wooden skiffs upon these rocky and black-sand shores, Iceland has stood weathered by the arctic winds, baked in midnight sun, and drowned in a sea of wintery darkness - it’s qualities perfectly suited to our planet’s most adventurous and resilient, those hardy few in search of safe harbor here in the Polar North. As Iceland’s remote beaches, windswept headlands, and jagged peaks become a staple of the contemporary wayfarers manifesto, this volcanic island tucked at the intersection of the Atlantic, Norwegian, North Sea has simultaneously experienced a catastrophic decline in it’s true seafarers, those puffins, fulmars, murres, kittiwakes, razorbills and skaus that have long peppered these coastlines and jagged outcroppings to rest and raise their young. Here in the Polar North, researchers have long called these rich waters the ‘Serengeti’ for fish eating birds, a nursery for 23 species of Atlantic seabirds and countless fish who since time immemorial have fueled one of the world’s most productive fisheries. Salty, weathered fisherman tell tales of the skies turning black and white with the whisking wings of these seabirds, beaks brimming with the silver bodies of sand eels, herring, hake and capelin. Yet, today few return. Nests have gone empty, and colonies throughout the North Atlantic are in precipitous decline. Our planet is undergoing a slue of rapid changes ranging from shifts in wind patterns to unprecedented fluctuations in ocean currents and chemistry. These climate induced dynamics coupled with an ever rising plume of pollution spilling from our planet’s biggest cities have caused profound changes to the world’s oceans – their climate, chemistry and the food webs they support. Notwithstanding, millions of these seafaring birds still roam our planet’s northern seas. Yet, keep in mind, if radical steps are not taken to address the myriad of issues affecting our planet’s ecology, these seaward relics of legions past may largely disappear from the skies and bays of Iceland. Their fate is in our hands.
By @Charles_Post
Palouse Falls
Your embarking on a 900-mile journey from the Pacific Ocean with over 6,500 feet in elevation gain, and 8 mammoth hydroelectric dams stand in your way. But there’s something engrained in you that tugs and inspires you to embark on the biggest, longest, and last epic journey of your life. You’ll be returning home, to your birthplace, to the very waters that you hatched in - those cool, clear Idaho waters. Your lineage stems from a population of salmon that straddles the Southern boundary of your range, the boarder of home and a vast world unsuitable for the likes of Sockeye. As you look around, you find that you’re not alone in this journey, but then again, your just one of a thousand or so other redfish, hook-jawed or hens with noses pointed upstream, bound for Idaho’s Redfish Lake. Yet stories of redfish so thick that these waters once churned with radiant, ruby-hued life remain like cold air lingering over morning meadow, a fond memory still told and re-told around campfires on these river banks – a memory held tightly, one that keeps hope alive that someday the great migrations will return.
Here, from the brow Washington’s Palouse Falls, a passing raven with a keen eye for mighty waters may be able to see the vast Snake River that runs just a few miles downstream from this pothole in the high desert. No sockeye salmon come this way, it’s far too hot; that desert baked water’s no place for a salmon.
By @Charles_Post
