The Story of a Friendship Lost Too Soon

When my time finally arrives, the experiences I have lived will be far more valuable than any award, framed photo, or bank account balance. I hope to be surrounded by friends and family as I close my eyes to let the memories of my encounters with so many great wild animals wash over me for the last time. I cherish many of my experiences as a wildlife photographer, but only a handful will qualify for that moment – true deathbed memories. This is the story of one in particular.

In 2007, I was on assignment for a National Geographic story about the effects of climate change on Svalbard, Norway, an Arctic archipelago just seven hundred miles south of the north pole. These islands were once locked in sea ice year-round, ice that has mostly vanished in recent summer months. Even the winters are nearly ice-free these days, as climate change slowly warms our planet, seriously affecting the culture and behavior of the local wild species, polar bears in particular.

At this point in my career, I had discovered that charismatic wildlife species could help an audience break through the walls of apathy that often separate us from an existential issue like climate change. After an earlier successful shoot, I planned to return and experience this remote part of the world during the heart of winter when I could spend some quality time with its polar bears as they roamed the sea ice.

I enlisted the guiding services of a local Norwegian fellow named Karl Erik Wilhelmsen. We immediately hit it off and became fast friends – as was my experience with most Scandinavians, he was always ready to laugh and had a positive answer for everything. I quickly discovered his extensive experience snowmobiling across mountain passes and glaciers, but thanks to a lifetime learning about sea ice from the Inuit, I perhaps had an upper hand in understanding the subtle variations that often spell the difference between life and death. With our combined skill set, we were well equipped to survive and function on every level of Svalbard's rapidly melting polar ecosystem.

We set out across the main island of Spitsbergen towards a tiny cabin on the east coast that would serve as our home base, enduring -35℃ temperatures and the Arctic's deafening silence as we carefully navigated across endless polar vistas. Every direction was a wall of white, as though we were living inside some artist's high-key painting. I felt right at home.

The end of that glacier crossing was only the beginning of our mission, however, and we immediately set to work, loading our sleds each morning under cover of darkness before venturing out in search of polar bears, sometimes for up to twenty hours at a time. It was a terrible freeze that year. The sea ice was rotten and unsafe – there were open leads (narrow, linear cracks that form as floes move in opposite directions), shifting ice, and most dangerous of all, large ranges where snow had collected above ocean currents that slowly eroded the sea ice from below. We cautiously worked our way across long passages where the ice was only a few inches thick, stopping regularly to test its ability to support us with a special metal instrument. As it sagged beneath the weight of my snowmobile, a phrase I had heard as a kid ran through my mind: "Una sikuk pungitualu." This ice is no good. Karl and I were well aware that one slip could prove fatal.

We endured many terrible winter storms that month. The conditions were most severe on one day in particular – a full white out with near-zero visibility and cruel temperatures that would have made searching for polar bears both futile and dangerous. Rather than take an unnecessary risk, we fired up our kerosene heater and played Yahtzee by the faint light of the little cabin's window, deepening our new friendship as the wind outside howled its disappointment. We sat for hours, talking about my waning marriage, his budding romance, how much we connected with the Far North, and all the projects we would embark on together in the future. His zest for life was infectious — I admired him.

So caught up in story were we that a sudden movement outside nearly went unnoticed. I glanced over and was delighted to discover a gorgeous female polar bear who had come to stare at us through the frosted glass, hungry and curious after the smell of our terrible, boil-in-the-bag food had escaped through the poorly insulated walls. I slowly rose to my feet and did what any normal person would have done in the same situation: I opened the window to talk to her. There she stood, calm and magnificent, perfectly framed by the ancient timbers. She moved closer to the opening for a better view, and it dawned on me that she could probably fit through if she wanted to, which would have been an awkward situation for all of us.

This chance opportunity was too great to pass up, however, as I had always wanted to take a picture that illustrated the common occurrence of polar bears coming into contact with humans and their dwellings. Polar bears are labeled "problem bears" in the Canadian Arctic, so much so that killing one isn't counted towards annual harvesting quotas. But as in most cases with apex predators, the bears are not the problem – the humans who keep dirty camps filled with discarded carcasses and unsecured food are. Regardless of species, a human-fed bear is, sadly, a dead bear. Through patience and respect, I have maintained a peaceful, lifelong relationship with these great nomads. I am proud to have encountered well over two thousand of them in the wild without ever having to take one's life in self-defense.

I slowly reached for my camera and snapped off a few pictures but failed to produce desirable results, cast in silhouette by the white-out conditions as she was. I needed a light source, but there weren't many at hand. The wall-mounted oil lamp (that seemed as though it had been dark since the beginning of time) sparked to life after a brief struggle but only slightly improved the situation without altogether solving it. My camera's flash was packed away on the sled outside, but our new friend circled around to greet me as I attempted to slip out the door and retrieve it. I returned to the window (as did she), and just as I began to think this precious encounter might slip through my helpless fingers, I spotted the laptop lying on my sleeping bag. I opened it up, loaded the same blank Microsoft Word document I am typing in right now, and slowly lifted it towards her face with my left hand while shooting like mad with the camera held firmly in my right. She just stood there taking in the scene, glancing back and forth between Karl Erik and me as I worked to fill in the shadows on her face with my makeshift rig. Slowly, the shot began to take shape. "This is really special," whispered Karl Erik, reaffirming what a truly amazing situation we were in. I smiled, feeling confident I was making a photograph that would live in service to her vulnerable species.

In an instant, she grew tired of us and wandered off into the blizzard just as quickly as she appeared. We closed the window and briefly sat in silence before pouring big glasses of scotch and laughing at our good fortune – after such a tremendous effort looking for her, our polar bear had ended up coming to us. National Geographic selected the image to appear in the magazine, and it has since become one of my favorite fine art images of all time.

Days later, Karl Erik and I packed up our camp and set out for Svalbard's capital, Longyearbyen, where I was to catch a plane home. It was a treacherous journey – the storm had worsened the condition of the sea ice to the degree that our best precautions could no longer keep us safe. We both nearly broke through a patch of extremely thin sea ice while traveling at high speeds, sending showers of large, jagged chunks into the air behind our tracks like shrapnel. At one point, our snowmobiles ground to a slushy halt in a patch of overflow (a thick soup made up of seawater and frozen crystals that has leaked up through the ice), where we remained trapped for hours. We would often stop, breaking apart our loads and carrying gear to shore one piece at a time to minimize weight, knowing the -1.8℃ water below us spelled certain death should the ice give way. But we survived the trip and embraced before I boarded the flight back to my home in Canada's Yukon, reminding each other of our grand plans for future adventures together before parting ways.

Two days after arriving home, the phone's ringing stirred me from the couch where I had been reflecting on the difficult but wonderful shoot. It was the worst kind of news: shortly after I flew out, Karl Erik had returned to the sea ice with a group of friends and been on one of the lead snowmobiles when several of them fell through a rotten patch. Most made it back to solid ice, but Karl floated on a soup of iceless snow, calling out for almost an hour before succumbing to the cold just as a rescue helicopter finally arrived. I sat in disbelief, then hung up the phone and cried openly for the dear friend who I miss deeply to this day.