torsdag 17. september 2015

When it's gone...

A few years back, I watched the movie "Into the wild". The true(ish) story of Chris McCandless who hitchhiked up to Alaska, spent a summer in a bus stranded in the middle of nowhere and eventually died there. Apparently from eating a plant that botanists later found contained a poisonous protein.
The other day, while plowing through YouTube, I found a soundtrack video with the last song in the film. And the image from Chris' camera where he sits in front of the bus, smiling. One of the comments for the video was from a woman who wrote she was the exact same age as he was, and that she had hitchhiked up to Alaska at the same time as him. That they probably stayed in the same hostels and maybe even ran past each other hitchhiking. And she continued writing about all her travels. Then one sentence caught my attention. "...until the big Wanderlust finally left me around the age of 35. I do miss that feeling sometimes,"
It made me think. And it brought me back to 1996. June. My plane taking me home was taking off from the foggy morning in Quito, Equador. I had spent 3 and a half months backpacking in South America. I was tired. Glad to be going back to Norway. But a few hours later, when I saw the coastline of Venezuela disappear on the horizon behind the plane, I almost started crying. I wanted the plane to turn back. And as soon as I got home. I started thinking about my next trip. I remember the feeling is much alike the feeling of falling in love. I hadn't fallen in love with South America. I had fallen in love with traveling. There was a spark there that made me light up every time I spoke of my journey. And for the next few years, I went to South America, Africa, Asia and Australia. And the spark was still there. I was like a kid on Christmas eve. I almost couldn't contain myself. I even planned that sometime in the future, I was going to take a year off just to travel.
And I wondered. Where did the spark go? In all my love for travel, the spark is gone. The Wanderlust. I am still exited about traveling, but the spark is gone. It's like being in an average marriage. I still love my travels, but the things that made my heart rush, isn't there anymore. And I have no idea when and where it left me. Maybe it just faded slowly. Maybe it popped out of me when I wasn't paying attention. Maybe my girlfriends made me want to stay home. Or maybe it died when my dad died. I don't know. I only know it is gone. Maybe I just have forgotten to revive it once in a while? Fed it with much needed oxygen to let it burn?
I try to remember, because I have a vague memory of a trip I made sometime in my 30s when I was lying on my bed in one of the usual crappy backpacker hotels I normally stay in. And I hated it. I wanted to scream. I wanted to jump on a plane and go to a nice place. A cosy place. 5 star hotel with all creature comforts. Fling out my gold card in the reception and tell the receptionist to give me a room. And then just stay there for the rest of my vacation. That was the first time I asked myself "Why am I torturing myself like this?". And I decided never to go anywhere except nice "western" countries. I dunno what happened. I didn't stop. I continued to travel like I always did. But maybe the spark left at that point?
I am not searching for my lost youth. I'm 45. The hairs on my chin are going gray on me. I'm unable to sit on a bus for 40 hours straight like I used to. And I have accepted that I am never going back. But I just wish I could have that single spark back. The drive. The intoxicating Wanderlust.

But I guess, when it is gone....

Me at the tender age of 28. When I look at this picture,
I can still see that Wanderlust spark in me.

mandag 22. juni 2015

How can I sleep?

Today I leave. Last night was the last night under some of the clearest, cleanest and most beautiful skies I have ever seen. It was hard to go to bed. But I knew I had a long journey ahead of me today. I am heading home. I have collected more photons in two weeks here than I normally do in a year at home. My USB-stick is brimming with images ready to be processed during the long, cloudy nights at home.
I am tired, but not tired OF sleepless nights. Only tired BECAUSE of sleepless nights. But how can I sleep when looking up at skies like these? Skies that makes you think deep and hard about our place in cosmos. And all those things I struggle with in my daily life, seem so small when standing like this. Looking up at the Milkyway. I drew a final sigh, and headed into my tent. It was hard to fall a asleep, but I slept like a baby. Ready for uprooting my home for the last 12 nights.
Goodbye Namibia! I will be back. Some music to listen to while looking at the picture below. (Click for a large version)


tirsdag 16. juni 2015

Under a Namibian sky

I squeeze out of my tent. Stretch. The temperature is in the vicinity of 10 degrees. Standing in shorts and t-shirt, I can feel the refreshing, mild breeze against my skin. I smell the fresh air. The Sun is gracing the hills on the other side of the valley with its first rays of the day. Birds are chirping. I smile. A new morning in Namibia! A song comes to mind. I start humming.


I have the whole campsite to myself. Which means the only noise I hear, is music from the birds. At night, I hear the high-pitched squeals from the zebras nearby and the thunder from the herd when they run.
I am staying at one of the many so-called astrofarms in Namibia. Amateur and professional astronomers from all over the world come to Namibia during June and July to enjoy its almost guaranteed clear nights. And skies so dark the planet Venus is considered light pollution.
The farms are in high demand, so one has to book maybe up to a year in advance to be sure to get a room. I booked my stay here a bit too late, so there was no room at the inn. And in lack of a manger (...), I decided to resort to the time-honored tradition of pitcing one's tent in the ground. And I haven't regretted it. Admittingly, there are times, especially at 2-3 am when walking half unconsious the near 1 km to the camp site seems like an infinity. ("Am I there yet?")  But every morning, when the birds wake me up to another beautiful, sunny day, I smile. And bless my fortune to be able to enjoy this incredible landscape and silence. This far from everyone else, there is no disturbance. No noise. Just pure silence. And nature.
And I also have the shower to myself. The Sun is the sole provider of hot water. Thus, I shower in the afternoon. When the water has soaked up the energetic rays from our light in the sky. Out the window, I can enjoy the shifting color of the light as the Sun is setting while enjoying a long, warm shower.
I have planned to stay here the whole time. I am spending 12 nights under the dark skies to collect photons from faint corners of our galaxy. And it is pure joy to see the masterpiece my camera depicts after staring at a seemingly dark patch in the sky for a few hours. Here is an example.
I have now stayed here for 6 days, and have 6 more to go. I am constantly tired after many sleepless nights. But I am smiling. Not in defiance to my body, but in pure enjoyment. Knowing tonight and the next nights will bring even more beauty to my computer. Beauty I can keep enjoying for the cloudy nights back home during the coming autumn and winter. Pure elixir for a frustrated astrophotographer.
Clear skies everyone!
My shadowed camp-site
Morning view from my camp site

The trail back to the main buildings of the astrofarm

Encountering baboons on my way


When shaving, I see this beautiful view in the afternoon

In the afternoon light, even dead trees are beautiful


My telescope setup at sundown

The beautiful colors of sunset, seen from the dinner table at the main house

A short trek to see the weird and wonderful quever tree

On the way back from the trek, we encountered a herd of Oryx antelopes



søndag 5. april 2015

One day in April


The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.                                                               - Revelation 8,10-11

Our guide quoted the Bible when she was telling us about the statue of an angel with a trumpet inside the exlusion zone around Chernobyl (or Chornobyl as it is really named in Ukraine). Chornobyl is the Ukrainian name for wormwood. I have wanted to go to Chornobyl for years, but haven't gotten aound to it. But this Easter, I decided it was probably time. I booked the tour, and then asked some friends if they wanted to come along. One friend said yes.

26th of April 1986

Just after midnight. The shift at reactor 4 of the Chronobyl nuclear power plant has just started an experiment. And in order to conduct it, they have to turn off the safety systems. A few minutes later, huge explosions are heard. The 2000 ton concrete lid on the reactor is blown off and a plume of glowing gas rises almost a kilometre into the night sky. The firefighters on site are the first to the scene. Thinking it is just an ordinary fire, they rush to put it out. Unprotected. No matter how much water they spray on the fire, it doesn't die down. This is the beginning of a several months long fight with the worlds worst nuclear accident. The firefighters all perish from radiation sickness in the matter of days.
A cloud of radiactive smoke creates a cloud that blows with the wind towards the nearby town of Pripyat. In Pripyat, the citizens awake the next morning, unaware of the danger they are in. And nobody sees the need to give them any information either. Even though a radiactive cloud of dust is decending upon them. Exposing them to potentially lethal doses of radiation. Even the authorities think the accident is just a fire. It would take days before they realize that the fire is actually the white hot core of the reactor. And the "smoke" is actually radiactive dust leaking from the core. In the end, it is Swedish authorities that first note the rise in radiation levels in the atmosphere a few days later. They contact all known nuclear power plants to find who is leaking radioactive dust into the atmosphere. In the end, they learn about the accident at Chernobyl. Soviet authorities have seen no reason to warn anybody or inform anybody about the accident.
The year is at the very beginning of glasnost and the old communist state is not ready for full openess about what has happened. The leaders know the seriousness, but they refuse to acknowledge it amongst even their own people. Even when the scale of the disaster is known to the rest of the world, the national newspaper Pravda (which is Russian for "Truth"...) only notes the accident as a "minor incident" in a small note inside the paper.
Only today do we know how close to a major, almost global catastrophe we were. Secrecy, denial and outright lies kept this from the public.
During the tour to the exlusion zone around Chronobyl, we were told more of the full story. One of the things that shocked me, was to learn that they were actually close to a nuclear chain reaction in the melting core of the reactor. If this hadn't been prevented by people that more or less sacrificed themselves, Chornobyl reactor 4 would have turned into a megaton nuclear explosion that potentially could have made most of Europe inhabitable due to radioactive contamination. The cloud of radiactive dust that spread to Europe was just a minor thing compared to what could have happened if they hadn't stopped it.
How many people died to prevent the disaster, and to clean up after the accident, is unknown. Only a few dozen casualties are officially attributed to the accident. But unofficially, thousands have died. And even more thousands are still to this day being treated for the after effects of exposure to huge doses of radiation. No studies have ever been conducted on the after effects of the accident. And most of the numbers and facts have been clouded by secrecy. Even to this day.

2nd of april 2015

We met our group a short walk from the central train station of Kiev. Oksana, our guide for the day, took our passports to check that we were on the list. We needed to bring our passports for the two checkpoints inside the exclusion zone around Chornobyl. I was handed my dosimeter for the day. There are two zones. The outer, 30 km zone, and the inner, 10 km zone. No-one is allowed to live inside the 10km zone and only selected people can live inside the 30 km zone. Both are guarded to prevent terrorism and looting.
It was a two hour drive to reach the outer exclusion zone. Everybody off, passports were checked against a list. "No photo of the buildings and the millitary personell!", Oksana informed us. I took some photos of the road and the sign on the gate to the exclusion zone. And checked out the toilet facilites. Reminds me of some muddy places by the roads in Norway. The dosimeter showed a minor increase in radiation. 0.12 is normal in any city, including Kiev.


Country toilet.



A few minutes later, we were driving on the almost deserted road. It felt a bit creepy. Although it is safe now, it felt a bit weird to be here. In a place that less than 30 years ago, was more or less a nuclear wasteland. Where thousands of people lived and worked up until the day they were rushed out. Never to return.



Well almost. A few of the original inhabitants of Chernobyl, a small town with a history dating back to the 12th century, moved back when it was concidered safe. "And the only one still alive today, is an old school teacher, Rozaly. She is 87 years old." Oksana told us. A few minutes later she expelled "There she is! Everybody! Look, the only original inhabitant of Chornobyl!" I looked out the front of the car, and saw an elderly woman, walking slowly by the road.



"Shall we offer her a lift?" Oksana asked. We all agreed. The minibus stoped beside her, and Oksana invited her in. A warm smile greeted us as she looked at us while climbing aboard.



Just after picking up Rozaly, we arrived at our first stop. A small village. I took out my dosimeter. It was still ticking away at around 0.15 uS/h. Barely higher than Kiev. The town had almost been reclaimed by nature. Trees everywhere.








Chornobyl town

Rozaly got off as we entered Chornobyl. She thanked us for the ride. We got off at the name sign for our mandatory selfies in front of it.


The town was deserted. At least mostly. Some buildings were still used by workers at the nuclear plant. And we actually had dinner here at the end of our trip.




DUGA-1

This is one of the places that was only opened a few years ago to the public. Not because it was particularly radioactive, but because it used to be top secret. It was a radar built during the cold war to see if there were any missiles launched from the US. It never worked, but it got the US millitary on their toes. Trying to figure out what it was. Everything from mind control to a radar was suggested. On official maps, the site was marked as a "non-functional summercamp for kids". To sell the story, they even put up a bus-stop with a cute bear painted on the wall. It was nicknamed "the Russian woodpecker" because of the sound it made on the radio. Like a light tapping. Transmitting signals at 10 Hz.
The road there was the first time that the dosimeter jumped above its default trigger setting. It started beeping. It showed 0.31. Almost 2.5 times higher than normal. I set it to 4.0 to prevent it from going off all the time.



The antennas were gigantic to say the least. 17 000 tons of metal was needed in the construction. 135 meters high and 300 meters wide. And it was designed to withstand a nuclear blast in nearby Chornobyl. They will start to dismantle it within a few months, so we were among the last to see it.
Standing beneath the gargantuan antenna was humbling, to say the least. And my photos can only barely do it any credit.





I shot some photos of the area around the antenna, and came across a mask that were used to protect people from inhaling radioactive dust.


Some Soviet era propaganda on a wall. "The Red Army needs you!" To fight Uncle Sam I guess...


Abandoned barracks.



Then we stopped at our first "hot-spot". A place where the radiation was much higher than everywhere else. It was a tree outside a former kindergarten. I took out my dosimeter and held it up in front of me. 0.2 uS/h. I then walked closer and the dosimeter jumped to above 1.0. Then I lowered it towards the root of the tree, and the alarm of the meter went off. It was above 4 uS/h.





The town the kindergarden belonged to, had been levelled and all houses buried. It had been an experiment to try to eradicate the radiation from the houses, but it failed. So they just buried everything. Except for a few concrete buildings. One of them was this kindergarden. We walked inside. A lot of the items left from when the town was evacuated, was still there. Toys, some kids' shoes and children's books.









Back outside, my dosimeter still read high. This was definitely a contaminated area.


Pripryat


We drove past the Chornobyl power plant on our way to this town. "This road is the only road in the world where you are encouraged to break the speed limit". All our dosimeters started to scream. I took out mine. It was above 5.0. Oksana placed hers on the window on the reactor side of the car. Hers showed above 9 uS/h. "And this is inside the car! Imagine what it would be outside!" We quickly drove to the road sign at the entrance of the dream city of Pripyat.



The city was opened in 1970. The year I was born. It only lived for 16 years before it was emptied. Left to die and be reclaimed by nature. Walking around in this now deserted ghost town was somewhat sad. This was once a dream city in the Soviet. People here made twice as much money as everywhere else. And they had everything they needed. And then some. And when they were finally rushed out of town, with only two hours to gather their most important belongings, they were told they would only be gone a short while. But they never returned. They lost everything. Some, even their life. We were allowed to walk through the town, but since the buildings have started crumbling, it was illegal to enter any of them. But not illegal to walk up to them and taking photos through the windows. The town had been looted through the years. Even the radiators had been removed. Some had taken highly radioactive clothes and artifacts. So radioactive in fact, they would constitute a health hazard. Now, there is a 1 to 7 year jail sentence for anyone bringing anything from the town out of the area.








This fun fair was to open on May 1st 1986. Four days after the accident. The town was evacuated before it opened. Now it was just rusting away. As a sad monument.










Some places in Pripyat was still active compared to the rest of the area.


Old Soviet-era vending machine. You put a glass in the machine, put some money on, and chose between three drinks. Then you drank it, washed the glass and put it back in the machine. Wow. That's...well...old school.




The view from a beautiful spot down by the lake.


Chernobyl reactor 4

Our final stop was the reactor that started the whole thing. Reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl power plant. We stopped at an observation spot with a monument about 500 meters away. The sheer size of the power plant was way more than I had previously though. And the sarcofagus covering it was gigantic. Imagining that the whole thing was built by people who could only work for a few minutes at a time to avoid radiation sickness. They tried to make robots. But they normally died in hours or days. So they had to use "bio-robots", or as we call them : "Humans". How many people died building the sarcofagus, nobody knows.



But it was rotting away. And a new shell was being built a few hundred metres away. The new seal was built on rails, and when finished, it will be rolled over the old sarcofagus, and sealed airtight. The new cover is meant to last for 100 years. The old was meant to last 30 years. Which means it was supposed to last until next year. But the new one is planned to be finished in 2017. I guess the old will last two more years. The wall in front of the sarcofagus in the picture above is a new wall built to protect the workers working on the new sarcofagus, from the radiation.



Surprisingly, this side of the power plant had a lot less radiation than on the road on the other side. I measured only 2.8 uS/h when standing in front of the monument.



This inscription is very true. They did save the world. And they sacrificed their lives doing so.



In 1986 I was 16 years old. The accident sent fear through me. Like most people, I guess. What would happen with the plant? The radioactive cloud decending upon us? Now I had been a tourist to the same site. Seen and heard about what could have happened. And the sacrifices made by so many people. And the lies and cover-up. Not just by the Soviet government, but also by western governments and agencies. Trying not to scare people. The trip was enlightening. And scary at the same time.
When standing at the spot for the photo above, my mind drifted to the almost unreal thought of where I was.

When leaving the exclusion zone, we had to go through radiation checks to see that we hadn't accidently been contaminated by radioactive dust or something. We had to go through two checks. One at the 10km zone border and an even more sensitive one at 30km border. On the picture below I am being scanned. If I got a yellow light, I was clear, and could walk through. If not, I had to be decontaminated.


After leaving the area, we all got our "certificate" that we had visited the area, and the radioactive dosage we had received during our stay. 3 micro-Sievert. This is about as much as a flight attendant receives in a day. So not much to be scared of. Of course, we were careful. If we had been wandering around in the woods or rolling around in the grass, we would have seen much higher doses. But the thousands of people in the "liquidation"-group have done an outstanding job cleaning most of the area. After all, they where trying to make it habitable again. They sacrified their health and some even their life to do so.

Afterthought

Standing in front of the ruins of reactor 4 was a stark reminder of the fact that we do not control nature. Even though we would like to think so. We need to face this fact, and take the consequences of that. Not pretend otherwise. That goes for any human endeavour. When seeking even more energy for our daily needs, and an ever increasing population of this planet, we need to stop and think before we act. Not just opt for the easiest solution. Sometimes, we need to sit down and think about our options. And the consequences. Not just downplay the dangers. And pretend we can control them. There have been a few accidents involving nuclear powerplants around the world. Some small, some big. And I am not saying that shutting them all down is the solution to all our problems. Replacing nuclear with coal isn't necessarily any better neither for the planet nor us. But we definitely need to think about all the consequences of the choices we make. Not just the economics. But also the human cost. And we need to get all the facts. Not only "how many jobs will be created" by this and that option. Have we thought of all the alternatives?
It is, unfortunately, almost impossible to implement anything that will negatively affect peoples lives. We all have a "me first" thought. If something affects me negatively, I'm all against it. Because I am thinking that if it affects me, the world will go down the drain. But if one looks at history, we see that this has happened before. When the industrial revolution came about, many people thought there would be massive unemployment. Why would anybody need workers if they had machines? Now we are many times more people in the industrialized world than then. And unemployment is not any higher. Why not? Because inventive people found other jobs. Other uses of people that had been replaced by machines. This is what we call progress. And I am still amazed when friends and aquintances that are engineers only see the problems of today's energy crisis. And not see it as an opportunity to shine. I wish they did. They could have been part of finding the solution to the problem instead of being just another voice in the screaming choir of discontent.
Chernobyl is a testament to human ingenuity and endeavour. But also a testament to our biggest problem. We still think we can build unsinkable ships. That we can control nature. That we can build safe power plants. We can't. But we can make it possible for more people to survive a shipwreck. And we can protect people better when nature throws a tantrum. And we can make sure that when our powerplants do get out of hand, the damage isn't potentially global. No luxurious hightech life is worth that.
I have for many years tried to be conscious of my energy usage at home. I have reduced it significantly. And I wish that most people would. Because no matter how much energy we produce, it will some day be too little (read up on exponetional growth and you will see why). We only have one planet. One set of resources. Let's not consume it like we had a spare tucked away somewhere for a rainy day.

Ragnar
Only visiting this planet