Almost Landscape 

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Text by Doojin Ahn

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We head toward the North Pole. We set off with pounding hearts. Our resolve and determination were proportional to our preparation and training, but consecutive clashes with nature quickly cool the burning passion of our departure.

We move forward with our backs to the sun, which stays up all day, but the cold grows harsh and the visibility is faint. Still, inside the tent with the crew, it is as warm as a campfire in a cabin. We debate our navigation methods, average speed, and direction. The white breath from our conversation scatters like cigarette smoke, and the serious discussion warms our bodies in place of alcohol.

When passing through ice mountains and valleys created by drift ice, each of us proposed our own way. Risk is proportional to speed, but it is also proportional to time. With risk as our mediator, we must compromise somewhere between speed and time. We cannot do many things at once.

The most dangerous thing is not the cold, but the boredom. Cold binds life together through fear, but boredom scatters the self. I look. I breathe. I walk. White days, faint nights, black wind. The illusion of exploration, the expectation of arrival, the repetition of numb pain. Floundering in between, I just keep moving forward. Boredom splits me into a yellow 'me', a gray 'me', and a blue 'me'.
40 kilometers before the destination. From the beginning, it was a white landscape. (With a little more color, it is only a faint blue.) And even now, it is a white landscape. The only way to know our direction is through measurement and recording. The path to 90 degrees North Latitude does not happen by our will alone. One day, the distance we drifted back while sleeping was longer than the distance we marched. We effectively retreated 10 kilometers.

90 degrees North Latitude. From a planetary scale, it is harder for a human to find the exact location of the North Pole than it is to walk 817 kilometers. Anywhere around here, the North Star is directly overhead, so it wouldn't be strange to declare arrival at this point. However, unlike when facing danger, everyone’s judgment is divided.

"K," who questions the direction, deferred judgment, saying we need to replace the broken compass. "J," who handles data sensitively, readjusted the speed, distance, and direction, explaining that we fell short. "S," who loves stories, quotes an Inuit advice to follow the stars, saying we have already passed it. Contrary to expectations, "N" says that due to the nature of moving glaciers, we will repeat getting closer and moving further away somewhere around here. For him, who sought the reality of identical places through factuality, perhaps the Arctic landscape had already arrived when we departed. My interest rests only on the ice, so it does not matter where this is.

Summing up everyone's calculations, the North Pole is fluid.

In fact, the North Pole moves. The Magnetic North Pole, where the N-pole of a compass points, constantly changes its location due to shifts in the Earth's internal magnetic field. Unlike planetary position changes, the North Pole on sea ice also changes along with the movement of ocean currents. Perhaps we are looking for fixed coordinates on top of something that moves. Since the landscape was the same from the beginning, the North Pole exists only as a concept.

Now, passing the North Pole, we intend to cross the white landscape to the nearest village. A place closer than where we started. Until the village appears, we walk in place again. Where is our destination? Walking inside a landscape means that we are inside the landscape. The only thing there is the landscape. A brushstroke on a white flat surface creates a small thickness, like footprints on pale ice, and will eventually become a landscape. Whether we intended it or not, whether we arrived or fell short. Almost Landscape. The story crossing the square Arctic is, roughly speaking, like this.