I sailed into the high arctic at the beginning of last winter on board a 1957 fishing boat retrofitted to appear like a tall ship.  This floating art and science residency brought artists together from around the world for a three week adventure  along the northwestern coast of Svalbard.  My colleagues arrived in Lonyearbyen from far flung cities such as Shanghai and Seoul and Barcelona and Luxembourg and Athens and Belgrade.   Together we endured close quarters and trying circumstances--rough passages and bad weather and multiple unexpected mishaps and detours not the least of which included a broken desalination machine which greatly limited our supply of freshwater.  By the final week  we were at sea we only had four hours of workable light per day for making landings, each of which required elaborate preparation.  Four rifle toting women would make land first to clear a perimeter in which  we were allowed to work, and once we were on land we had to work fast  in dim light and weather so bizarrely warm and wet it was hard to believe we were actually in the high arctic.