In October 2010, Australian writer Urszula Dawkins joined 18 other artists to participate in The Arctic Circle international artist residency, aboard a 100-year-old ice-class schooner, sailing the high arctic archipelago of Svalbard.

This is Part 1 of a two-part work-in-progress piece Urszula presented at the event Cold Edge: The Arctic Circle, for Midsumma Festival (Melbourne), Jan 2011. The Romantic fantasy of sublime, snow-covered mountains is rapidly shattered by the reality of walking in Svalbard's harsh terrain, where polar bears wander, hungry, and loose and treacherous rocks await beneath deceptive snow.