LA ROSA'S   GARDEN

                                                     THE SVALBARD SEED VAULT

   It is spring and that means it it time to plant seeds. All winter long I have read seed catalogs to negate the cold cloudy days. I have read the glossy pages and looked at the brightly colored photos yearning for those plump beefsteak tomatoes and enticing zinnias, luscious marigolds and  beckoning crowns of cosmos blossoms. And now it is to stop having fantasies and cut to the chase.

   I have now germinated  cherry tomatoes, and that has given me confidence that the gardening season really has begun. That has also reminded me of my favorite seed vault and it millions of seeds sleeping in the Arctic winter. I am thankful that it is there, floating in my imagination like a phantom island in the dark blue sea off the coast of Norway. There are other seed vaults but Svalbard holds a special place in my psyche.

   Svalbard island was first mentioned in  print in1194, but must have been frequented before that several times earlier by the Vikings, whalers, and the Scandinavians. The island of Svalbard was discovered in 1596 by the explorer Willem Barentsz, and he chose to name it Spitsbergen which means pointed mountain. The island is known today, generally, as Svalbard, and it lies within the Svalbard Island Archipelago which is itself about halfway between Norway and the North Pole. I envision Svalbard as a magnificent ship of carved sandstone and ice "sailing"  magically in the dark blue-black Arctic sea. Svalbard means cold edge or coast named by the Norwegians who felt that it was almost impossible to live there. Today, about 400 humans inhabit the island, among polar bears, seabirds, and the technicians of  of Svalbard Seed Vault. Coal is mined there to fuel the backup generators if the permafrost melts too much. There are no trees except tiny birches that never grow taller than six inches, and there are some lovely wildflowers in ephemeral spring.

   Norway had the magnanimity and forethought to fund Svalbard along with the help of Sweden, Denmark, Finland and the US. The actual seed vault is cut deep, many meters,  into the island's sandstone bedrock and the temperature is a constant 21 to O F.  The vault is high above the sea. The temperature fluctuates very little, but there could be a threat of global warming some day, which has not happened yet, thankfully. That is the thinking behind the coal mining for the backup generators. Let us all hope that human kind will be wise enough to conserve our energy by using fewer electric appliances and cars. In that regard we have too many energy applications. That is why I do not own electric garden tools,  have a garage door openers, or many TVs.

   Svalbard possesses 1,355,592 accessions representing 13, 000 years of human agriculture, and it has room enough to reach 4 million seeds. This is all contained in and intelligently designed structure that juts out into the Arctic night; the walls are covered in wonderful art---appropriate for the Arctic day and night. The 200 fiber optic-cables give the vault a muted greenish-turquoise and white light. It has a ghostly, otherworld glow. Take a look on the internet of the NPR (USA funded) special narrated by Jeff Bennett of the spectacular photographs and descriptions by Bennet. The beauty of Svalbard and the descriptions by Bennett are incisively portrayed.

   I will cite here as a tribute to the purpose and ethos words by the Quechua farmers. They travelled all the way from the Peruvian Andes to Svalbard to deposit in the vault seeds of their sacred potato varieties.

   "In song and prayers they said goodbye to the seeds as their 'loved ones' and endeared 'children'. We're not just leaving genes, but also a family one farmer told a Svalbard official." No more need be said.

A giant stem of wild rice was  sculpted by Mitsuaki Tanabe, and completed by his son, and then placed inside the crypt that is the seed vault of Svalbard--a fitting tribute to the imaginative energy that the seed is, in every act of creativity such as painting, music, writing, and of course, the planting of a seed. 

   Seeds are precious vessels of being, each seed a veritable space ship that provides a future existence  sailing along like ships with leafage sails, powered by the Sun's warmth and the sanctity of water. Without the Sun, water, and seeds, humans would perish very fast. The founders and supporters of Svalbard are not necrophils but are true lovers of life, of humanity.

                                                                                              Frank La Rosa 

                                                                                              The Vernal Equinox 2026