Norio Matsumoto’s Igloo Home

Photos by Norio Matsumoto

Chances are Norio Matsumoto’s home is very different from yours: he lives in a three-person tent on a tiny Alaskan island. During the summers, anyway; in winter he lives in a cave on a glacier.

Elderly recluse? Kaczynski-esque societal dropout? Hardly. Matsumoto is a dedicated thirty-three-year-old photographer whose work has graced the pages of National Geographic Adventure, Audobon magazine, and the Japanese nature magazine Yama to Keikoku.

Theme: Why Alaska?
Norio Matsumoto: I only photograph things I truly love. I don’t want to just take snapshots—I want to devote myself totally to the subject.Which is why I ended up going to such a remote place, to photograph something incredibly beautiful. I don’t consider it work.

How did you get into it?
Well, I thought to myself, “I want to spend my life doing what I really love.” I didn’t know what it was. I started looking for it, and one day, I came across a book by Michio Hoshino [the late, pioneering Japanese nature photographer]. His work made me decide to become a photographer.

Sorry to get sidetracked, but when you say, “I started looking for it,” how did you conduct this search to find what you wanted to do in life? I believe this quest, and how people solve it, is of great interest to many people of our generation.
Whenever I was awake, I tried to look for what was interesting to me—whenever I watched TV, read the newspaper, talked to people, and such. Gradually, I began to realize that I liked outdoor things, such as traveling and camping. I started reading many books about those subjects. I read these books written by a Japanese guy who goes down the Yukon using a kayak with his dog, and that was when I first came across the name “Alaska.” Then one day at a book store in Kyoto, I found a book called Alaska, the Light and Wind by Michio Hoshino. I picked it up because the title said “Alaska.”

Let’s talk about your actual, physical “home.” What is it like, and what possessions do you need for it to feel like home?
No possessions in particular. I just have camping gear and food.

The tent is a three-person North Face Expedition 25. I have been using it ever since I came to Alaska about ten years ago. They don’t make it anymore. In summer, I set it up on a tiny, remote island in the middle of a big ocean off the southeastern part of Alaska. There are many, many humpback whales in the area!

I make a cave/igloo in winter time. It starts off ten feet high and twelve feet wide, but the outside grows as snow accumulates. Inside it’s a little larger than the tent. I make a room three feet higher than ground level so the warmer air stays inside. This way the inside can get thirty degrees warmer than the outside.

It still sounds cold...but I guess you can’t beat the rent.
What’s it like living there? Well, there is no one else living there, for one thing. I don’t see any life in winter. It’s totally quiet. Wild. Pure.

What’s the longest you’ve gone without seeing another human soul?
Two months.

And in sixty days of solitude, you don’t get lonely?
No. I truly love camping in the wilderness by myself. It’s not because I don’t like human beings, but because where I camp is incredibly beautiful. You will see what I mean if you go there!

How and what do you eat? Do you carry all your own food out there?
In summer, I eat angel hair pasta, twice a day, all summer long. I add seasoning packets from ramen noodles to add flavor. For lunch, I eat energy bars. I also drink V8. In winter, I eat ramen noodles with veggies and sausages for breakfast and dinner. I eat rice crackers for lunch. I have all the food brought in by boat in summer and by Cessna in winter.

Describe a typical day for you, from morning to night. Both summer and winter.
Summer: Get up at 9 a.m. Cook pasta and eat. Pull the skiff (ten-foot inflatable) down to the beach. Go out to look for whales by 10 a.m. Go around the ocean and photograph whales all day. Go back to the island as the sun goes down, around 10 p.m. Put skiff back on the island. Cook pasta and eat. Write in journal. Go to bed by midnight.

Winter: Get up at noon. Cook ramen and eat. Take some pictures of the alpine glow as the sun goes down, around 3:30 p.m. Go back to the sleeping bag and take some rest. Wake up at 8 p.m., cook ramen and eat. Stay outside from 9 p.m. to 4 or 5 a.m., to wait for/photograph the northern lights. Eat rice crackers, write in journal. Go to sleep at 5am.

Where do you feel the most comfortable?
In summer, it is on a glass-calm ocean on my skiff, surrounded by many whales. In winter, it is in a warm sleeping bag!

How do you keep your film refrigerated? Haha, sorry, just kidding. How do you get the film developed after you shoot the pictures?
In summer, I ask tour boats to send the films to a lab in Anchorage. In winter, I send all the films to the same lab in Anchorage after going back to town. So by the time I get back to civilization, the film is developed and waiting for me.

Have you had any big surprises, or big moments of joy or disappointment while living in Alaska?
The first time I camped on the glacier next to Denali*, I was still a student at the University of Alaska. It was during a winter break. The weather got bad and the Cessna could not pick me up—for ten days! Also, from Denali it took a while to get back to Juneau, where my school was. I ended up missing the first three weeks of the semester and I was worried about failing classes.When I finally made it back and explained to my professors why I was late, they totally understood. I thought “Alaska is such a wonderful place, because you can miss classes if you are stuck on glaciers.”

It always brings great happiness when I get to photograph northern lights and Denali in the same frame. To do that, the conditions have to be perfect. You need a clear sky, no wind, some moonlight (a half moon, to be precise), and northern lights. There are usually not many days like that. Out of sixty days there may be only two or three with the right conditions. It sometimes happens that I don’t get any of those photos after an entire winter.

I wait long days for the right moment to photograph the northern lights. If I wait patiently, Mother Nature will show me something incredibly beautiful that no one has ever seen.

* “Denali” means “the great one” in the Athabaskan language; it is the native name for what Americans call Mount McKinley, the highest peak in North America (20,320 feet).