June 15, 2019
Do you think I'm done with icebergs and glaciers? Not even close. We spent four days in Greenland, and every day involved at least one, and sometimes two, trips to view icebergs and/or glaciers. (It's not like there are big museums or cathedrals in Greenland. What there is is a lot of snow and ice.) I have a lot more pictures of icebergs and glaciers that I'm going to be posting. It's going to be hard to convince anyone that every day was a new experience, a new way of seeing what seemed to be essentially the same thing but was not the same thing at all. And yet, that is exactly what our experience was. We never did feel like we had overdosed on ice and snow. We are not likely to ever return to Greenland, so we had to take in as much as we could.
On our second day in Ilulissat, although we had been on a nighttime glacier cruise the previous evening, we took another daytime glacier cruise. We headed off after our walk through Ilulissat and our lackluster lunch. There was no luster lacking out on the sea:
We had a different guide than we'd had the night before, and he reinforced many of the same facts about icebergs that our previous guide had shared with us, and even though we had heard and seen it all before, it was still a jaw-dropping experience:
The reflections in the glassy water were even more spectacular in the afternoon sun:
This giant fish is my favorite:
One of the things that I loved about these voyages that weaved through the maze of bergs was the eerie stillness . . .
. . . broken only occasionally by the soaring flight of a sea bird
"Wilderness," said environmentalist Edward Abbey, "is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself." (In Desert Solitaire)
The variety of configurations and shades of blue and white are endless. It is the snow and ice version of Utah's Goblin Valley:
And again from Edward Abbey: "This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places."
Though they are inanimate, it was an honor to be in the presence of these ancient creations. (The ice that comprises them is as much as 15,000 years old.) We humans are so tiny and powerless and transitory next to them. Their massive forms demand a kind of spiritual reverence:
It was time to go back to Ilulissat, but even though it was early evening, we weren't done yet.
Next: A bird's eye view of the polar ice cap
Do you think I'm done with icebergs and glaciers? Not even close. We spent four days in Greenland, and every day involved at least one, and sometimes two, trips to view icebergs and/or glaciers. (It's not like there are big museums or cathedrals in Greenland. What there is is a lot of snow and ice.) I have a lot more pictures of icebergs and glaciers that I'm going to be posting. It's going to be hard to convince anyone that every day was a new experience, a new way of seeing what seemed to be essentially the same thing but was not the same thing at all. And yet, that is exactly what our experience was. We never did feel like we had overdosed on ice and snow. We are not likely to ever return to Greenland, so we had to take in as much as we could.
On our second day in Ilulissat, although we had been on a nighttime glacier cruise the previous evening, we took another daytime glacier cruise. We headed off after our walk through Ilulissat and our lackluster lunch. There was no luster lacking out on the sea:
This giant fish is my favorite:
One of the things that I loved about these voyages that weaved through the maze of bergs was the eerie stillness . . .
. . . broken only occasionally by the soaring flight of a sea bird
"Wilderness," said environmentalist Edward Abbey, "is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself." (In Desert Solitaire)
The variety of configurations and shades of blue and white are endless. It is the snow and ice version of Utah's Goblin Valley:
And again from Edward Abbey: "This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places."
Next: A bird's eye view of the polar ice cap
Love the icebergs, keep them coming! Particularly relevant given global warming and Greenland being regularly in our news feeds.
ReplyDeleteAnother wonderful collections of photos!
ReplyDelete