Disko Bay Expedition

Today as breakfast ended we were treated to a spectacular iceberg show as we journeyed down the ice fjord towards the front of the Jakobshavn Glacier Each berg more beautiful than the one that came before, you couldn’t help but feel in awe that this happens every day, that the ‘show’ wasn’t for our benefit, merely something we were lucky enough to stumble upon. I found myself stood on deck in my birkenstocks unable to turn away from everything before me. And as I sit here typing this blog on my bunk bed, I begin to wonder – did I actually see what I think I saw?

Birkenstocks changed for snow boats we head for land and a shore visit – it is a hive of activity, Francesca Galeazzi completing one of her projects, Marcus Brigstocke in his courdroy suit performing to an audience of icebergs, Ryuichi Sakamoto with the hydrophone listening to the breaking ice and the rest of us wandering around the snowy landscape.

It is breathtaking. I keep trying to desperately pin it to some past experience in an attempt to grasp hold of just how beautiful this is; that snowy hill over there looking strangely like Ben Nevis, that bay in front with all the icebergs flowing out to sea like Dorset beaches from childhood holidays. But it isn’t like anything I’ve seen or experienced before, I must somehow re-programme my thinking so that this becomes the reference point for everything else and not the other way round.

It doesn’t quite yet feel real, this trip that I’ve been working on for months and the archive of images that I know back to front don’t quite relate to the reality in front of me. I begin to worry that I will forget this experience, that after I leave this landscape, the beauty, much like the icebergs themselves, will be lost. As I ponder this, another iceberg creaks behind me and a solitary bird sings on top of the snowy mountain. I think, I hope, I won’t forget.