Dark Ice , 2025

Dark Ice is a remembered response to the vastness and fragility of icebergs, seen last summer off the Greenland coast. In the calm water of the North Atlantic after a raging storm, the bergs dwarfed our small sailing boat. we sailed close enough to reach out and touch the transparent glistening wet surface of the ice. I licked my fingers to taste the 1000 year old water and check it wasn't salt water, but ancient precipitation , snow that had one fallen in the Greenland high lands. They looked majestic and calm, and then with a sound like a gun firing, a chunk dislodged and fell 50m into the sea below, causing the berg to judder and then rock and the waves sent our boat rising and falling. We backed off, waiting for it to calm. A huge flock of black birds circled and then one by one landed again on the long, lower tail end of the berg.