I’m writing to you from Fraya, somewhere along the coast of East Greenland.
Outside my window, icebergs are drifting past, some enormous, sculptural, almost impossible to comprehend. They look permanent. Ancient. As if they have always been here and always will be.
And yet, they are disappearing as I write this.
Perhaps there is no greater symbol of impermanence than an iceberg.
It can take thousands of years to become what it is, only to break away, drift into the sea, change shape, melt, and eventually become water again.
Being here has made me think about how much of our lives we spend trying to hold on.
To places. To people. To moments. To who we once were. Even to the idea that there will always be more time.
But Greenland offers a very different lesson: nothing has to remain unchanged in order to have mattered.
Maybe its impermanence is precisely what makes it extraordinary.
I came north again for the polar bears, of course.
Watching one move across this immense landscape, I keep returning to something I have been thinking about throughout The Lonely Wanderer.
We call the bear solitary. But is it really alone?
There is almost no separation between the animal and the world around it. The bear belongs to the ice, the ocean, the wind, the cold. It was shaped by this place, and this place lives within it.
We humans seem to have forgotten this.
Somewhere along the way, we began to imagine ourselves as separate, from nature, from one another, perhaps even from the places and experiences that made us who we are.
The polar bear never forgot where it belongs.
Maybe we did.
There is another contradiction I find beautiful here.
We are all part of something larger, and yet each of us must walk a life entirely our own.
Our paths cross. We love. We lose. We change one another. We accompany each other for a while, sometimes for decades, sometimes for only a moment.
But no one can walk the entire journey for us.
Perhaps the challenge is not to hold on more tightly, but to become better at witnessing what is here while it is here.
The iceberg.
The bear.
The person beside us.
This particular version of ourselves.
To pay attention before the landscape changes again.
I don’t know exactly what Greenland will give me this time. That is part of why I keep coming back—to photograph, certainly, but also to listen.
And today, from Fraya, surrounded by a world that is constantly becoming and disappearing, I wanted to share this small piece of it with you.
Thank you for continuing to follow my work, for living with these photographs in your homes, and for becoming part of their journey long after I leave the ice behind.
Nothing stays. But perhaps that is exactly why we must be here for it.
