This is a photo I took in April of 2004 in Resolute Bay. I was there with the film crew for our NOVA show, and they wanted the iceberg as a backdrop for their interview with Roy “Fritz” Koerner. They’d had Koerner bring an ice core from the Greenland glacier from which he had just returned, and his protest that standing in front of bay-ice with a core from a glacier might be misleading was ignored. He certainly looked the part of an arctic personality, with a narrow, grizzled face that could have stood beside an old photograph of Amundsen. He remained remarkably cordial throughout his interview, despite the cold and the fact that the producer kept having him re-do his lines to hit the specific points she was looking for.

Images by Jock Gill, Peacham, Vermont

I walked my woods, this cold wintry day. Gusts pulled snow twisters from a thin blanket. Trees creaked in the wind. I saw signs of my work. light splashed a pattern across the shoulder of a distant mountain. No birds followed. In a depression below me,deer beds.

The generations before me, I knew so well. The recent warmth was troubling, believing that the way we live truly is having an effect. First impacts are being felt in vulnerable places, we seldom see. The wind reassures me.

Text: Averill Cook, Photograph: Jock Gill