The DNM

When a Glacier Falls in the Arctic, Does It Make a Sound?

The calving of a massive glacier believed to have produced the ice that sank the Titanic is like watching acity break apart. ―Duane Dudek, Journal Sentinel

James Balog, a photographer, featured in the film, Chasing Ice, set out to document glaciers influx. The Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), and the EIS team install sophisticated cameras all along the Arctic Circle, fighting through painful weather and technical setbacks. The team set up equipment, in harsh conditions, persevering through stress, for weeks. In the film,after a long wait, finally, one day, the Jakobshavn Glacier starts to fall apart, to calve, as they call it, into the seas. The experience is fast and furious and it leaves the photographers in a state of mixed experience. The EIS triumph is that there is unique, and valuable documentation of the calving reality. The EIS defeat, is this same footage proves the changes projected in climate models are happening more quickly than anyone expected. Balog's work stuns him and it stuns us all when through the film, we witness the sounds, and the tumbling of something ancient and grand like the glaciers. As we follow Balog through his hero's journey, we become witness to our shared predicament, of keeping up with the rate of change. The bigger picture continues despite our daily lives and it tends to defy our expectations.

As far as Balog goes, I didn't intend to like him. Balog is well respected in a world of extreme nature photography, which is notoriously known for its elite, white,masculine culture. This has been the state of photography, of media and art for quite a while, and I was prepared, in some part of me, to dislike him for it, even though his focus and our careers were worlds apart. What I saw in that man, with my critical eye, was not some easy target of my own projected rejections. What I saw, and what disarmed me, was his humanity.

In the film Balog is stubborn by one point of view, and persistent via a slightly different lens, either way he is complicated, a passionate, high-achiever. As the film ended, Balog stood up with others, answering questions, rising to challenges regarding his politics and his personal habits. I saw in him the discomfort of a new, true witness. I saw a person navigating a switch from insider to the riskier role of agent of change. Comfortable voices, queried him critically, and some, who superficially looked so similar to him, grew distant, in their own discomfort. To look at the people, they all looked mostly the same, and yet, the illusion of their inherent cohesion broke right in front of me. For very personal reasons, people were forming opinions, and you could sense that no one saw this as simple.

A higher than average number of people in Boulder come from old money. Balog's work seemed to implicate them all in this problem of biosphere, brought on locally through the consumption of the Earth via mining, one of Colorado's first product specialties. What I realized then, not for the first time,was that despite myself, I, as a fellow human of various privileges,was also implicated in this. I realized, that even here, in an enclave of class and wealth that outweighed my own, I was no perfect victim or alien. I didn't need to make money in oil or have a robber baron ancestor. I didn't need to drive a luxury SUV, or bean agri-business rancher to be part of the problem. I was eating meat, and wearing at least one article of new clothing. I had spent all day typing and reading, hooked into the satellites and infrastructure of a system I can easily take for granted. Privilege was in here somewhere, his, mine, most everyone has some degree of it and that was also a turning point, maybe not in my environmental views, which were aligned with Balog's, but in my perception of how we build community and bridge the way from apathy to creativity.Positive creativity transforms anger.

I have the right to be wrong, the right to learn from my failings, and to become more humble.

This little vignette is not meant to illustrate how we all need to to forgive systemic wrongs and exploitation because of our mutual, if varying, complicity. This is an opening into one time I could see my own identification with victimhood, and how it could have poisoned a particular moment. This moment of prolonged anger would have reduced me to my reaction to how things have been, distracted me from where they need to go. A person can be victimized, and scars can last, and healing these woulds sothe hero can once again walk, this is part of the journey, the game and its structure.