It’s been a year since I went on a trip that changed my life.
I boarded an ice-breaker on the West coast of Greenland and journeyed for 18 days all the way up to 81 latitude near the North Pole in the Canadian High Arctic with and a group of 10 incredible people.
There is a pre-Arctic me.
There is a post-Arctic me.
And in-between those two versions of myself is the me that I am convinced is still there, in the Arctic, floating on a ghost-ship, wandering the decks at night.
It took me this long to be able to actually really go through the photos and videos I filmed while there because the last year has been one of the hardest, loneliest, scariest, and strangest in terms of my career and my personal life.
And while I have published a handful of my Arctic photos already and even had a brief gallery showing with Commander Hadfield (my goodness what a bizarre sentence to write), I hadn’t yet digested the full meaning of what everything meant on many levels: on a personal level, on an Earth level, on a profound, philosophical level.
The Arctic was one of the best experiences of my life and I knew it while I was there. That was the surreal aspect of it.
I even talked about it in the moment at 81 degrees latitude (which somehow over 33,000 people have watched, how? why? !…):
When you know that what you are experiencing is a peak and is something so incredibly profound and that it is creating a seismic shift in your soul, it’s one of the heaviest and bittersweet feelings.
The truth is that I am still trying to put this trip into words.
And I feel like just now, a year later, I am ready to go through the photos. There are hundreds I haven’t even touched in terms of editing and writing about.
It’s as if a whole chapter of my life is sitting unread in a book that has been weighed down with an anchor of circumstance.
I would be lying if I said that I didn’t think of this trip often especially as of late.
There is a truth I keep coming back to over and over again.
I was the happiest I have ever been in my life on that trip.
This was while standing on the deck of the Kapitan Khlebnikov as the first snow of the trip started to fall as we waited to board zodiacs (small rafts) to go on an adventure.
That look? That’s not one I see on my face often.
That’s pure joy.
I may never, ever be in a position where I am with (who is one of the most exceptional humans I have ever spent time with) and a truly phenomenal group of people as the ones I was with and with a ship crew that made me come full circle with my family history (more about that in a later post) and an expedition crew that sincerely helped me get through some of my deepest fears (via ).
But I have these photos and videos and memories forever.
And while I know that part of me is still there in the Arctic, the part of me that is here that is struggling to know what’s next can’t stop thinking about the impact that the Arctic had on me as I wonder how to turn that impact into another chapter of my life and career.
I don’t have those answers to what my next chapter is yet but I can share the story of this particular chapter finally starting with some of the self-portraits I took over the course of the trip.
I take photos of myself to mark time.
I am fascinated, appalled, and tantalized by the ebb and flow of mortality.
Like this moment in the morning when the sun touched the Greenlandic waters and a heavy wind rushed through the fjord.
Time disappeared completely on this trip.
Temporal matters mattered less and less by the day as the midnight sun lingered on the horizon for hours bathing us in a near permanent twilight.
If anything, I took these just to remember how I felt in these moments: alive, having contemplated the deep losses of my life every night on the fly-bridge: lost loves, lost beginnings, lost ends that I relinquished to the cold night winds that caressed my face.
And here I was - a creature on this planet wind-burnt, hair full of snow and icy-whispers, freckles like pepper sunlight.
In a cold dream of an Earth star, the sun skips along an infinite horizon.
I would ponder the significance of life, grasping towards the wind that whipped through my hair, feeling small tossed about on an ocean of ice before going back to my cabin.
By the end of the trip, I couldn’t fathom leaving the ship.
The sea is an enchanteress.
It tosses you along with its songs to sirens and rocks you to the lullaby of its stories as it’s hues shift from blue to green reflected in the sky’s eyes.
I slept to dream the rest of the moments back into existence.
Like the most beautiful sunset I have every seen in a valley that had rarely been traversed by humans where the sun glistened like diamonds…
Or when we hiked a few hours along the Arctic tundra and ate lichen while the sun played the landscape like a harp.
My lips were cold, kissed by the tiny shards of snow that fell and my eyes were watery but all I can see is the silence that enveloped me; a silence so loud that my thoughts were drowned out.
In Greenland I told myself in this moment that I would never take anything for granted, that I would hug each moment and memory as deep as the ocean before me.
—
It’s 2 in the morning and I am in the Arctic.
I can feel the best parts of me being scattered along the landscapes like ice shards calving off of glaciers.
It’s 2 in the morning.
….and I am still floating in the Arctic.
—-
(part 1 of a series of posts about this trip)
()
()
(a huge thanks to the Hadfields especially for being the person responsible for getting us all together for this)
(and a huge thanks to Quark for literally the whole expedition and the ship and the crew and, and, and…everything :) )
—-
(My book releases in all stores worldwide on September 5th)
It’s been a year since I went on a trip that changed my life.
I boarded an ice-breaker on the West coast of Greenland and journeyed for 18 days all the way up to 81 latitude near the North Pole in the Canadian High Arctic with and a group of 10 incredible people.
There is a pre-Arctic me.
There is a post-Arctic me.
And in-between those two versions of myself is the me that I am convinced is still there, in the Arctic, floating on a ghost-ship, wandering the decks at night.
It took me this long to be able to actually really go through the photos and videos I filmed while there because the last year has been one of the hardest, loneliest, scariest, and strangest in terms of my career and my personal life.
And while I have published a handful of my Arctic photos already and even had a brief gallery showing with Commander Hadfield (my goodness what a bizarre sentence to write), I hadn’t yet digested the full meaning of what everything meant on many levels: on a personal level, on an Earth level, on a profound, philosophical level.
The Arctic was one of the best experiences of my life and I knew it while I was there. That was the surreal aspect of it.
I even talked about it in the moment at 81 degrees latitude (which somehow over 33,000 people have watched, how? why? !…):
When you know that what you are experiencing is a peak and is something so incredibly profound and that it is creating a seismic shift in your soul, it’s one of the heaviest and bittersweet feelings.
The truth is that I am still trying to put this trip into words.
And I feel like just now, a year later, I am ready to go through the photos. There are hundreds I haven’t even touched in terms of editing and writing about.
It’s as if a whole chapter of my life is sitting unread in a book that has been weighed down with an anchor of circumstance.
I would be lying if I said that I didn’t think of this trip often especially as of late.
There is a truth I keep coming back to over and over again.
I was the happiest I have ever been in my life on that trip.
This was while standing on the deck of the Kapitan Khlebnikov as the first snow of the trip started to fall as we waited to board zodiacs (small rafts) to go on an adventure.
That look? That’s not one I see on my face often.
That’s pure joy.
I may never, ever be in a position where I am with (who is one of the most exceptional humans I have ever spent time with) and a truly phenomenal group of people as the ones I was with and with a ship crew that made me come full circle with my family history (more about that in a later post) and an expedition crew that sincerely helped me get through some of my deepest fears (via ).
But I have these photos and videos and memories forever.
And while I know that part of me is still there in the Arctic, the part of me that is here that is struggling to know what’s next can’t stop thinking about the impact that the Arctic had on me as I wonder how to turn that impact into another chapter of my life and career.
I don’t have those answers to what my next chapter is yet but I can share the story of this particular chapter finally starting with some of the self-portraits I took over the course of the trip.
I take photos of myself to mark time.
I am fascinated, appalled, and tantalized by the ebb and flow of mortality.
Like this moment in the morning when the sun touched the Greenlandic waters and a heavy wind rushed through the fjord.
Time disappeared completely on this trip.
Temporal matters mattered less and less by the day as the midnight sun lingered on the horizon for hours bathing us in a near permanent twilight.
If anything, I took these just to remember how I felt in these moments: alive, having contemplated the deep losses of my life every night on the fly-bridge: lost loves, lost beginnings, lost ends that I relinquished to the cold night winds that caressed my face.
And here I was - a creature on this planet wind-burnt, hair full of snow and icy-whispers, freckles like pepper sunlight.
In a cold dream of an Earth star, the sun skips along an infinite horizon.
I would ponder the significance of life, grasping towards the wind that whipped through my hair, feeling small tossed about on an ocean of ice before going back to my cabin.
By the end of the trip, I couldn’t fathom leaving the ship.
The sea is an enchanteress.
It tosses you along with its songs to sirens and rocks you to the lullaby of its stories as it’s hues shift from blue to green reflected in the sky’s eyes.
I slept to dream the rest of the moments back into existence.
Like the most beautiful sunset I have every seen in a valley that had rarely been traversed by humans where the sun glistened like diamonds…
Or when we hiked a few hours along the Arctic tundra and ate lichen while the sun played the landscape like a harp.
My lips were cold, kissed by the tiny shards of snow that fell and my eyes were watery but all I can see is the silence that enveloped me; a silence so loud that my thoughts were drowned out.
In Greenland I told myself in this moment that I would never take anything for granted, that I would hug each moment and memory as deep as the ocean before me.
—
It’s 2 in the morning and I am in the Arctic.
I can feel the best parts of me being scattered along the landscapes like ice shards calving off of glaciers.
It’s 2 in the morning.
….and I am still floating in the Arctic.
—-
(part 1 of a series of posts about this trip)
(a huge thanks to the Hadfields especially for being the person responsible for getting us all together for this)
(and a huge thanks to Quark for literally the whole expedition and the ship and the crew and, and, and…everything :) )
—-
(My book releases in all stores worldwide on September 5th)
It’s been a year since I went on a trip that changed my life.
I boarded an ice-breaker on the West coast of Greenland and journeyed for 18 days all the way up to 81 latitude near the North Pole in the Canadian High Arctic with and a group of 10 incredible people.
There is a pre-Arctic me.
There is a post-Arctic me.
And in-between those two versions of myself is the me that I am convinced is still there, in the Arctic, floating on a ghost-ship, wandering the decks at night.
It took me this long to be able to actually really go through the photos and videos I filmed while there because the last year has been one of the hardest, loneliest, scariest, and strangest in terms of my career and my personal life.
And while I have published a handful of my Arctic photos already and even had a brief gallery showing with Commander Hadfield (my goodness what a bizarre sentence to write), I hadn’t yet digested the full meaning of what everything meant on many levels: on a personal level, on an Earth level, on a profound, philosophical level.
The Arctic was one of the best experiences of my life and I knew it while I was there. That was the surreal aspect of it.
I even talked about it in the moment at 81 degrees latitude (which somehow over 33,000 people have watched, how? why? !…):
When you know that what you are experiencing is a peak and is something so incredibly profound and that it is creating a seismic shift in your soul, it’s one of the heaviest and bittersweet feelings.
The truth is that I am still trying to put this trip into words.
And I feel like just now, a year later, I am ready to go through the photos. There are hundreds I haven’t even touched in terms of editing and writing about.
It’s as if a whole chapter of my life is sitting unread in a book that has been weighed down with an anchor of circumstance.
I would be lying if I said that I didn’t think of this trip often especially as of late.
There is a truth I keep coming back to over and over again.
I was the happiest I have ever been in my life on that trip.
This was while standing on the deck of the Kapitan Khlebnikov as the first snow of the trip started to fall as we waited to board zodiacs (small rafts) to go on an adventure.
That look? That’s not one I see on my face often.
That’s pure joy.
I may never, ever be in a position where I am with (who is one of the most exceptional humans I have ever spent time with) and a truly phenomenal group of people as the ones I was with and with a ship crew that made me come full circle with my family history (more about that in a later post) and an expedition crew that sincerely helped me get through some of my deepest fears (via ).
But I have these photos and videos and memories forever.
And while I know that part of me is still there in the Arctic, the part of me that is here that is struggling to know what’s next can’t stop thinking about the impact that the Arctic had on me as I wonder how to turn that impact into another chapter of my life and career.
I don’t have those answers to what my next chapter is yet but I can share the story of this particular chapter finally starting with some of the self-portraits I took over the course of the trip.
I take photos of myself to mark time.
I am fascinated, appalled, and tantalized by the ebb and flow of mortality.
Like this moment in the morning when the sun touched the Greenlandic waters and a heavy wind rushed through the fjord.
Time disappeared completely on this trip.
Temporal matters mattered less and less by the day as the midnight sun lingered on the horizon for hours bathing us in a near permanent twilight.
If anything, I took these just to remember how I felt in these moments: alive, having contemplated the deep losses of my life every night on the fly-bridge: lost loves, lost beginnings, lost ends that I relinquished to the cold night winds that caressed my face.
And here I was - a creature on this planet wind-burnt, hair full of snow and icy-whispers, freckles like pepper sunlight.
In a cold dream of an Earth star, the sun skips along an infinite horizon.
I would ponder the significance of life, grasping towards the wind that whipped through my hair, feeling small tossed about on an ocean of ice before going back to my cabin.
By the end of the trip, I couldn’t fathom leaving the ship.
The sea is an enchanteress.
It tosses you along with its songs to sirens and rocks you to the lullaby of its stories as it’s hues shift from blue to green reflected in the sky’s eyes.
I slept to dream the rest of the moments back into existence.
Like the most beautiful sunset I have every seen in a valley that had rarely been traversed by humans where the sun glistened like diamonds…
Or when we hiked a few hours along the Arctic tundra and ate lichen while the sun played the landscape like a harp.
My lips were cold, kissed by the tiny shards of snow that fell and my eyes were watery but all I can see is the silence that enveloped me; a silence so loud that my thoughts were drowned out.
In Greenland I told myself in this moment that I would never take anything for granted, that I would hug each moment and memory as deep as the ocean before me.
—
It’s 2 in the morning and I am in the Arctic.
I can feel the best parts of me being scattered along the landscapes like ice shards calving off of glaciers.
It’s 2 in the morning.
….and I am still floating in the Arctic.
—-
(part 1 of a series of posts about this trip)
(a huge thanks to the Hadfields especially for being the person responsible for getting us all together for this)
(and a huge thanks to Quark for literally the whole expedition and the ship and the crew and, and, and…everything :) )
—-
(My book releases in all stores worldwide on September 5th)
It’s been a year since I went on a trip that changed my life. I boarded an ice-breaker on the coast of Greenland and journeyed for 18 days all the way up to 81 latitude near the North Pole in the Canadian High Arctic with Astronaut Commander Hadfield and his hand-picked group of 10 incredible people.
There is a pre-Arctic me.
There is a post-Arctic me.
And in-between those two versions of myself is the me that I am convinced is still there, in the Arctic, floating on a ghost-ship, wandering the decks at night.
It took me this long to be able to actually really go through the photos and videos I filmed while there because the last year has been one of the hardest, loneliest, scariest, and strangest in terms of my career and my personal life.
And while I have published a handful of my Arctic photos already and even had a brief gallery showing with Commander Hadfield (my goodness what a bizarre sentence to write), I hadn’t yet digested the full meaning of what everything meant on many levels: on a personal level, on an Earth level, on a profound, philosophical level.
The Arctic was one of the best experiences of my life and I knew it while I was there. That was the surreal aspect of it.
I even talked about it in the moment at 81 degrees latitude (which somehow over 33,000 people have watched, how? why? !…):
When you know that what you are experiencing is a peak and is something so incredibly profound and that it is creating a seismic shift in your soul, it’s one of the heaviest and bittersweet feelings.
The truth is that I am still trying to put this trip into words. And I feel like just now, a year later, I am ready to go through the photos. There are hundreds I haven’t even touched in terms of editing and writing about. It’s as if a whole chapter of my life is sitting unread in a book that has been weighed down with an anchor of circumstance.
I would be lying if I said that I didn’t think of this trip often especially as of late.
There is a truth I keep coming back to over and over again.
I was the happiest I have ever been in my life on that trip.
This was while standing on the deck of the Kapitan Khlebnikov as the first snow of the trip started to fall as we waited to board zodiacs (small rafts) to go on an adventure. That look? That’s not one I see on my face often.
That’s pure joy.
I may never, ever be in a position where I am with an Astronaut (who is one of the most exceptional humans I have ever spent time with) and a truly phenomenal group of people as the ones I was with and with a ship crew that made me come full circle with my family history (more about that in a later post) and an expedition crew that sincerely helped me get through some of my deepest fears (via Quark Expeditions).
But I have these photos and videos and memories forever.
And while I know that part of me is still there in the Arctic, the part of me that is here that is struggling to know where to go with my career can’t stop thinking about the impact that the Arctic had on me as I wonder how to turn that impact into another chapter of my life and career. My future is currently an entirely open book which is scary and also somehow exciting.
I don’t have those answers to what my next chapter is yet but I can share the story of this one finally piece by piece starting with some of the self-portraits I took over the course of the trip.
I take photos of myself to mark time. Like this moment in the morning when the sun touched the Greenlandic waters and a heavy wind rushed through the fjord.
And time disappeared completely on this trip.
Temporal matters mattered less and less by the day as the midnight sun lingered on the horizon for hours bathing us in a near permanent twilight.
If anything, I took these just to remember how I felt in these moments: alive, having contemplated the deep losses of my life every night on the fly-bridge: lost loves, lost beginnings, lost ends that I relinquished to the cold night winds that caressed my face.
And here I was - a creature on this planet wind-burnt, hair full of snow and icy-whispers, freckles like pepper sunlight.
I felt haunted by the Earth during every sunset.
I would go back to the bare but perfect cabin I shared with my roommate and ponder significance and feeling small tossed about on an ocean of ice.
In these moments I couldn’t fathom leaving the ship.
The sea is an enchanteress.
It tosses you along with its songs to sirens and rocks you to the lullaby of its stories as it’s hues shift from blue to green reflected in the sky’s eyes.
Sleep was just a vehicle to dream of the moments that imprinted themselves on my heart.
Like the most beautiful sunset I have every seen in a valley that had rarely been traversed by humans where the sun glistened like diamonds…
Or when we hiked a few hours along the Arctic tundra and ate lichen while the sun played the landscape like a harp.
My lips were cold, kissed by the tiny shards of snow that fell and my eyes were watery but all I can see is the silence that enveloped me; a silence so loud that my thoughts were drowned out.
In Greenland I told myself in this moment that I would never take anything for granted, that I would hug each moment and memory as deep as the ocean before me.
—
It’s 2 in the morning and I am in the Arctic.
I can feel the best parts of me being scattered along the landscapes like ice shards calving off of glaciers.
It’s 2 in the morning.
….and I am still floating in the Arctic.
—-
(part 1 of a series of posts about this trip)
(a huge thanks to the Hadfields especially Evan for being the person responsible for getting us all together for this)
(and a huge thanks to Quark for literally the whole expedition and the ship and the crew and, and, and…everything :) )
—-
(My book releases in all stores worldwide on September 5th)
()
First part of a series about my trip to the Arctic one year ago.
