Last night, after the sugarloaf experience, we finally managed to reach the camp and crashed soon after dinner was over. Jason acquainted me with all his camera gear, which alone weighs 100kgs! With so many carry-ons exceeding the prescribed weight limit of 7kgs, we sure had had trouble loading parts of it on board for the many flights. Flying with so much equipment is never easy. His bumblebee backpack and my camera bag each weighed over 10kgs, and not to mention his 800mm and 400mm beasts of lenses. Gear lust always makes one drool, and I was quite enchanted by the variety of lenses to experiment with, and I wondered which one of those I might get to use. Thankfully I was a Nikon user as well, so lens compatibility issues were sorted straight away.
Quick breakfast, and we set off to see Kangerlussuaq, stopping around its lakes and intense lichen patterns on rocks – riot of colours just sitting idle by the roadside, waiting for one to stop and admire. Vast ash coloured quicksand plains stretched in the background with tall dun mountains. We spent the morning shooting reflections and looked for patterns that announced the advent of winter, transitions in nature.
Post lunch, we loaded all our gear and bags onto a 4WD and met Adam, our guide from World of Greenland and Arctic Circle. First stop was the city harbor where we found two fishermen repairing and painting their boats. I got some quick shots of them at work, and soon it started to snow. Adam laughed saying ‘Aputsiaq’ was falling from heaven, and we realized our friend’s name, literally translated to snowflake. This foddered us with new nicknames for him from “Snowflake”, “Snowy” and others we coined through the rest of the trip.
We met a couple at the same harbor, which were breaking the stereotype of trendy destinations and had picked Greenland for their honeymoon! I wished the adventurous newlyweds a good time and soaked in some light while looking at the area. We visited a dog-breeding center nearby where Canadian dogs, the Diesel of Greenland, were reared and prepared for the winter months.
Jason explained the importance of persistence and access to me. Saying he would have ideally met the owner, spent time and gotten to know him and the pack better, if there was enough time instead of as now. We were currently shooting from a distance. And, without the owner, getting close to that ferocious pack meant signing our death warrants. So, we soon left as we were already running behind the schedule. But En-route, when we saw some wrecked metal on the ground, we became curious.
Lying with abandon, next to the road, was the wreckage of a Lockheed T-33 plane. Aputsiaq apprised, in 1968, three planes flew in from Iceland, and in a whiteout due to heavy snow, couldn’t land. They circled the area until they were out of fuel then crashed into this site to prevent anyone from getting hurt. I wondered where the other two planes were, and what the fate of those pilots was but Adam assured me that the pilots had survived.
The metal from the crash gleamed in the light. Some had inscribed words onto its silvery surface. The plane parts lay half submerged in sand, half buried, half drawing attention to their tragic past. Grass grew around; grass grew over the metal, and underneath it, as if in nature’s way of taking over everything, of giving a transition, a fresh start to a grim past.
We started off again; soon we were off-roading and reached the camping site of the Russell Glacier, 25kms east of Kangerlussuaq. We were camping bang opposite the mighty 60m tall Russell Glacier. Adam helped us pitch our tents, unload the gear and after a brief tour of the place (including many warnings of high alert), left, leaving us in the company of mighty Russell and breathtaking landscapes of ice, silt and boulders.
Earlier in the day, Jason had taped the LCD of my screen and I missed it terribly, but later I realized, not looking at the screen improved concentration and resulted in better compositions. I kept it on till the end of the day. While exploring the area and hiking around, Jason and I discussed Ansel Adam’s zone metering system, something tough to grasp at the first go.
When camping, food is usually basic. Our friend Apu however had fixed us some great smoked halibut (the best ever!) and we finished an early dinner after a good long day. Towards night, Jason was making a portrait of me and Lo! Behold! Greeting him in the frame when he checked the result apart from my chattering toothy smile was a curtain of green in the sky. He shouted out with glee, and I looked back, and there it was, the northern lights! Beautiful velvet of green floating over a stretch above the glacier in the sky!
We all kept hugging each other, marveling at the colours. This wasn’t the exact season for Aurora Borealis, but as the curtains serenaded us with a surprise performance, and a cold wind blew, it looked like a party upstairs. Little magnetic charges flaring up enchantment. If I died that night from the cold, it was a death worth dying for. Norway had always been on my top 5 places to visit, more for the lights than anything else, and I was delighted. Later I took some long exposures to capture the lights. The wind was strong; my tripod unsteady and there was too much grain, grain I liked.
Tomorrow night, some more light, please.
