Auyuittuq: The land that never melts

My Scholarship entry - A 'place' I have visited

Canada | Monday, July 8, 2013 | flickr photos

Every time I view these photos, I am awestruck at the beauty of the Arctic only momentarily before realizing how these landscapes are being altered irrevocably. That to me was the bittersweet joy in using my first DSLR Nikon D5000. As a young environmentalist, I embarked on the 2010 Arctic Expedition to view and understand the vulnerability of these regions. Large humbling mountains and glaciers were as wondrous as the thousands of tiny microorganisms living on a single rock. As we eagerly touched broken icebergs floating by our zodiacs, I reflected on how we had the ability to adversely affect nature on such a scale. In chatting with Inuit elders, I valued how they preserved their stories and cultures of the land and transferred their knowledge onto the younger people in magazine covered sodhouses. Their resiliency and grace amidst such changes grounded me. Overall, while we were a tiny speck in the grand scheme, our actions have the potential to alter the complex chemistry of the planet for the smallest phytoplankton to the massive glaciers. I want to share the stories of Greenland landscapes and its people to inspire and preserve through collective action.