I am from Nebraska. I had lived in Nebraska for 24 years of my life. To say that life outside of cornfields and flatland would even be possible for me seemed a bit farfetched. But I wanted to try. In 2014, I sold all of my possessions and booked a one way ticket to Japan. I was going to walk across Japan...and after 5 grueling months, I did it. 4 years later, I would wind up traveling across the globe to Iceland after befriending a man that I met along my journey across Japan in the years prior. He had become a glacier guide with his wife and I joined them. For 3 years I trained amongst the ice, learning it's story and photographing it. Today, me and the man own a glacier tour company together.
I now trek across the frozen landscapes for a living and teach travelers about the ice and how it shapes our world.
This photograph is not one that was taken on the glacier. It is much more unique than that. This photograph was taken on a frozen glacier lake inside of an iceberg. As a glacier reaches lower altitudes, the ice calves and forms massive icebergs in the lakes. In the wintertime, it gets so cold that these lakes freeze and the icebergs become locked in a stasis until summertime. There is a brief window where teams of glacier guides can trek across the lakes and explore these ice caves formed inside of the icebergs. This ice cave was formed at the roof of the biggest iceberg on the lake and in order to explore it, we had to repel down into it.
As I photographed my friend rappelling into the static iceberg on a frozen lake in the middle of Iceland, it dawned on me how absolutely insane my life had become.
6 years prior, I took a step out my door without understanding where it would lead me, and it lead me here.
To this static moment in time.
