Introduction
FIRE AND ICE
Over the last decade, I have photographed Fire and Ice. I made two trips to the Arctic, and five to the Antarctic, including a four-month season at McMurdo Station, thanks to the National Science Foundation. While there, I climbed Mt. Erebus, a 13,000 foot open-lava-lake volcano that towers over the base. More recently I have photographed Yellowstone in the winter, Iceland, Hawaii, the Galapagos, and the Aeolian Islands. Everywhere, I search for stories and myths about local volcanic and geothermal activity.
Fire and ice are animating forces for our planet, constantly changing its surface and atmosphere. We tend to imagine Earth as a ball, like a dime store globe. We expect, we need our planet to be firm beneath our feet. We forget that its surface slides, subducts, and transforms. Its molten inner nature erupts as volcanoes or triggers earthquakes. Its icy poles melt and then reform over geologic time, dramatically changing sea level. A stable earth, whatever we would like to think, is an illusion.
Early humans had stories about the land that flooded, smoked, belched fire, and shook. Rightly, they feared the forces of the underworld, devised rituals and ceremonies to mollify them, and tried to live in harmony with the natural world. We, on the other hand, with our increasing population and constantly evolving technology, have lost our reverence for nature and natural balances. We are to exhausting our planet’s resources. Our activities have begun to alter earth’s climate, and we see global temperatures rising and glaciers melting,. We have forgotten there are forces we cannot control. Fire and ice will continue to influence our future; we ignore them at our peril.
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