In Patagonia, I scale the Tronador Glacier. The trail is hot, dusty, difficult and being largely vertical near impossible. All compounded by having to carry an enormous pack with sleeping bag, food, water and camera equipment. The summit rewards me with a breath-taking view of the Andes as well as a clear, cold stream of water pouring steadily from the mouth of the glacier. The supply appears endless.
In Cape Dorset, Baffin Island, I stare out at the bay. It is late November and the water has not frozen as it usually does. Without solid ice beneath their feet the hunters of the tiny community are landlocked, unable to travel by either ski-do or boat. For the local Inuit people it is significant. There will be no traditional food until the water freezes over.
In the outback of Australia recent high rainfalls have transformed the dry red earth into a green desert. An elder from the Darling tribe shows me the mysterious Menindee Lakes, flooded for the first time in a decade. We stroll to a nearby riverbed that normally rushes with muddy water, but see only dry, cracked, red earth. The eerie cries of the river birds echo overhead.
On the northeast coast, I board a riverboat in Daintree, moving upstream from the Pacific and the Great Barrier Reef. On a slow leisurely ride I feel the water’s pulse beneath me and I ponder the future of the earth….
Commissioned by METALCULTURE, UK