Sebastian Copeland on Polar Ice

My name is Sebastian Copeland. I’ve made it my life’s mission to explore, study and document the polar ice. The Inuit have up to 50 words to describe ice. The Sámi and Lapland have hundreds, some even to describe its soul. In the more moderate latitudes, ice is largely misunderstood. 

In reality, ice has a life cycle that is not entirely different than our own. Just like us, ice is born. It travels, it interacts, it transforms. As it ages, the more vulnerable disappear earlier and the rest moves on, eventually meeting its fate as it breaks to the sea in the form of icebergs. And by melting, it returns to its original state, thereby closing the cycle of life by feeding the birth of the next ice. It’s beautiful.

That ice helps us understand atmospheric conditions that predate modern humans. And if we can learn how the Earth behaved up to 1 million years ago, that helps us understand the rate of changes today with the influences of human activities and what we can expect tomorrow. Recently, it hit me that everything that I’ve studied and I’m passionate about—glacier sea ice, ice shelves, and ice sheets—are all threatened with extinction.

My work can be summed up to giving nature a voice, or more specifically, making that voice heard and perhaps better understood because it’s not too late. Traveling alone in remote environments forces us to be alert both internally and externally, with little in the way of outside distractions. The communion with the land approaches the spiritual and even the sublime. He or she who walks the land invariably becomes a warrior in its defense.