_photography

Helio Sur (Southern ice cap) Torres del Paine, Patagonia, Chile... 23 March, 2000.

...What strikes you, is the absence of life accross that huge expanse of ice.  A scar, a chilling swathe of cold accross the earths surface,  hundreds of metres of it; and below that, rocks and river systems on a whole other sub glacial landscape, lying hidden, living from a time more ancient than we can lay claim to. No animal would venture out there, it would be a feat of endurance even to make it very far.  No fish would swim in its streams, no algae Would survive in that cold.  A natural law unto itself, embedded there by sheer brute force against the life around it, it is the last bastion of a prehistoric ice age, silent and indifferent to the age of warmth and tourist trekkers that now surround it.

Copyright Sunda 2000