nomads

The icebergs have landed. Well, you know what I mean. They’ve started appearing along our shore. Some seasons we don’t see a single one because they’re too far out; other seasons, our coasts are littered with bergs. Some are majestic. Others, just bits. But each one is spectacular.

We saw our first iceberg in June 2008, within a few days of moving to Newfoundland. Since that time, we’ve seen many more. Icebergs are a way of marking both time and space here: they are integral to the landscape, but they are seasonal. We start sniffing them out in March and usually by April they’ve started drifting past our shores…

What the Oceans Remember isn’t about icebergs, per se, but because the book is so firmly rooted in place, and because that place includes not only this island that I now call home, but also the endlessness of an ever-changing and ever-moving ocean, and because this book is about migrations and memories, it seems fitting to ruminate on icebergs.

 

Nomadic giants, icebergs migrate, too, calving from Greenland glaciers before moving along the ocean currents towards Labrador and then back along the coast of Newfoundland. So, too, are icebergs repositories of memory: the memory of thousands of years of water.

 

So this is a post filled with gratuitous images of icebergs. Because it’s spring in Newfoundland. And spring means icebergs. And then, in June and early July, capelin. And behind them, whales. Summer is on its way; it’s got a way to go yet, but we’ll get there eventually. In the meantime, enjoy.