Iceberg Season
This morning I was thinking about icebergs. It’s iceberg season in Newfoundland, with more than 1200 released from sea ice and parading past the ruggedly beautiful eastern coast. Icebergs are big business as tourists flock to see them, much as tourists flock to see Great White sharks now on Cape Cod. The world has a curiosity about icebergs that goes back to the day the Titanic sank. There’s something mystical and romantic about these roaming islands of ice marching from their icy prison in the north where they’ve been locked away for millennia to southern waters where they reunite with the blended waters of the world. Romantic until you run into one anyway.
Scanning the iceberg sightings this year made me think about my time on Signal Hill in December of 2017. Signal Hill is impressive without the draw of icebergs floating by you, I can imagine the crowds there on a Saturday with an iceberg floating by. My time there, documented early in this blog’s history, was memorable but certainly not crowded. Little did I know at the time that I wouldn’t be back there again any time soon. It remains on my short list of places I’d love to get back to.
Environment and Climate Change Canada tracks iceberg activity and states that most of the icebergs that you see in the North Atlantic are calving from glaciers in Western Greenland, with between 10,000 and 40,000 icebergs annually. I had no idea there were that many in a season. To be categorized as an iceberg the ice has to be at least 5 meters above the sea level. That’s the starting point, and icebergs get much bigger from there. Those that miss the 5 meter cut are still navigation hazards.
So icebergs triggered my wanderlust affliction, which is always lingering just below the surface. Surely a trip to Labrador and Newfoundland in April would be a great mix of Aurora Borealis and icebergs. Frankly I wonder why I haven’t done this trip already. So much to see and do in this world, and two things I’ve always wanted to see are just out of reach this season.