Arctic Eyewitness: Back From Ellesmere Island
Photographer Ben Horton, 25, reflects on 60 days dogsledding across Ellesmere Island with Will Steger and five other young explorers for Global Warming 101’s second expedition.
Text and photographs by Ben Horton
The contrast of coming home from Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Artic reminds me of a light switch being thrown on in the early morning. The body recoils in sensory overload from the nonstop noise, motion, and the number of unchecked emails. I guess it didn’t help that our first real stop was in New York City. While on the expedition, it was normal to ski alongside the dogsleds for 25 kilometers without seeing a single sign of man for days in a row. Now we are forced to confront our “normal” lives, weaving in and out of people on busy sidewalks, crossing car choked streets, and choking on the smog that churns out of them.
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