Voss, Norway -
Pieces of ice float above the blue waters.
On the horizon, clouds gather to cover the majestic mountain peaks.
The closer the plane gets to the surface, the louder the roar of water and the louder the "cracking" of ice, as chunks of ice fall from Europe's largest glacier.
The scenery is enormous, and it seems to be far beyond the scope of human perspective.
It seems the whole world is running in front of you.
In the margins of this massive backdrop, the plane carrying the man chasing glaciers looks like a little child's play.
The man wonders: “There is no one there.” “The air is almost empty.”
These scenes are what the 42-year-old American adventurer, Garrett Fisher, is accustomed to, and you can learn from them the nature of his work and life.
An aerial view of Norway's Nygaardsbryn glacier, which has lost nearly 3 kilometers of its length due to climate change (Associated Press)
Fisher travels around the world, watching from above, from the seat of his tiny blue and white SuperCab.
Here he combines his two old passions - photography and aviation - in his quest to document every remaining glacier on Earth, and he does so for the simple reason that "I love them", as he puts it.
But he also does it for deeper reasons.
Because the climate clock is ticking, and the planet's glaciers are melting.
Fisher is convinced that documenting, archiving, and remembering all this serves an important noble purpose.
“Because, after all, nothing lasts forever – not even ancient glaciers”;
Glaciers are not static.
And in a warming world they will get smaller.
“Within 100 or 200 years, most of them will be gone or drastically reduced,” says Fisher. “It's the front line of climate change...the first indication that we're missing something.”
According to data from the European Environment Agency, the Alps, for example, have lost about half their volume since 1900, with a clear acceleration of melting occurring since the 1980s.
The ice retreat is expected to continue into the future.
Frightening pace
Estimates from the European Economic Area indicate that by 2100, the volume of European glaciers will continue to decline by between 22% and 84% – and this is under a moderate scenario.
While the most severe models indicate the possibility of losing up to 89%.
"We have a record of observations of small glaciers in stable areas, particularly in the Alps, Norway and New Zealand," says Rodrik van de Waal, a glacier expert at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
He adds that this record shows the glaciers retreating further.
"This is a consequence of climate change."
Fisher looks out the window of his plane during a mission to photograph glaciers in Norway and says they are the front line of climate change (Associated Press)
Of course, the slow disappearance of glaciers is a bigger problem than the loss of that stunning beauty or even the loss of the glaciers themselves, and the biggest danger is the rise in sea level (around the world) of about 15 centimeters around the world over the past century due to the melting of glaciers.
This ticking clock is running at a frightening pace, which is what got Garrett Fisher moving.
For Fisher, it all began—as many people do—in childhood.
Growing up in a quiet rural community in upstate New York, he was the son of local business owners and the grandson of a failed pilot who introduced him early to aviation.
He used to live next to a private airport.
Garrett Fisher's grandfather, Gordon, with his plane in the late 1990s (Garrett Fisher, Associated Press)
Fisher was only a toddler when his grandfather, Gordon, put him in the back of his plane.
The boy was not happy about it, but the dismay soon turned into delight.
At the age of four, he was addicted to that ride.
Fisher remembers the endless hours he spent staring out his bedroom window, waiting for the door to his grandfather's hangar to open.
The older man used to tell him, "Whatever you think you can do."
Fischer edits photos he took of a glacier at a home he rented in Voss, Norway. (Associated Press)
Then, as a young man, he started photography.
Which made him satisfy two of his three passions.
Sometime in the late 1990s, a friend of Fisher's told him that the world's glaciers were disappearing.
It has haunted her ever since, so much so that he added the third piece of the passion triangle: the urgency to beat the clock.
The Bundhasprien River between 1869-1870, in Vestland County, Norway (Associated Press)
He had seen them disappear, and he wanted to make sure that these amazing pieces of the world—pieces he saw as indescribably beautiful—were documented and preserved, even if only in pictures.
Fisher directs his efforts directly to future generations.
He believes that any documentation he makes about the glaciers before they disappear may be invaluable to future generations.
So, he launched the Glaciers Initiative, a nonprofit foundation, to support his work, and plans to open some of his archives now to the public.
Fisher is not the first to feel the documentary and archival sense when it comes to glaciers. Since the invention of photography in the early decades of the 19th century, amazing glaciers have been documented by amateur travelers and scientists.
The Norwegian photographer Knud Knudsen, one of his country's most artistic photographers, delved into landscapes with an obsession similar to Fischer's.
Travel around the west coast of Norway, photographing nature: fjords, mountains, waterfalls… and glaciers.
But in an age when everything about photography was cumbersome, unwieldy, and slow, Knudsen moved about on the surface of the earth, traveling in carts and boats.
On one trip, he carried about 175 pounds of camera equipment with him.
Unlike Fisher, he couldn't fly and couldn't capture the images and feelings from above looking at the vast and magnificent natural formations he was chronicling in his homeland.
A sky of crystal and cotton
For Fischer, Norway is just the latest glacier front.
He spent years documenting their counterparts elsewhere, including the American West, before shifting his focus to the Alps and Europe.
He has photographed thousands of glaciers and is hungry for more.
Fisher never, even amid the silence and beauty of his travels, lost his sense of documenting the "decisive moment";
They are the turning points of a glacier that still exists but is in the process of disappearing.
He knows, with each flight, that he is documenting a slow-moving tragedy as it rears its ugly head.
In his tiny two-seater plane, he's about to ascend into a sky of crystal in hopes of photographing the Nygårdsbern glacier.
"There's a 30 percent chance we'll see the iceberg," he says.
"There's a bunch of clouds sitting over there."
Nygaardsbren Glacier in Jostedal, Norway (Associated Press)
The plane looks like an old car and smells of oil and fuel. Fisher has brought his iPad for navigation, but his flight software has no GPS information for glaciers.
So he flies using a combination of feeling, instinct, observation and Google Maps.
Garrett Fisher, an American pilot and adventurer, prepares his small "SuperCop" for takeoff in Voss, Norway (Associated Press)
risk from above
The glass windows of the plane provide great views.
And when you're at a higher altitude, the houses start to feel like game pieces.
Anxiety dissipates in moments of deep peace.
It's as if altitude - the distance from the world as we know it - makes everything that happens on the planet below seem more manageable.
Yet he knew that one wrong move would end it all.
"The weather is very bad and cold, the wind is very strong and flying is a big technical challenge," says Fisher.
"To photograph glaciers, we get very close to all of this. So, it takes a lot of skill, time and determination."
Many people are afraid to fly, especially in small planes.
When agencies broadcast news of a plane crash, it is usually a small vehicle.
"Many pilots have told me I'm crazy," he adds.
Tourists skiing in Voss, Norway (Associated Press)
Many of the glaciers are remote and difficult to access or document except by satellite or by air, making his small plane, the SuperCap, an ideal vehicle for this photographic excursion.
The aircraft is designed to weather the gusty winds and hazardous environments inherent in its work.
Why take the risk?
Fisher believes that satellite images will not capture glaciers effectively — neither aesthetically nor scientifically, or what he calls: glacier brilliance at the "magic hour".
Glaciers constitute one of the most beautiful natural scenes on Earth (Associated Press)
The way the shadow falls on the ice, revealing an infinite and indefinable blue.
The absolutely epic existence of these ice giants who are in a perpetual state of flux.
Will the engine stop?
He has detailed plans in case of an accident on a glacier.
He calculated that he could survive for about 24 hours if he landed and measured the plane's tail to make sure he could contain it to stay in a safe place while waiting for help.
Fischer moves frequently between the United States, Spain and Norway, rarely stopping.
His wife, Anne, his childhood friend, urges him to sleep and says that if left to his own devices, he hardly sleeps.
This is what happens to people who are so determined about something that everything else starts to fade from their lives.
So far, Fisher has paid for his passion with his own money, but the adventure is not cheap;
Running out of funding and looking for backers.
Tourists on the edge of a glacier in Norway (Associated Press)
Aesthetics Beyond Science
He does his job carefully.
In many ways it's a science, and in other ways it's a public service, but it always revolves around one thing: beauty.
Science has all the data we need.
"They have a lot of data sets, which will be available in the future," says Fisher.
"The problem is, it's not pretty."
What he does, he says, is something that not only is aesthetically pleasing, but might encourage people to change their ways.
Warning sign of a low-flying aircraft on the road to Voss Airport (Associated Press)
"It's not a data set. It's a very stimulating and emotionally compelling presentation of these glaciers," he adds.
Glaciers are a window into our past.
Photography too is a window into our past.
Fisher has combined these endeavors to ensure that many sightings of this present moment are documented, so that people remember all that disappears.
After all, much of his work is about memory, but what about the here and now?
Can a photograph convey the deep experience of being in front of something that will soon be lost forever?
In many ways, that's what he's trying to find out.
A boat sails through the fjords outside Voss, Norway, at the end of September 2022. (Associated Press)
The archive is the thing I poured everything into, devoting countless hours.
Far from archival dreams, he dares to hope for change.
If he had the right light, the right angle, the right moment, maybe people would care more.
He is chasing the perfect image.
One very beautiful picture can make people and decision makers act.
And if it's not a single photo, maybe an entire archive will convince people to come and look and get close and pay attention.
Garrett Fisher, an American pilot and adventurer, pushes his plane into its hangar in preparation for a new takeoff to photograph glaciers (Associated Press)
"We can live without them," says Fisher, "and yet it pains us to lose them."
It's all gone but not yet, there's still time, and Garrett Fisher has a plane and a camera and he's not going far from them.